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Beef and dairy cattle posts in 2013

The cattle have certainly kept us busy in 2013!  At Eight Acres (and part of our neighbour's place) we currently have the two Jersey house cows (Bella and Molly), their calves (Nancy, and Monty, who is now weaned), Bella's previous calf, Romeo (who is next up for the freezer), Benny the Braford that had paralysis tick as a young calf (destined for our neighbour's freezer) and Donald our tiny Dexter bull.  This year we had Frank(furter) butchered as well.  At Cheslyn Rise, after the brief experient with steers last year, we now have about 25 Braford cows and their calves.  Unfortunately Maus our lovely Braford had to go due to an eye cancer.  


I haven't written about them as much as I thought I had, so I've included some posts from previous years as well.  I am also currently writing an ebook about our experience with house cows, but its is taking me longer than expected to get it all down (we keep having more experiences!).  Next year I will be writing about branding and castrating our steers, and no doubt there will be more house cow "learnings" (or should that be dramas?) to write about.  And I've got some pretty nice fencing work to show you too, as well as our trials with solar electric fence energisers.

About Beef Cattle
Cattle psychology - when the steers tried to run away
The beef cattle industry and us
Vaccine guilt - should we vaccinate our cattle?
Paralysis ticks and the orphan calves – part 2 of ...
Caring for an orphan calf – part 1 of a long story...
What type of cattle operation will suit you?


About Brafords
Brafords - a versatile Queensland breed
A herd of Brafords for Cheslyn Rise


About Butchering
Homekill meat - some tips for beginners
Home butcher vs meatworks
Homekill butchering
Homekill beef - is it worth it?


About Tanning a Hide
Tanning a hide
Tanning a steer hide - update and answers
Tanning another hide


About House Cows
The perfect house cow
Weaning calves
Bella and Kaptain Nightcrawler - Artificial Insemi...
A foster calf for Bella
Training a house cow
Colostrum - why calves need it and what to do with...

And of course you remember the series of interviews with bloggers who keep dairy cows and goats, Getting Started with Homestead Dairy!

Interview with myself
Interview with Mark and Kate from Purple Pear Permaculture
Interview with Kim from the Little Black Cow
Interview with Rose Petal
Interview with Marie from Go Milk the Cow
Interview with Ohio Farmgirl
Interview with Gavin from the Greening of Gavin


So that was our year in beef.  How were your cattle this year?  What plans do you have for next year?  Any beef or dairy questions that you'd like me to answer?

 If you want to know more about house cows, my eBook is available for purchase on Scribd.  Its only $4.99, and it includes lots of information about keeping a house cow in Australia.  There's more details about the eBook on my house cow eBook blog.  If you don't want to go through all the Scribd/paypal effort, just send me an email on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com and I can arrange to email it to you instead.

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Comments

  1. Sunnybrook FarmDecember 13, 2013 at 7:55 AM

    Lots of good information that I need to know. We have one steer coming up on 2 years this april and the other in august. The man at the meat counter at our grocery told me that beef was now a rich man's food and I believe him. Not sure what happened to our country but making fuel out of corn has to have something to do with it. It is such a shame to waste corn on fuel as it is such an inefficient process. Anyway we will have to continue to raise our own beef if we want any. Thanks for such a good post on beef cattle.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownDecember 13, 2013 at 10:21 PM

    Again really helpful place to bring everything together, thanks! I have had a wonderful time starting out with cattle this year. My mini herd are all Dexters ( long legs) and I LOVE them. I have two cows - Geranium and Dora (she's boss girl!). Then there is Dora's heifer calf Hazel and Geranium's bull calf Baby Dexter.

    Little Baby Dexter will become an eater as will all the boys and I will raise Hazel as my second milker ( I only milk Geranium at present - Dora was never trained for such!). I will probably only keep three milkers for myself and hope to halter train all other heifers and sell them on.

    I don't know what it is about them that I love so much - perhaps it's because Geranium grooms me each time I see her? Perhaps it's just amazing to have a relationship with a big animal?

    ReplyDelete

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