Category: Cows

We have a new girl on the farm. Last week #54 had a pretty little girl calf.

This was a big deal because this was #54’s first calf. Miguel pointed out she was in labor that morning and I walked over to check on her.

This is what I found. She was completely non-plussed. She was apart from everyone else and just walking around like nothing was going on. The rest of the herd was curious as to what I was doing so they followed me which then crowded her. She looked ok so I walked back and told Miguel she had a few hours to go. You know, with my massive experience as a mid-wife, I could totally tell.

So about 15 minutes after I got back Miguel texts me that the calf had been born and was already nursing. Looks like I need another career. The mid-wife thing isn’t going to work out.

So when you come for a tour, ask about the new little girl we have hanging around. She is a cutie.

While we were gone, Miguel emailed me to let me know that we had a new calf. Normally I’d have put something this cute up immediately after coming home, but I’ve spent my time instead trying to figure out why this picture wouldn’t upload in WordPress. After spending way too much reading the interwebs and finding out everyone else was having the same problem, someone suggested that the color palate of his picture was set to CMYK and he changed it to RGB and it worked. Hmm, this is suggestion 307 in my search but it’s much easier than some of the coding options suggested, at least for me. If I blow up the picture, no problem. If I blow up the website, PROBLEM!

So I hunter in Acorn (my photo editing program) till I found the color thingy. Turned out it was already RGB. Sigh. But it’s some kind of weird RGB with lots of extra numbers in the name. No idea what that is. After poking around a bit, there is a generic RGB option. Click RGB, click save, click export, click upload, BAM!! It worked!! It only took me three days to upload one picture. Argh!

But it is a cute picture.

Oh, and she’s a little girl.

Yesterday morning Erin said Hedy looked like she was ready to pop. It just so happened that the vet was coming anyway, for something that will be another post. We walked out and looked at Hedy, who was huge but still eating bananas that’s we’d brought and otherwise seemed content.

The vet sorta shrugged her shoulders and said, “Hopefully she’ll deliver in the next few days.”

I was kinda thinking she’d deliver shortly.

About 3 hours later, we had this.

Hedy had no issues whatsoever and delivered a pretty, perfect little bull calf. Sadly we were hoping for a girl but regardless he’s cute and perfect so we are happy.

This means we’ll be back in milk on schedule. It also means if you want to see the little cutie, he’s in the pasture right by the store so when you come for your goodies today, take a stroll out on this 62 degree day and meet Henry. 

In part 1, I detailed the cattle plan for the next two years. You’ll note a few things about this plan.

One, we still have cows that are well and truly finished to take us through the winter, except for February. These weights are from back in October so they’ve actually added a bit of weight since then. Remember, a well finished grass fed cow weights about 1100 pounds. We have cows finishing the middle of next year that already weigh 1000 pounds. We are in good shape.

Two, we were planning during early 2016 on growing our operation to where we would finish two cows  per month in 2017. That plan has been shelved. We were looking to add more land in 2016 and land prices have gone sky high. We are not going to add land anytime soon.

Also, we have learned that finishing in 30 months vs 18-24 gives us a much better product. We are getting the marbling and fat of a grain fed cow in a cow that has only eaten grass, hay, and produce. It’s pretty amazing. We are going to tweak the times in our plan as we go but for now I’m planning on a 30 month age when we process our cows. This is quite a bit different from what anyone I know does where the name of the game is to get cows finished as quickly as possible. We are going the opposite direction, slowing things down and focusing on quality instead of volume. It’s quite a bit slower and means we have less cows available each month, but we think it’s for the best.

In support of this decision, we have greatly reduced our marketing efforts and are concentrating on our core group of customers and word of mouth. One cow per month is plenty for our current volume and we look to maintain and grow our business organically vs. through outside marketing. We still greatly appreciate your referrals, even more so now because that is how we acquire new customers. But I have a pretty quick answer to people calling here trying to sell me on their marketing campaign.

Despite not growing at the original planned rate, 2017 looks to be a good year. Even though we plan to only process one cow per month, the cows weigh quite a bit more. In 2015 we averaged about 500 pounds hot hanging weight per cow, meaning at 1 cow per month we had about 6000 pounds of beef for the year.  In 2017, I hope to average about 850 pounds per cow or over 10,000 pounds of beef. Not exactly double but about 70% more than 2015.

Even though it will take us 6 months longer to finish the cow, we hope that moving more meat in the same trip will gain us some efficiencies in other ways. We are also expanding our store this winter, and also increasing our freezer space. If we can house more beef on site, I can cut out the one trip per month, and instead take two cows every other month, halving my trips to Siler City each year.

Some of these are firm plans. Some we are still just looking at. But the plan is to get more efficient in our time for 2017, allowing for more time spent on the farm, and less time driving. All while bringing you the absolute highest quality product you can get anywhere.

I’ve been slack on posting to our website lately. Part of that is because our hosting company managed to blow up our server which caused all kinds of drama. Part of it is that I’ve been busy with the Civil Air Patrol and Spork, and our involvement with it. Part of it is because I’ve been working on putting this plan together for quite some time. It takes more time than you think to go through all this data and get a plan put together.

And last, part of it is because I’ve been sleeping like a baby. Like all night. Without waking up. I used to get up at 2am, 3am, whatever, and come over to the barn to work. It kept me from waking the Mrs and the kids and let me be productive. However lately I’ve been afflicted with this need to sleep 6, 7, even 8 hours at a time. It’s terrible. I can’t get anything done. Luckily, I did something dumb the other day and made the Mrs mad at me. Since I’m always slightly concerned she’s going to kill me in my sleep anyway, we ratcheted things up to DEFCON 1 and viola! Up at 2am. Phew! I was worried this sleeping thing would never end! Who knew being stupid could come in so handy.

After cleaning off my desk, responding to about 1000 emails, procuring our health insurance for next year, getting IRAs set up for the kids, calculating how much hay we’d need for winter, reconciling the 6 months of back logged bank statements, ordering Christmas presents, fixing all the guns that were languishing on my bench, and generally making things sort of organized in this chaos that is my office, I was able to finally work on the 2017-2018 cattle plan. And thank goodness I did.

I hate not knowing what I’m doing. But worse yet, my guys hate when I don’t know what I’m doing. Part of being the boss is you are supposed to have some form of leadership. Bumbling from crisis to crisis isn’t leadership. It’s an overpaid employee with a fancy title. So after a few hours of work, here is the current cattle plan for the next few years.  Comments and explanation to follow.

So what does all this mean? For that, you’ll have to wait for part two, where we discuss cattle finishing, land plans, expansion plans, and general farmer dreaming.

I dedicated two cows to standing rib roasts this year. We sell a few for Thanksgiving and quite a few for Christmas so it seemed like a good idea.

So much for planning. We are already sold out except for a few small roasts (4 pounds) that are already in the freezer currently. And I know those will go lightning fast.

I know you’re going to ask me if we have standing rib roasts over the next month and a half. I’m going to look sad and tell you no. When you complain, I’m going to point you to this post.

I’m still looking for a breed of cows that breaks down like this! Then I’ll have all the rib roasts you want.

Today we are loading #39 to go to the processor. This is one of our home grown cows, from our blood lines. This boy weighed over 1500 pounds at the last weigh in and is officially the largest cow we’ve ever produced on our farm. He is MORE than finished so I’m excited to see how these cuts come out.

We are still well stocked on beef currently, so swing by in the next few weeks and grab some beef for Thanksgiving. We also are well stocked on pork, lamb, and we are slowly catching up on chicken.

Received a text from our leased farm owner yesterday. We had a cow dead by the pond where we load and unload the cows. Vicente went to bury the cow. It was #69 who died of unknown causes. He was born in June of 2016 to #1.

So we weighed our cows and found…. what? Who cares? If you like steaks, then you should.

Remember when I said that you get a weight of 1100-1200 for grass finished cows? That’s what everything I read and hear says in the industry. However lets look at the first two cows in that list.

#39 – Yellow – 1516
#Steve 10- Red – 1457

#39 was born on our farm in February of 2014. He is grass fed, grass finished. He’s never had anything in is diet except grass, hay, and produce. He’s not a bully, doesn’t push others out of the way. He is a completely normal cow, except we’ve held him, quite by accident, past the 24 month window until he’s actually 30 months old. When we weighed him in June of 2016, he weighed 1289 pounds. A great weight, but look what happened in the last four months. He’s gained 227 pounds and that’s after he was already “fully grown!”

Maybe he just had great genetics. Some people are tall. Some are short. Maybe. But Steve 10 is from another farm. A different breed, different genetics, same diet, same time frame. He’s probably 32 months old and he’s right there in weight, not 50 pounds different and well over the 1100-1200 target. So it’s likely not genetics. My thought is it’s time.

It’s expensive for a cattleman to keep cows in the pasture. The grass #39 is eating could be used to raise two smaller cows. But we aren’t in the in cattle production business. We are in the, “Oh my God! This is the best steak I’ve ever had!” business. In other words, we are a retail store, not a factory. We strive for quality, not quantity. By holding this cow for another six months, we’ve gotten a cow to the weight that a normally grain finished cow would attain. WITHOUT GRAIN! The last several cows we’ve finished have all been at these weights meaning we are hopefully establishing a trend of finishing some awesome cows. Our yields at the processor have certainly gone way up. Last year we got about 525-550 pounds of hanging weight. The last cow had a hanging weight of over 800 pounds. Per the grass experts, any yield over 550 pounds is really good. We’re beating that by 250 pounds!

I have no idea if we are making money at this currently. I’ll be working to figure out the logistics and economics of 30 month cycles for cows vs 18-24 month normal cycles. But if higher yields mean better results, we are on to something. And if the comments from customers about their steaks mean anything (they mean EVERYTHING) then we are definitely onto something.