Does anyone have experience with keeping cattle for meat?

Both cattle and sheep, can answer some questions a bit later on as I've got a bit to do just right now

No but I keep my meat in my cattle if you know what I mean

>>1069774

Yes, ask your questions.

>>1069813
I want to start keeping cattle and i will have around 65ha at my disposure. I'm not sure about the amount of rent, but its within the family so I suppose it will be fair.
The plan is to let them graze during the youth and feed them high density feed for some marbling.

Ideally i'd do the butchering within my operation to assure quality parameters and make use of the non noble parts.

I never worked with animals that big, will they kill me before i kill them?

>>1069831

>I want to start keeping cattle and i will have around 65ha at my disposure. I'm not sure about the amount of rent, but its within the family so I suppose it will be fair.

The rule around here is 1 head per acre with grain, so you will most likely have far more land than you need, which is a good thing. Around here field rent god from $100 to $150 per acre per year, but that's for crop ground, I don't know anyone who rents pastures. If it is good crop land you can expect to pay a fair chunk more than you would for scab land. If the land isn't very good then it will be cheaper but you won't be able put as many head on it.

>The plan is to let them graze during the youth and feed them high density feed for some marbling.

I can't speak much on feeding range cattle because I raise show steers and they never leave their 400 square foot pen, but you will have to be careful not to push to much grain to quickly or you will make them sick.

>Ideally i'd do the butchering within my operation to assure quality parameters and make use of the non noble parts.

That's your call, but cleaning a cow is a lot of work. You will need a cooler to hang the carcass in for two weeks which isn't cheap too build/maintain/operate and then you need all the equipment to handle/cut up the carcass. On top of that depending on location you might need certification in order to sell your meet to the public if that is the route your looking to go.

>>1069872
>I never worked with animals that big, will they kill me before i kill them?

Only if you let them. You should have a working area with lots of gates and fences. The goal should be to never be in to never be in the pen with them while you're working them, you should be able to funnel them into a head catcher/loading chute 1 by 1 from outside the fence. Most beef breeds are extremely docile, but if you get a 1300 pound maverick you sure as shit don't want to be in his way. If you're scared of them now, don't bother buying anything. They will pick up on it and you will never have an easy day with them.

All in all you are looking at a $20k+ for facilities (assuming you already have a barn or similar for shelter) $40k+ for breeding stock, and $100k+ to build a slaughter facility. It's also important to remember that you have to feed them, and they eat a lot. I'm currently feeding about 3 bales of hay ($6 a bale) and 4 bags of feed ($12 a bag) per steer per week.

>>1069774
out of curiosity, what breed? highland?

>>1069831
Freerange beef on good forage tastes far better than well marbled grain fed beef. It also commands a premium at market, if you're doing it for income.

Around here, for full freerange expect 2-2.5 acres per head depending on forage quality, if you don't supplement their diet.
>65ha is ~160 US acres

You WILL need water troughs, depending on your weather anywhere from 1 per 5 to 1 each. Even if you have naturally occurring water, you don't want that to be their sole source or they'll get sick. Cows love to get belly deep in a pond and commence shitting while they drink.

Nonfamily pasture rent here is around $40 per acre per year for mixed bottomland, which is mediocre forage but about the best available.

Cows can be dangerous.

>>1069873
I was going with angus or galloway for starters. I guess they are more docile than your steers. The 100k per slaughtering facility seems a bit high. Id go on a limp and say i could do it fir 60k. Can you estimate how much feed id have to add to the pastures per head per year?

>>1069913
Yes highland :)

>>1069872
>>1069873
>>1069934
Also thanks for answering.

How long do the steers take to grow out. Are they just for a e s t h e t i c s?

Can i supply thr cows with an IBC tote and a dispensing unit?

>>1069957
what latitude are you at? must be cold.

>>1069913
>Freerange beef on good forage tastes far better than well marbled grain fed beef. It also commands a premium at market, if you're doing it for income.

Grass fed tastes like shit but is "healthier". It takes twice as long so it costs twice as much.

>>1069954
>The 100k per slaughtering facility seems a bit high. Id go on a limp and say i could do it fir 60k.

Like I said, I don't know where your from, but around here you can sink 60k into a pole barn real easy not to mention a USDA (assuming you're American) approved slaughter facility.

>Can you estimate how much feed id have to add to the pastures per head per year?

Like I said I keep my steers on dirt in a small pen with lots of so they don't run of any weight, but I suppose you could cut out hay for 7-8 months a year. More grain means more growth, but you can probably scale the grain back significantly since you aren't pushing for the show.

>>1069957
>How long do the steers take to grow out. Are they just for a e s t h e t i c s?

I usually buy mine in January at around 700 and push for 1200 by mid July, 1300 beginning of August. And yes, they are all about aesthetics, I spend more time and money on hair supplies and dietary supplements than any woman I've ever known

>>1070074
>grass fed tastes like shit
Lol nah

>>1069831
Small property means two things- smaller animals and a smaller herd
My animals (Poll Hereford) run around through pastures so we cycle them through the hill paddocks and down to the river paddocks through the year so they're getting a bit of diversity in their diet. Around the yearling stage the ones we're keeping are usually supplemented with a bit of hay and grain to give them a little more fat and that's it- we don't do feedlot and our market is for pasture, lean beef. Majority of the work here is having good genetics, I was lucky enough to pick up a few premium animals at a good price after the last long drought here (Australia) and a lot of the income I get is from basically breeding good quality beef cattle with a fast growing, large carcass
Water is something cattle have to get a lot of

Home slaughter is something we do a couple of times a year, for the family (and its a major undertaking!). Most of the world usually has some legal issues about meat being sourced from a licensed butcher, setting up a slaughterhouse is a major investment that tends to also have a lot of legal requirements and generally costs a fucking lot in labour. With smaller animals though, that does mean you can get them slaughtered in most places as some can't handle the larger animals.
Moving your stock is also a consideration- do you have a truck?

Cattle are sort of funny in how you raise them, we still use a dog to round them up but for the most part they lead a fairly calm existence and are kind of used to people but they're no dairy cows. I hand raised a couple of Santa Gertrudis bull calves years ago when I had a herd of them after their mum died giving birth, they where basically just big puppies that would follow me around and a couple of years later, they where still basically 1100kg puppies. Was kind of heartbreaking to sell them.
If you're not comfortable with big animals- sheep, pigs and goats are easy:
>cheaper vet bills
>easy to move
>low maintenance

>>1070131
Im locates in Northern Germany btw.
I dont own a truck, all the pasture is connected though, and the barn and supplies are adjacent ro the pastures. I assumed i could move the herd by horse or on a quad. If we could do the slaughtering onsite i could use the truck money for the slaughtering facility and develop my own ripening protocol. There is a cafe/restaurant at my uncles farm nearby. The plan was to develop this as well with a large vegetable garden.

I cant assess the daily work input for the cattle though. So im not sure how many people i should factor in in my calculations. I know there isnt a general answer to this.

>>1070272
Ah gotcha,
What you might want to look at is maybe 20-25 head of cattle as sort of a basis for your breeding stock and see how they go, how much they eat, water and everything else (vet bills, supplementary feed and drenching). Highlands are known to be sturdy, easy to feed critters so I doubt they'll give you much trouble.

In the meantime you can work on a cool room, freezer and clean-ish area for small scale slaughter, also start looking around for a butcher who will travel out for a days work every now and then. We have a couple that service our area for people that don't normally butcher animals themselves and are generally fairly reasonable rates. Alongside that you'll want to set aside an area for market gardens, greenhouse, get the soil prepared (an abundance of cow poop comes in handy for that) and any kind of irrigation if its needed.
Sort of one of the things you get used to on farms is a long-term planning. Nothing really gets done overnight so to speak!

12 months down the track, you've hopefully got some new calves around and the herd gets a bit bigger, you can get a couple for veal early on, raise the others as yearlings, weed out any duds from the main herd, keep a few for increasing the size the size of the herd.
That's sort of a conservative/semi-safe idea of something you can look at.

>>1070076
Grain fed even smells like shit.

>>1070290
That was the plan. Except for the cow shit. I think ill fertilize the garden with bio-digested pig manure from my uncles breeding operation. The cow shit mixed with straw that i get drom the winter stables would go the more sandy acres my uncle is cultivating. He wont introduce straw to his pigs because of the hygiene protocol. So he cant have the humic compounds that would be needed to improve the sandy soils binding capacity.
Also I want to implement an aquaponic operation as an attraction, as it is kind of my strong side. I ran 2 ap-systems for 4 years know and gained lots of experience. But after observing the scene and doing my own research, i dont want an AP unit as standalone project for income anymore.

Do you guys have problems marketing your meat? Especislly the non noble parts?


Am i being too naive about all this? I kind of feel like the only people advocating against this are low-risk, fear-motivated people anyway.

>>1070378
Animals in some ways are a little lower maintenance than something like your aquaponic setups, they run around, eat and generally look after themselves. We diversified as well in a sense that sheep are our other income, sometimes when beef prices drop, sheep goes up and there's hopefully some kind of happy middle ground at the end of the financial year. Majority of the income seems to be stud related though, good cattle with good genetics that people want in their own herd and a part of that is actual stock sales (mostly steers) for slaughter.
In terms of what people like, offal parts are always a hard sell, during and post WW2 they got a bit of a bad rap from a lot of consumers due to poor culinary skills and that's only started to come back in recent years as people basically learned to cook again. Majority of beef products though all have a place, even the 'less desirable' cuts seem to do fairly well in most markets with some decent promotion for grass fed, organic beef that hasn't been messed with as outside of the country people have begun to realise that quality matters.

Sure we cant compete with the huge feedlots that have massive outputs, but people have begun to realise all the chemicals, growth hormones, antibiotics and stuff in that environment isn't very good. It has its place though, intensive farming puts meat on the table for a price consumers can afford.
Premium markets though when you're a small producer are somewhere to aim for in terms of $ per kg.
Mutton and aged sheep meat here has made something of a come back as well (like offal it got a bad name for exactly the same reasons) so that's a market we're using via well connected butchers who are prepared to go through that route and market it to restaurants.

>cont

>>1069774
we wuz kangz

>>1070795
In terms of your risk management, like anything you've got to make sure you don't over-spend in your setup and then be able to support it during those first 2-3 years it'll start to pay for itself, but by the sounds of it you've got some secondary activities to keep cash coming in. For me, I was in the army for a lot of years which essentially paid for the farm itself (deployment bucks yay!) and my sister's family live there full time to keep an eye on the place- but even my sister and brother in law work part time on other things. My wife and I work mostly in the city and I've got a small business which keeps regular income coming in, so we split our time between town-country.
That extra cash lets us buy some extra stock every now and then, improve pastures, pay the mortgages and everything else that comes with life. And kids, kids are expensive little buggers that I can't throw in the sheep dip or drench them when they get sick! :)

So, set your goals accordingly for a short and long term objectives based on your budget, lot of the short term risks will be financial, long term will be things like health, accidents and additional expenses
Plus you can look up livestock husbandry easy enough, the internet has made so much more available in terms of information, but socially its also worth talking to anyone else that's done something similar, going out and talking to them, see their setup and how its working for them

>>1070378
I ranched as a hired hand, I had no part in the marketing beyond getting them there. Sorry.

>>1070798
Wow congrats for making this work with the wife!
I am still having arguments about this with my gf.
Basically i want to invest my time and money in a lifestyle that can work without modern economy if necessary. I dont want to be the car sales man hit by recession etc.
She, as a typical woman, thinks everything stays as she knows it and wealth is granted as soon as you live near urban areas.

>>1071207
>making this work with the wife!
Not entirely... I had the farm before her :)

Similar thing in that she's too much of a city girl with a ridiculously high level of education and still doing the whole 'career thing' in big business, which she enjoys (for now). But over time she's warmed to the fact that living in a city isn't all great, all of the time and later on we'll move out there full time for a lower stress, slower paced lifestyle and she loves gardening. Personally if it was just me, I'd have dumped everything and been there yesterday as I can effectively work anywhere and devote a bit more time to expanding another aspect of my business instead of engineering which mostly do now.

Guess its like anything, you have to be kind of flexible with your time and investments, if something changes then you need to adapt and sometimes it just doesn't work out exactly how you thought it would. In my opinion, at least try and make a go of it.

>>1069774
>>>1071207
>>making this work with the wife!
>Not entirely... I had the farm before her :)
>
>Similar thing in that she's too much of a city girl with a ridiculously high level of education and still doing the whole 'career thing' in big business, which she enjoys (for now).

Same here. She is currently doing her Masters in Psychology which, at her university, is hard as fuck, workload wise. Its not exactly a line of work that has a base in the countryside.

I will go for it. Fuck the normie life.