If you have raised other animals for your personal food supply then you may have considered raising cattle for Beef. Although raising cattle isn’t an impossibility there are some very important things you must know and have as a resource on your farm.
The first most important part is having enough pasture land. It kind of works out to about an acre of good pasture per animal if you are pasture feeding them. Pasture areas should be segmented so that you are constantly moving your animals to different areas. You will want to move your animals often and that might be twice a day or twice a week depending on how much good pasture area you have. By moving them and not just holding them in one area you will reduce your need for medications because the cattle won’t be grazing from an area covered in manure.
When housing your animals inside during the winter then manure management is a real concern. Dairy Farmers often house their animals inside for extended periods and in the winter it can be really difficult but you have to keep up on the management and cleanliness or your animals will get sick and this means antibiotics and other treatment that you really want to reduce. You don’t want to have sick animals. And sick animals should not be used for dairy or other food resources. You will have to discard the milk or delay processing for meat until the animals are healthy.
Farm Inspections and USDA Meat Inspection Required For All Meat Sales
A lot of people think if they are a small farm they don’t need to have their meat inspected and this is wrong. Not only do you need to have your cattle inspected and tested you will also need to have your farm inspected. Records must be kept accurately for your farm, the products you buy, feed, chemicals you use on your fields, water quality and bacteria levels and then way way down the line when you are ready to harvest your animals they must be butchered by an approved USDA Facility. Such a facility can be a large processing plant that farmers sell their animals to or a small one that hands you back the processed meat with inspection.
The regulations for food production are very reasonable and every farmer should be willing to go well beyond what minimal regulations require for growing, processing and selling your product. If you are a good farmer you will have no problem with the regulations and they are there to protect not just the customer but you too. If someone or a number of people get sick from what you produce you will have records of everything if you get sued. You will need insurance to cover liability but you reduce your liability by following proper care and regulations.
Think about it this way if you go to the store or a restaurant to get food you expect that the producers of that food do so in a safe manner. Meat, Dairy and other animal products can go bad very quickly if care isn’t taken and that care is from the pasture to the plate.
Costs For Processing And Packaging
Processing and Packaging is very expensive. This is why many farmers will sell their calfs at a lower weight to a production company that pretty much force feeds them up to their optimal weight. This means the final amount of feed is much less for the farmer and they don’t have to worry about the slaughter fee and processing and packaging fee. Often if there is a problem animal on the farm this is something that a farmer will do or they may do this as their primary business.
There is a Processing and a Kill Fee. Kill Fees are normally about $100 per animal and Processing fees are based on weight and the type of cuts you want from the animal. The more processing required the higher the cost it can come out to about a dollar per pound.
Packaging is another cost. If you want a custom label for your product then you will pay an additional price.
Processing and packaging can make or break a business thats why farmers often like to over sell the fact they are raising the animals free range/ grass fed to raise the cost of the products but in actuality pasture fed animals on a small scale are much less expensive than buying feed. You will have to buy feed all winter but in Summer months you will save feed costs for the most part.
Grass Fed vs Grain Fed
Grain fed production farms provide food, antibiotics, often steroids and other things that shorten the time to market and ensure a healthy animal at harvest time. Many farmers of grass fed beef will debate whether the animal is actually healthier but this is the process because production farms produce the primary amount of consumed beef in the industry. Grain Fed cattle normally head to market 24 months or two years.
Grass fed cattle as we have said is often raised on pasture and if managed correctly they have a higher probability of not needing all of the medications that a production raised animal will require but this doesn’t mean they will be 100% healthy and need no care by a Veterinarian. The drawback is that the cattle do not receive the same amount of protein and that means a longer growth time. Grass fed Cattle can add another year to a year and a half to the time for harvesting. They will also have lower weights so the profits after processing are much lower unless you raise your prices for the consumer.
Final Note
In this how to we covered the overall aspects of caring for cattle and bringing them to market. We did not cover any of the day to day details or decisions that you will need to make. Although we covered three different types of farming the first being farms that raise calfs to send to feeder farms, the second farms that grain feed for production and the final being Grass fed animals we did not go deeply into the differences. In general Grass Fed animals do have a life that requires less antibiotics and steroids however as we also said less doesn’t always mean none if your animals were to get sick or if there are problems in the winter months where they aren’t outside all day.
Having the land and having the resources is extremely important in any commercial farm and you must educate yourself very well before you begin. Don’t just think that you can get a couple cows and put them on your property and harvest meat. Also you really need to consider you are talking about animals that are very big and sometimes hard to manage. Even if you are doing this only for your family and extended friends and don’t charge or sell the meat then you are still going to run into situations where you aren’t prepared. For example what would you do if your animals got out? If they are running in your neighbor’s property or up the highway. Very few people consider all of the problems that can occur but if you go in without training and maybe taking a course or two then your experience will not be good.
On the other hand it is possible if you are professional and consider this a job and not an adventure or that you’re raising pets.