The cow thread

911 said:
I’m glad I took a peek to see if anyone read my story. Maybe I can help answer your questions.

A bull is a bull until it is castrated and then it becomes a steer. The reason they castrate is to hopefully give the meat a better taste because without the testicles, the steer losses it’s testosterone in about 2-4 weeks. Castration also supposedly calms the animal and in most cases, it does.

Best of my knowledge, super markets don’t label whether it’s a bull or steer. Cows (females) stop producing quality milk after about 6 or so years. Then, they also go to the butcher shop. Many types of lunch meats are made from cows, but also some shoulders make good roasts. Cows are also used to make beef hotdogs. Very little goes to waste. If you get a tough piece of meat, it may have come from an old bull.

Here’s another bit of news. When butchers trim fat, that is sent to a plant to be rended. And some of that is used for pet food. I could go on and on, but you can check it out for yourself.
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Thanks for the info!
 

rgp said:
I happen to like cows .... Out west riding through the Bitteroot range during the 2000? wild fires , I came upon one. She was standing right on the road center line .... poor thing looked like it was in shock. Still had smoke coming off her rump-flanks. I took some water I had with me, and a rag and tried to cool that area , and gave her the two bottles I had to drink ........ man-oh-man did she lap that up. I was out of water, so my riding [motorcycle] buddy Carl pulled up and gave her his two bottles ...... I'm sure she did OK, just felt so bad for her.
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I used to know some cows in Litchfield, Ohio but I could never get used to seeing them grazing in the pasture while eating pressure cooked dairy cow.
 
CarolfromTX said:
Cattle are a lot more work than most people realize. Expensive to feed in times of drought, like we’re having now. Our tenant keeps some cattle, which in turns keeps our ag exemption, but I don’t know how he’s keeping them fed.
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Maybe he’s feeding them a lot of grass (hay), some grain and even silage. Cows can really put away the grub.
 
RadishRose said:
Remember Elsie the cow for Borden's Dairy? Her husband was Elmer the advertisement, for Elmer's glue, of all things!

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I sure do remember her!
 
rgp said:
I happen to like cows .... Out west riding through the Bitteroot range during the 2000? wild fires , I came upon one. She was standing right on the road center line .... poor thing looked like it was in shock. Still had smoke coming off her rump-flanks. I took some water I had with me, and a rag and tried to cool that area , and gave her the two bottles I had to drink ........ man-oh-man did she lap that up. I was out of water, so my riding [motorcycle] buddy Carl pulled up and gave her his two bottles ...... I'm sure she did OK, just felt so bad for her.
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I am not an expert on cows, but I can tell you that cows are easily confused. They become used to being regimented and when that regimen is distorted, they become confused. They know to be milked at 5 am and 5 pm. They know they get fresh hay, maybe some grain or soybeans and silage while being milked, then out to the pasture. In the evening, repeat. It’s kind if funny to watch the cows in the late afternoon around 4:30-5:00 they are all walking to the barn or milking parlor. Quite often, vies like to just lay down in the barn and chill.

Each cow milks about 5-6 gallons per day. We keep very busy just running the milk through the pasteurizer and homogenizer to get the milk ready for pickup. Sometimes I helped with that and sometimes I tended to other chores. Like the hogs. It was funny. We always made sure we walked around the cows that were in the barn at quitting time and pet them and tell them good-night. Sometimes the owners daughters would come out to the barn and give some of the cows a big hug.
 
Short story today. It’s a really, really hot July day. Temperature was about 100 degrees, humidity was reported to be 74% barometric pressure was 30.65 Hg. and with sun, no clouds. My job today was to clean out chicken coop #2. Our coops were super-sized, as I called them. We had 52 chickens in this coop. There was a really large pen outside the coop, so I had to shoosh the chickens out of the coop and into the pen. Every chicken went willingly with a little encouragement from me. One chicken remained. The dog-gone rooster just wasn’t having any of it.

After I chased that rooster around for a good 15 minutes, Randy, my boss, came over and asked me what was I doing. I told him that I was trying to get the rooster out of the henhouse. He told me I was going at it all wrong. I told him to show me or tell me a better way. He went and got the garden hose, hooked it up to the spigot on the side of the henhouse, sprayed the water at the rooster and that rooster ran out the chicken opening of the coop. Game over. I thought to myself, I just chased that chicken for a good 15 minutes, fell twice, tripped over the water fountain and knocked that apart, so I had to stop and fix that. I was sweaty, dirty and smelled like chicken crap and I still had 3 hours to go until the end of the workday.

The bad news was that I smelled to high Heaven, but the good news was that nobody bothered me the rest of the day. When I got home, my mom asked me what did I fall in. I told her the story and like always, I had to undress outside and put my clothes into a burlap bag and then she put them straight into the washer. I was glad that day was over. My dad’s advice was that next time, leave the rooster inside because when I spray the disinfectant, the rooster will gladly run out. I never thought of that. My dad should know, he worked on an egg farm during his high school days.
 
Bretrick said:

Droughtmaster bull breaks breed world record, selling for AU$220,000 in Queensland - Australia​

It breaks the previous record for the breed, set at AU$180,000 in 2012
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I never seen one of these bulls. He’s beautiful. I will have to research his breed. Just a bit pricey, but he’s probably a breeder. His calves won’t come cheap.
 
I was watching a story on TV and the following story came to mind. I was just about finished for the day when Randy, the boss asked me if I could stick around for a little while until the truck came back from the auction. We had sent four Heifers to auction and only three of them sold because the fourth one was diagnosed with an infection.

When the truck arrived back at the farm, I was to unload the Heifer and take her to quarantine. I couldn’t get her to come off the truck. I didn’t want to go get the boss, so I tried to bribe her off with grain, but she still wouldn’t move. So now I decided to just leave her there for a few minutes while I give the steers their grain. When I came back to the truck, she was gone. I kind of panicked. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t find the Heifer.

When I turned the corner to go around the barn, I ran into the boss. He asked me what was I doing. I had to tell him that I lost the Heifer. He tells me not to worry. He picked up her rope and and she came off the truck, so he took her to the quarantine area. I felt kind of foolish, but the Heifer was where she needed to be, so I called it a day.
 
911 said:
I am not an expert on cows, but I can tell you that cows are easily confused. They become used to being regimented and when that regimen is distorted, they become confused. They know to be milked at 5 am and 5 pm. They know they get fresh hay, maybe some grain or soybeans and silage while being milked, then out to the pasture. In the evening, repeat. It’s kind if funny to watch the cows in the late afternoon around 4:30-5:00 they are all walking to the barn or milking parlor. Quite often, vies like to just lay down in the barn and chill.

Each cow milks about 5-6 gallons per day. We keep very busy just running the milk through the pasteurizer and homogenizer to get the milk ready for pickup. Sometimes I helped with that and sometimes I tended to other chores. Like the hogs. It was funny. We always made sure we walked around the cows that were in the barn at quitting time and pet them and tell them good-night. Sometimes the owners daughters would come out to the barn and give some of the cows a big hug.
Click to expand...
Add to this story, it wasn’t unusual for the owner’s daughter or daughters to come out to the barn and sing to the cows or if we had a sick cow in the quarantine pen, they would play a radio for them all night and leave a light on. I would tell them that they were making pets out of them. The youngest girl said the music keeps them happy.
 
Cows, by nature, can endure cold weather. In fact, during summer when the temps reach above 80, cows can become stressed. Stressed cows can reduce milk production. Cold temps below 20, the same thing can happen to some cows. With the 3 barns we had, we could fit all the cows in the barns during very cold nights, or even icy, sleeting or snowy nights.
 
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