style="font-size:15px;"> Finishing Rations
There are two approaches to fattening a steer for your freezer. The first is to use time and low-cost inputs, and the second is to speed up the process with a formulated ration fed at a high rate. The first approach usually makes the most sense for small farms because it doesn’t require an expensive ration or a separate pen. If you don’t have any land for grazing, it’s possible to put a weaned calf directly onto a finishing ration, provided it’s the right breed and a fast-growing animal. However, the animal will still need plenty of forage-based fiber in its diet. Most calves need some time to mature before they will fatten and are better off on pasture or hay until they’re at least a year old.
You also have some choice as to when you send an animal to the processing plant. You can have “baby beef” from a steer as young as a year, although steers are normally kept until they’re more mature and have put on some exterior fat. A steer from one of the English breeds can be ready for slaughter as young as sixteen months, while a steer from a continental breed may not finish until it’s two or more years old, depending to a large extent on how much grain you feed. On a small farm, it’s practical to keep the steers on pasture and feed them grain once or twice a day. If the pasture is excellent, 4 or 5 pounds of corn (usually with a protein supplement) each day will have most steers ready for slaughter in three to four months. Generally, it’s a good idea to finish a steer before the age of twenty months to ensure a tender carcass. Please remember, however, that these are just rules of thumb; finishing cattle is not an exact science.
If the steer is on good pasture, it’s helpful if you can time the finishing so that it coincides with the end of the grazing season. Cattle gain weight faster and more cheaply on good pasture than on hay. If the steer is out with a cow herd, he can be trained to come to a separate pen for his ration. To do this, watch where the steer normally is when the herd comes in for the morning drink or grain ration. If he’s at the front of the line, close the gate behind him and move him forward into another pen. If he’s at the back of the line, close the gate behind the cows and feed the steer with a low bucket in the pasture. If he’s in the middle, you’ll have to finesse getting the cows ahead and keeping the steer behind for a few days until he figures out to stay behind for his ration.
Grass Finishing
Cattle can be finished on grass, but it takes expertise to turn out high-quality beef without grain. If you are interested in grass-finishing, you first will need to buy the right cattle. Short-legged animals from the English breeds are probably your best bet. Second, you will need superb pasture, lush and high enough in protein that it will enable a steer to gain no fewer than 1.7 pounds per day for the last ninety days before slaughter. In most areas, this takes a combination of pastures and planted annual forages plus experienced management. However, any cattle can be raised to maturity on grass and slaughtered for edible beef.
| Finished or Fat? Most of us can’t just walk up to a steer, jam a thumb into his back fat, and know that he’s ready. Two beef-raising friends, Barry and Libby Quinn, told me that you just have to develop an eye for finish. Former extension agent, current friend, and lifelong beef producer Dan Riley told us that a steer is ready for slaughter when you can see the fat around its cod, over its pinbones, and on the rear flank. If a steer has fat around the tailhead, it’s close to grading prime; if it has a fat brisket, it’s too fat. |
Water
Clean water should be available at all times for your cattle. If the water isn’t fresh, they may not drink as much as they should. Tip the water tank a couple of times a season and scrub out the algae. A float valve, available at farm supply stores, will keep the tank full when you’re not around. In below-freezing weather, install a tank heater and plan on filling the tank daily because a float valve freezes up in cold weather.
Unless you run a hose out to the paddocks, your cattle will need to come into the barnyard for a drink. When building your paddocks, create lanes that give your cattle easy access to the barnyard. These can be built with the same portable fencing used for the paddocks and should be about 10 feet wide. Gates can be made by tying a gate handle onto the wire and adding a loop at the far gatepost to hook the handle through.
It’s not necessary to have water available in the pasture. Cattle will walk a long way to get water, even when there’s snow on the ground, and that’s usually good for them and their hooves. Cattle need regular exercise to stay healthy, and they can be a little lazy about it. Some producers still rely on snow to water their cattle in the winter, but it’s difficult for them to get enough to stay fully hydrated. Eating snow also chills them, and they’ll lose weight burning calories to stay warm.
Salt and Minerals
Salt is essential to cattle, and the best way to make sure that they get enough is to provide free-choice loose salt in a feeder protected from rain and snow. Buy or build a two-compartment feeder and put salt in one side and a mineral mix geared for your area in the other side.
Mineral deficiency used to be a common cause of disease in cattle. The diseases varied from region to region, depending on what was deficient in the soils. That’s why it’s important to get a mix formulated for your area of the country. As with salt, it’s easier for cattle to get enough minerals when the mix is loose rather than in a block.
For steers being finished for slaughter, getting enough minerals and vitamins into their feed is especially important. These can be mixed in the finishing ration according to your feed dealer’s directions or fed free-choice in a separate feeder as you would normally do with the cow herd. If fed free-choice, the vitamin and mineral mix should be freshened at least once a week.
| Poisonous Plants No matter where you live, chances are that some plants in your pasture could poison your cattle. Fortunately, though, most (though not all) poisonous plants taste icky. If your cattle have enough to eat, they probably won’t touch anything that’s bad for them. But if your pastures are stressed by drought or have been heavily treated with nitrogen fertilizer, or if it’s very early in the spring and the only plant that’s green is also poisonous, you should be alert for problems. Six different classes of poisons have been identified in various plants, the most important being the alkaloid and glycoside groups. Alkaloids affect the nervous system, causing loss of motor control, bizarre behavior, and death. Jimson weed, a common species of the western United States, is probably the best-known example of a plant that kills with an alkaloid poison. Glycosides basically cause death by suffocating cells. The animal is breathing, but the oxygen in the bloodstream is blocked from being transported into the individual cells. The buttercup, which brightens low pastures in early spring, is a familiar glycoside-containing plant. Other familiar plants that are dangerous to cattle include black locust, black nightshade, bracken fern, castor bean, curly dock, death camas, dogbane, horsetail, locoweed, lupine, milkweed (several species, but not all), oleander, pigweed, and tobacco. White snakeroot, common throughout the Midwest, causes the “trembles” in cattle and can kill humans who drink milk from cows grazing it. Thousands of settlers in the Midwest died of milk sickness in the early 1800s, including Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s mother. For more information, contact your local agricultural extension agent. |
Beef Cattle Behavior and Handling
Although they are not as bright as dogs and cats, cattle are intelligent in their own way. Usually good at taking care of themselves, they’ll find a windbreak when it’s cold and shade when it’s hot, and they’ll never forget where their calves are. While cattle learn more slowly than horses, they do quickly learn to come when called if you reward them with grain or a new pasture when they get there. And when they learn something, they never forget it—especially bad experiences, which is an important point to remember when you’re working
