The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Cattle => Topic started by: truckspace.co.uk on September 21, 2012, 09:30:56 am
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We have a small area of land and are looking to get prob 2 cows, how do you go about keeping your stock rolling?
If you slaughter a cow how do you replace via breeding rather than have to go out and buy more cows, obviously i dont want inbreds
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Hi, we keep two breeding cows but we don't eat them, we eat their bull calves.
So we bought the girls in October 2010 at 6 months old; they calved for the first time this May / June 2012, one had a bull, the other a heifer; we'll run the bull calf (castrated) on to just short of 30 months, so end of 2014. We could sell the heifer at weaning to keep numbers down. We bought a weaned bullock last autumn for beef.
The cows are now running with the bull to calve June 2013, at which point we will have two cows with calves at foot, Henry (26months), George (12 months), Annie (12 months) if we don't sell her.
So you can see how the numbers grow. We have Shetlands, so it's not unusual for them to have 10 calves, so we will simply keep the two main cows for as long as they are fit to breed.
Hope this helps.
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It's also worth mentioning that you can often get your cows in calf using AI - artificial insemination, so then you don't even need to find a bull to hire or to take them to.
If you are not bothered about what breed of bull you use, you may well find a local farmer who won't mind you running your girls with his/her bull for a few days when she's a-bulling, for which the usual 'thank you' is a bottle fo scotch and/or a homemade cake! :D
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Whys this in sheep ???
mandy :pig:
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We just do it the easy way, let a farmer keep his beef cows on your land and take beef as a rent. No paperwork, handling or anything. The meat even comes to us butchered and packaged! This works for us as I look after the croft and would not be able to deal with cattle emergencies/ care myself.
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Yes, get the local beef farmer to put a few of his heifers on your land - but make sure your fences are up to it, ours is top wire electric (mains powered) and you need to have a water supply (even just a number of large buckets connected to a hose as we have - just be prepared to fill it daily.... cows do drink a lot).
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mandy are you stressed today it is in cattle :farmer:
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mandy are you stressed today it is in cattle :farmer:
It is now, robert, but only because Mandy noticed it had been posted in Sheep and Dan moved it! :roflanim:
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well that just proves that i am not on it constantly :relief:
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how much land do u have? u could get one cow with calf at foot, put her to bull/ai her every year.
on a roll, u should have a pregnant cow, calf at foot, a yearling, a 2 yr old and beast just gone in the freezer.
castrate bull calves at 2 days old, saves worrying about in-breeding. if u dont have enough land for 4 beasts, sell the heifers at weaning.
what breed are u thinking of? head per acre varies greatly with breed. we have found that cattle eat alot more than we expected.
:wave: