i grew up on a beef farm, as did my wife.  through college i had to live in dorm/apartment.  now that i have a job and some ground i'm able to have cattle again.

have two small jersey bulls (going to steer and sell at end of year).  last night i got 4 cows (two angus, a baldie and a guernsey/angus).  each cow had November calves on their side, from a registered angus bull (300-400 lbs).  the cows have also been breed back to another registered angus bull and are due to calve again this winter.  i'm pretty happy with the deal we got on them.

i was just curious if anyone else out there has any cattle.

ON our farm we raise mostly Brangus cattle(3/8 Brahma and 5/8 Angus).  They work really well for the climate down here.

sgf...i am familiar with some of the brahma crosses (went to college in south carolina).  the fella i bought these cow/calves from had a nice brangus cow that threw him a really nice brangus bull calf.

you'd be supprised how many people up here have santa gertrudis and brangus cattle.  the brahma influence is definately here (you can see it too in the sale barn).  i don't know why people run them here.  the heat stress is very light.  as a producer you know that while the brahma brings a lot to the table (tick resistance, mothering ability and most noteworthy high heat tolerance) they don't seem to be able to mussle up like a straight british breed.  with all that said i still am suprised to see such strong brahma influence this far north.

 

I inherited our families ranches (headache) a few years back, and ran our eastern colo. ranch before that along with my practise.  We raise registered angus, red angus, hereford, beefmasters, and have some cross, gelbieh X angus, baldies, etc...  Along with that we have quite a mix of yearling crosses that we summer on grass, and eventually go to one of our feedyards.  I'm in the part of the country where eared cattle aren't desireable, but we do have one eared breed that we run down by the Okla panhandle and near N. Texas. I would like to phase everything out except for red angus/angus, but the herefords do really well up north - so I am undecided.  Anyhow, it does keep you busy, good luck--its been a hard couple of years around these parts and it looks as if this year is no different

Good Luck Sloth.

In Texas we have a saying about people who think too much of themselves, or have an inflated sense of self worth.

"Big Hat...no cattle"

So, no one can say that about you!

P.S. Do you have a big hat yet?

Soon you can participate in cow chip tossing!

You might look into getting some holstein ( I am sure there are others, jersey, swiss, etc. that might be more common in your area) bull calves from local dairies. They sell cheap $50-90/head around here.  Castrate and feed out, I know of more than a few people that make a (good) living doing that.  It is alittle time consuming when they are on replacer, but probably worth it...  Just a though, if you have alittle extra space and some time.

We milk 120, mostly Jersey, Shorthorn, Holstein, and crosses. We do have a couple British Whites, Dutch Belts, and one Ayreshire.

We're probably getting $100 a bull calf on average this year. Nobody wants the straight Jersey's so we raise them ourselves and direct market.

Sounds great, I am sure the cows will make great targets.

dairyfarmer...thats exactly what my dad does.  there is a jersey farm near by (where i got my two) where we get 2-3 day old calves at $25 dollars a piece.  I plan to do some of that as well.  I am pretty limited with my available time, so i can only handle 5-6 of them at a time (dairy calves).  they are time consuming with the feeding by bottle/bucket twice a day for 6 weeks.  

one of the big issues was getting the fields grazed down.  the fella we bought this ground off of just let his fields grow up/in over the past 6-7 years.  we spent last fall clearing fence rows now i needed some big ole cows to clean up the fields.  cow/calf pairs we the best buy for the money.

as for the big hat...i tried it once and i just can't pull it off.  its funny, i think there are just certain people that can pull it off better than others.  you see a pic of george straight in a cowboy hat and it looks normal, you see some random fella walking down the street and he just looks like a tool.  i fall into that later catagory.