As long as a cow raises a good calf each year and doesn’t exhibit any major personality problems, she’s kept in the herd. When she becomes too old or infirm to get pregnant, the owner culls her. Sending a gentle old cow away to slaughter is difficult. I try to console myself with the knowledge that she had a full and happy life on our place and by arranging for her to go somewhere close and quick.
Bulls are usually kept in groups until they’re sold as breeding stock. The bull’s first calves will be delivered the next year, just ahead of breeding season, so it’s safe to use him for a second year. If you keep a bull for a third year, his daughters will be old enough for him to breed, so you will need to either make other arrangements for the heifers or get a new bull to prevent that from happening. Bulls can be sold to other cattle owners to give them a couple more happy years in the pasture or sent to slaughter.
| Body Condition Body condition scoring (BCS) is a simple method for assessing how fat or thin cattle are, which will help when you’re looking at cattle to buy or assessing the cattle you already have. BCS is a simple system, and you can start using it right away, but getting exact results takes experience. The optimum BCS for a cow is 5–7, or “pleasantly plump.” A cow’s body condition should be scored three to four months before calving, allowing time to adjust the ration and to let her gain or lose enough weight to be in optimum condition for calving and rebreeding. The numbers break down as follows: 1.Emaciated: No fat visible anywhere; ribs, hip bones, and backbone clearly visible through hide 2.Poor: Spine doesn’t stick out quite as much 3.Thin: Ribs visible; spine rounded rather than sharp 4.Borderline: Individual ribs not obvious; some fat over ribs and hip bones 5.Moderate: Generally good overall appearance; fat over the ribs and on either side of tailhead 6.High moderate: Obvious fat over ribs and around tailhead 7.Good: Quite plump; some fat bulges (pones) possibly visible 8.Unquestionably fat: Large fat deposits over ribs and around tailhead; pones obvious 9.Extremely fat: Tailhead and hips buried in fat; pones protruding |
This cattle production cycle creates a lot of opportunities to tailor your beef operation to your personal preferences and calendar. A cow-calf operator is on the job year-round, but it doesn’t take intensive management to keep cows and calves happy and productive. A backgrounder can buy feeder calves in the fall or the spring and keep them on forages until they’re ready for the feedlot. It’s quite easy with this system to have cattle only for the summer so that you don’t have to make or buy hay, and you can take the winter off. Feedlot operators can work on small amounts of land because they don’t need pasture; they do, however, need excellent management skills and a lot of knowledge about cattle nutrition.
Finally, seed stock producers, who raise bulls and heifers for cow-calf operations, must have plenty of experience with breeding high-quality cattle as well as good marketing skills.
Fences and Feed for Beef Cattle
You could stick your new heifers in the garage until you get a fence up around the pasture, but think of the mess! It’s much better to have the “three Fs”— fences, feed, and facilities—in place before you bring home the cattle.
Fences
Good fencing is essential to a cattle operation, more important even than shelter. Poor fencing makes for bad neighbors and sleepless nights. If your cattle are constantly in the neighbor’s cornfield or causing a traffic hazard on your road, your neighbor and the local sheriff are going to be upset. So you’ll need to make sure that your fences are heifer high and bull tight.
Well-fed and calm cattle are about the easiest farm animals to fence. Hungry and scared cattle—and those in heat—will jump, break, or trample a weak fence. The fence around your property boundary should hold your cattle no matter what mood they’re in. You also need a fence that will discourage them from reaching over or under for a taste of some fragrant plant on the far side and from using the fence as a scratching post. Those sorts of activities break wires and let the herd out for an unscheduled field trip.
Whether building a new fence or rebuilding an existing one, you’ll need to pay close attention to the wire gauges, post spacing, and bracing. General guidelines and options for cattle fencing follow. For more detailed fence-building instructions, find a do-it-yourself book or a neighbor who can show you how to build it right. Fencing projects are best scheduled for early spring while the ground is still soft and the air is cool.
Out with the Old
Most small cattle operations are started on old farms, and old farms generally come with old fences. If the old fence is still in somewhat good condition, you may be able to get a few more years out of it by running a single electric wire along the inside of the fence to keep the cattle from scratching and leaning on it. If the old fence is half-buried in weeds and strung on rotted or rusted posts, the sooner you can take it down and replace it with something new and tight, the better. Otherwise, you’ll be lying awake all night wondering if this is the night that the cows will make a break for it.
Taking down old fencing is a slow job best done in cool weather, when it’s comfortable to wear the heavier clothing you’ll need to protect yourself against those sharp wire ends and barbs. First, clear away as much brush and as many weeds as necessary to uncover the fence, and then you can start on the fence itself. Take along a bucket, fencing pliers, and heavy leather gloves. You’ll also need a post puller, a handy device that looks like a tall jack, which you can borrow from a neighbor or pick up at a farm-supply store.
To disassemble a basic barbed-wire fence, start at a corner. With the fencing pliers, remove the metal clip holding the bottom wire to the post and throw it in the bucket. Continue removing all of the clips along a couple hundred feet of fence. Go back to the corner and spool up the wire in a big doughnut shape. When the doughnut gets heavy, cut the wire with the fencing pliers and lean the doughnut against a fence post for later pickup. Then go back to the corner and do the same with the other wires, working from the bottom up.
After you’ve removed all the wire, use the post puller to yank out the metal posts. (If they are U-posts instead of T-posts, you may have to rig a wire loop on the puller to make it work.) To pull wooden posts, you can pound a long nail into each, leaving a couple of inches sticking out, then rig a rope or wire loop under the nail and around the post to pull it out with the post puller. Even better, if you can get a four-wheeler, tractor, or vehicle with a trailer hitch close to the post, you can put a loop of chain around the post and then run the chain over the top of a tall board stood on end (next to the post) and down to the trailer hitch. Drive away slowly, and the board will tip over and pull the post up and out.
Immediately fill any holes left by pulled posts to prevent animals and humans from stepping in them and twisting an ankle or breaking a leg. Whichever pulling technique you use, be aware that rotted wooden posts will often break off at ground level, which will save you the trouble of filling the hole, although you may have to do so later when the remaining wood rots. For expediency, I have even sawed off posts at ground level instead of pulling them out.
You can burn old wooden posts, but save any usable metal posts for the new fence. Load up the bent and rusted metal posts and the old wire, and haul them to a junk dealer or a recycler.
Have a fenced area ready for your
In with the New
The two most practical options for a new cattle perimeter fence are high tension and barbed wire. A high-tension fence is the Cadillac of fences, long lasting and presenting a significant physical barrier even to a half-ton cow. It is also more costly than barbed wire. However,