The other two cows we took a few weeks ago to finish were:
#28 hanging weight of 323 pounds.
#40 hanging weight of 369 pounds.
Both cows had belted Galloway fathers, hence the desire to cull them. They were both culled at about one year of age, making them about half way to finished. #28 has been a trouble maker his whole life so he was selected way earlier in the year. #40 was a pretty good cow temperament wise, but he wasn’t doing well in our management system and was selected to be culled since we were already going.
Both cows were picked up on Friday from the processor. I had an interesting conversation with the processor when I was picking these up. He said that I grass-fed and finished by cows. I replied that yes I did then asked him how he knew. He said he could look at the carcass and tell how the farmer fed them.
He said that my cows had yellow fat, and were relatively lean compared to corn-fed cows. He said they had good fat for grass-fed but nowhere the fat of a corn-fed cow. All good news to me.
He said that corn-fed cows had pure white fat, and lots of it.
He said that cows that were grass-fed, then fed corn for the last month or two had yellow fat with a big fat layer covering the whole carcass where they put on a bunch of fat when given all that corn. He said that the fat on these cows was pretty weird feeling. That something was definitely different.
He said that he can really tell how a cow was handled by the carcass. This is something I’ve always heard but it was pretty neat to confirm it from the expert.