Category Archives: Cows

2014 Beef Cattle Herd Photos

Leave a reply

We often get the question, “What breed of cows do you raise?” We never quite know how to answer because we have such a hodge-podge of breeds. Why is that? It is mostly because we have purchased breeding cows when we’ve had opportunities to obtain cows that display the physical characteristics coupled with a history of our style of husbandry that we know will produce great grass-fed beef here in our extreme East Texas climate. For us, phenotype is just as important as breed. We’ll never keep breeding a cow just because she’s a particular breed, nor would we buy a bull for that reason. There are plenty of cows within any breed that are not suitable for grass-based operations, and they should be the first on the hamburger list.

So we have lots of deep-bodied, well-fleshed Devons, Limousines, Angus, and South Poll, and of course, crosses of all of those. We’ve even got a couple of cows that have Jersey influence to get more milky offspring that raise nice fat, fast-growing calves. Every year we evaluate last year’s calf and momma cow’s condition and decide whether to breed her again or not. It doesn’t matter what breed she is, so long as she is producing healthy calves in our pasture management system. 

We thought you might enjoy a photo update of our current beef herd. I couldn’t get all the cows in the pictures, but it’s a good cross-section. And there are some piggy and human pictures thrown in just for fun. Enjoy!

High Density Pasture Management

Leave a reply

Matt has been researching and experimenting with a new cattle management technique called High Density Pasture Management. The strategy changes throughout the year depending upon seasons and the types of cows being grazed (momma cows nursing calves versus finishing steers versus pregnant dry cows), and is quite complex in strategy, so we won’t attempt to describe the entire method here and now. However, we can share what we’re doing right now during the winter season (i.e. hay-feeding season) to sustain our grass-fed cattle.

Pastureland likes to be disturbed for a brief period, and then left alone to recover and grow. The disturbance method we use is livestock and manure because it involves no chemicals and it works so well to restore the soil’s health. Our soil at Shady Grove Ranch was in pretty poor condition when we arrived 4 years ago. But we’ve already seen tremendous improvement in many areas, despite a 3-year-long drought that may or may not have actually ended. 

The grass is dormant at this time of year, so we feed hay (stored grass) to the cattle. This is a critical time for the pasture–it can receive the nutrients from the “recycled hay” (aka manure) but it also needs time to grow and get established without hungry bovine mouths nipping off the baby grasses and legumes just as they emerge from the seeds. 

This is where High-Density Pasture Management comes in. Simply put, we spread out just enough hay to last the cows one day, let them eat and poop to their hearts’ content, and then move them to a new section of ground and repeat. They can’t be allowed to return to the newly “fertilized” but immature, growing pasture until it has established enough underground energy storage to bounce back from the grazing that will come later. This can take as long as 120 days, but after that initial waiting period, we can graze the land multiple times with just short periods of rest between grazings. The end result is more cow-food produced in a season when using strategic pasture access, rather than allowing cows to free-range constantly over an entire pasture.

Why does this work? By allowing the grasses to mature, we take full advantage of the balance between root energy storage and photosynthesis, and so the grass-based system becomes much more efficient and can feed more cattle on a fixed size pasture, even without chemical inputs or concentrated feeds (i.e. grain). It just takes patience and a watchful eye to judge when a paddock is ready for cattle pressure and how much pressure it can take. 

So here we are in Phase 1, the winter season, feeding the cows with stored hay and the ground with evenly-distributed manure, getting ready for the spring flush. The first video shows Matt’s nifty homemade hay-unroller. The second video shows Matt moving the fence so the cows can eat their breakfast.

Who is Top Cow at Shady Grove Ranch? Part 3 – Tiny

2 Replies

Welcome to part III of our “Who is top cow at Shady Grove Ranch?” series. First we introduced you to Gordita. Next we introduced you to Tilly. Now it is time to let you meet the first cow ever born at Shady Grove Ranch.

Who is Top Cow at Shady Grove Ranch? Part 3 – Tiny

If you recall in the story about Gordita, this tubby, funny-looking old momma cow was purchased at a discount with the intent to turn her into well-marbled, grass-fed hamburger. But Matt has a keen eye and noticed that Gordita was showing signs of imminent calving. Sure enough, one morning, there was a flop-eared tiny little calf in the field. Just for fun, we called her Tiny. She was the first calf ever born at Shady Grove Ranch.

This is Tiny as a newborn calf with her mother, Gordita.

This is Tiny as a newborn calf with her mother, Gordita.

As Tiny grew up, we knew she was something special . She looked just like her momma and was the friendliest cow in our beef herd. It is unusual for beef cows to seek out human contact, but Tiny did. She would often come up and lick a visitor’s hand or pants, even though we never fed the cows treats or anything. Few of our cows would even remain standing close enough to us to allow us to touch them. But Tiny was genuinely friendly and curious and seemed to enjoy making friends with us.

She was spunky, though. Very spunky! She proved that to us early on.

After moving to Shady Grove Ranch in March 2010, we set to work repairing the old fences that existed here and also frantically began installing new electric fences, since we already knew that the only fence cows will truly respect is one that offers a quick electric zap if a cow comes too close. However, we apparently were not quick enough.

One day we received a call from our neighbors reporting that a small group of our cows had paraded down the driveway and taken some nibbles of their shrubbery and lawn. The neighbors, being friendly horse people and used to large animals, had corralled the cows into their round pen in preparation for us to come get them. We apologized profusely and headed over to round up our rogue livestock.

Matt arrived with the cattle trailer and began loading up the cattle. But Tiny, the only calf in the group, did not yet know how to load onto a trailer or how to be herded like the adult cows. Calves are notorious for choosing all the wrong directions to run when humans are trying to herd them along. Tiny refused to get into the trailer!

Since she was so young, Matt decided it would be faster to carry her to her place in the trailer. He approached her and quickly straddled her, trying to collect all her legs so that he wouldn’t get kicked. He immediately felt a dull pain on his shin. He looked and realized that Tiny wasn’t kicking him, but was gnawing on his leg! She bit him!

So that was Tiny’s calfhood—she was spunky, fun to watch, energetic, and healthy.

Over the next two years, she grew into a lovely young heifer cow, and we put her in the big breeding herd with the bull, Big John.

Tiny as a young heifer, early in pregnancy.

Tiny as a young heifer, early in her first pregnancy.

Within weeks of being introduced to the bull, Tiny was bred, and approximately 10 months later (March 2013), she gave birth to her own flop-eared tiny little heifer calf. What is amazing is that Gordita, Tiny’s mother, also gave birth that very same morning to an identical little heifer. A double blessing for the farmers at Shady Grove Ranch!

Gordita and Grace in front, and Tiny and her new calf in back.

Gordita and Grace in front, and Tiny and her new calf in back.

We named Gordita’s calf Grace because we had decided to give Gordita one more chance after a failed calving of twins last year.

Now we need your help to name Tiny’s calf!

Here are Gordita’s calves’ names: Tiny, Mini, Grace.  Now Tiny has started her own line with a cute little female calf. What shall we name her? Please leave your ideas in the comments!

2020 Update

We have made Tiny’s photo into a Farm Fan Club Sticker! Get yours here with your next order!

Bull fight at Shady Grove Ranch!

Leave a reply

Bull fight at Shady Grove Ranch!

Pedro on the left and Big John on the right.

Pedro on the left and Big John on the right.

Meet Pedro, the young Jersey bull owned by TrueFields LLC. Pedro, who is a dairy bull (as opposed to a beef bull), is a bit more high-strung than our beef bull, Big John. That’s not surprising, as we’ve heard stories from old-timer dairy farmers about dairy bulls suddenly turning dangerous, warning us to always keep an eye out for young dairy bulls. For some reason, dairy bulls are not as mellow as most breeds of beef bulls. Perhaps it is because most dairy bulls are bottle-fed by a human instead of being raised by a cow, so perhaps they lose some of their respect for the distinction between man and beast.

So when working with Pedro, or any bull at the ranch, we are always cautious and attentive. We’d prefer not to have to keep a potentially dangerous animal, but we do have to have a dairy bull to make babies so TrueFields LLC cowshare can continue to operate. We just try to seek out as mellow an animal as possible to rebreed our cows each year. (Unlike conventional dairies where a cow can be fed hormones to extend her milking season to multiple years after a single pregnancy, we only milk our cows for about 10 months at a time, giving the cow a 2 month rest before her next calf is born.)

Our grass growth has exploded at the ranch due to plentiful rain and fairly moderate spring temperatures for East Texas. Instead of mowing, we often let the cows graze around the house. Free food for them, free labor for us! This week, Matt let the dairy herd around the house to graze. I began to hear some mooing and (believe it or not) cow growling, as if a couple of bulls were challenging each other. I went to the back door to investigate, wondering as I walked, “Who could he be challenging? There aren’t any more bulls over there.” Sure enough, Pedro was outside, scraping the ground with his hooves, snorting and huffing at another bull near his paddock.

Great. A bull fight. Just what we need–broken fences, mis-bred cows, and general chaos. On top of that, Matt was away for the day, bringing some cows to processing. I’d be on my own to control these feisty animals.

It only took me seconds to realize that this bull was not challenging another bull—he was challenging his reflection! He had meandered over to the wellhouse and spotted his own reflection in the window. Now he was snorting and threatening the big scary bull across the fence! I managed to get a short clip of video of it, and in the video, it looks like he even managed to frighten himself.

The wonders of farm life never cease to amaze me, and most of the time, they make me laugh!

Here is the video of Pedro making a fool of himself. Enjoy!

Fun Facts about Farm Words – Installment 1: Cows on Vacation

Leave a reply

Fun Facts about Farm Words

Installment One:  Cows on Vacation

By PapPap Cadman

Do you know the difference between a cow and a steer?  Or a heifer and a stirk?

Sometimes understanding all the various words used in raising cattle, as well as other farm animals, can be daunting.  When I arrived at Shady Grove Ranch some three years ago, that was certainly my experience.  It seemed to me at first that everything on our ranch that was bigger than a pig was a “cow.”  And I figured that that was all I really needed to know.  Who cared whether the “cow” was really a bull or a steer?  Or a heifer, for that matter?

But over the years I have learned that more exactitude would be useful.  For example, it is a lot more helpful to report to Matthew that “a bull is in with the heifers,” than that “there’s an extra cow in the field.”  Besides, I had read someplace years ago that it was a virtue to “eschew obfuscation,” so I finally decided that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to learn the proper terms for various farm animals.

This pursuit of terminological accuracy is actually great fun.  Though I am a retired gospel minister, I did spend some early years studying (and teaching) about words.  My first college degree was in Russian, and I followed my BA with an MA in that same field, and even completed doctoral course work in Russian at the University of Pittsburgh in 1976.  And though Russian is my main “fun language,” I did study a fair number of other languages, including French, Spanish, Ukrainian, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, as well as a few not-so-widely recognized languages like Old Church Slavonic and Ancient Russian.

How boring, you say?  I suppose it can be.  But, approached rightly, I have found that words are loads of fun.  What I especially like is the relationships between words in different languages.  Did you know, for example, that the term “vaccination” was probably first used in 1803 by a British physician to describe his new technique of injecting patients against cowpox?  He created the term from the old Latin word vacca, which means “cow.”  The reason he did that is because the substance he injected into his patients was taken from a cow (vacca).  And the stuff he injected, of course, we call “vaccine.” So getting a vaccination was originally considered to be getting injected with something from a cow.  It meant getting “vacca-inated”!  And I suppose that’s better than getting “cowinated.”

Speaking of cows, it is also fun to note that, though it cannot be proven, the Latin word for cow (vacca) may be related to the Latin word vacare, which means to be “idle” or “empty.”  We get our English words “vacation,” “vacate,” and “vacant” from the Latin word vacare.  The fun part is that, if the two Latin words vacca and vacare are related, it indicates that, in the eyes of the ancient Latins, vaccae (cows) were vacant (empty).  Personally I would agree with the Latins that cows are empty.  If you have ever stood in front of one of our milk cows while she was being milked, you could not but have noticed that hardly any animal has a more “vacant” look in its eyes.  When it comes to animal intelligence, cows are definitely running on “empty.”  There is absolutely no one at home.  I have seen our cows, who take the same path from pasture to the milk barn twice a day for years, suddenly stop in their tracks, utterly confused as to where they should go next… and the barn is right in front of them!

When it comes to IQ, cows are definitely “on vacation”!

Next time:  Who’s the Boss?

 

Who is Top Cow at Shady Grove Ranch? Part 2

1 Reply

Welcome to part II of our “Who is top cow at Shady Grove Ranch?” series. First we introduced you to Gordita. Now we will introduce you to another cow that we bought alongside Gordita, one of the first group of cattle at Shady Grove Ranch.

Tilly and Gordita on late-winter pasture in 2013.

Tilly and Gordita on late-winter pasture in 2013.

We call her Tilly. She is solid black–a compact, well-built Black Angus. She and Gordita were the only two older cows kept as breeders from the first group of cows we ever purchased. They were selected using strict criteria for keeping good flesh on eating forage alone (aka no corn!) and their ability to breed in a timely manner. They had mostly uniform udders, a sign that they will not have issues producing milk for their young.

He had no idea how old she was, but Matt kept Tilly because of her ideal body shape and pretty black glossy coat, which indicates a well-functioning endocrine system. He believes she was an older heifer. She was “open,” meaning not yet bred, when we got her in 2010, so in she and Gordita went with our bull, Big John. Nine or ten months later, a calf was born—a pretty, little brown bull calf.

We check the cattle twice daily, and after we confirmed the birth of this calf, the evening check revealed no sign of him. We hadn’t been at Shady Grove Ranch for very long at that point, so we were not accustomed to the habits and threats of predators in our area.

Generally speaking, cows are immune to the smaller predators in our area, like coyotes, bobcats, skunks, etc. Even cougars and wolves, which we have heard stories about from close by neighbors, will not harm an adult cow. But newborn calves are another story.

Still, coyotes, which mostly eat very small animals, berries and insects,  will occasionally attempt to get a newborn calf. But they fear adult cows, because cows are programmed to hate dog-like creatures and will often chase them and try to stomp them. Tilly in particular, showed serious contempt for our dog, Toby. Before Toby got used to being around cows, we had to keep an eye on him near Tilly, because she would charge him. We also keep an eye out for ourselves, though she has never actually done anything threatening. But Tilly’s feisty. She’ll let you know if you’re bothering her. If you’ll forgive the expression, she don’t take no bull!

With Tilly’s personality, and the overseeing protection of the herd, it would seem that a smaller animal like a coyote, would not be a problem for our herd. But this little calf was gone without a trace. We began to wonder about the presence of a larger predator…

We walked the pasture. We walked the fenceline, stopping every 10 feet to listen. Matt made frequent and thorough investigations of the surrounding forested area. Calves sleep a lot, and they like to sleep under shelter, so we tried to train our eyes to scan the leaves at the edge of the woods. Meanwhile, Tilly trotted frantically around the pasture, wild-eyed and worried, mooing for her calf. Her udder was turgid, indicated that the calf had not nursed in some time, if he had ever nursed at all. We began to fear the worst: One of our first calves at SGR, eaten. Carried off by some wild animal. All that time and work for nothing.

A day or so later, Bailey walked down to check on the herd during the routine twice daily check. There was the calf, snuggled up right in the middle of the pasture! Apparently Tilly hadn’t even seen him yet, because she was still off with the rest of the herd. The calf, startled by the appearance of a human, stood up, and Tilly recognized him at once. She ran over, and they were reunited at once. What an answer to our prayers, even our seemingly hopeless prayers!

She never lost that calf again, and raised him up to be a fine little bullock. Now she is raising a second calf, a fat little heifer who looks like a fuzzy black sausage with legs. Tilly carried her during a tough winter in Kentucky, and raised her through a hard drought here in Texas, and yet she’s probably the fattest calf we have! Tilly is a keeper. And a feisty one, too!

Tilly's second calf--a fat little heifer who is almost as feisty as her mother!

Tilly’s second calf–a fat little heifer who is almost as feisty as her mother!

Who is Top Cow at Shady Grove Ranch? Part 1

Leave a reply

Who is top cow at Shady Grove Ranch?

This is the first of a series of articles on our favorite breeding cows at Shady Grove Ranch. We have invested a lot of time and energy into our grass-fed beef herd and would love to share with you about some of our favorite personalities in the herd and why we like them so much.
The first is without doubt our favorite cow. We called her Gordita because she’s the fattest 100% grass-fed cow Matt has ever encountered. Here is her story.

Gordita

We bought Gordita at a discount because she is an unknown breed of unknown age, purchased from a colleague who was caring for the herd of a recently deceased friend of his. The colleague needed to get rid of some of the cows and was selling them for a very fair price despite their good condition (nice and fat on the lush green pastures of central Texas) and excellent naturally grass-fed rearing standards. We had actually worked with this colleague as part of our own farm internship experience and knew his standards for cattle-rearing were similar to ours (minerals, rotation, no chemicals, no grains, etc).

20130218 gordita 1

This is a recent shot of Gordita on winter pasture at Shady Grove Ranch. She is about 8 months pregnant.

Since we were just starting out, discounts were certainly welcome. We planned to grow the batch and gradually butcher the finished ones.  Since this funny-looking, part Brahma, big fat lumpy old momma cow was already extremely “finished,” she first on the list for the “hamburger factory.” But Matt has a keen eye and suspected that she was pregnant. He decided to wait and see what would happen.

A few weeks after we moved, Gordita gave birth to the very first calf ever born at Shady Grove Ranch– a pretty, spry little heifer that we named Tiny. Tiny is our loveliest heifer in the herd, and we eagerly await meeting her first calf, due later this spring.

Here is a photo of Tiny shortly after her birth. She was the first cow ever born at Shady Grove Ranch, and what a lovely cow she is!

Here is a photo of Tiny shortly after her birth. She was the first cow ever born at Shady Grove Ranch, and what a lovely heifer she is!

Will Tiny give us an outstanding new herd sire? Or a lovely future momma cow that has genetics perfectly adapted to our grass-based operation in East Texas? We’ll see. Farming is all about waiting to see…

Speaking of waiting, in our 3 years at Shady Grove Ranch, we have only a short glimpse at how well our cows reproduce. The reason is that cows only produce one calf per year, and that only when they are in excellent health. If one of our first cows were really good, she would have had 2 calves by now and would be carrying a third, typically breeding back within 2-3 of months after calving. That is true of just about all our momma cows, but Gordita is extraordinary.

Recall that Tiny, her first calf (to us), landed about a month after we moved onto Shady Grove Ranch. Her next calf, Mini (to carry on the traditional naming scheme), was born 324 days later (a cow’s gestation is 283 days). This is astounding because that means Gordita bred back in the astonishingly short length of 41 days after calving, despite the fact that she had just changed farms a month or two before. This indicates outstanding reproductive health and adaptability!

Just over ten months after Mini was born, Gordita went missing. She had broken through one of our fences and was acting a bit strange. Matt moved her back into the paddock with the rest of the herd. The next morning during Matt’s routine cow checks, he noticed that Gordita had some birthing membranes emerging from her rear-end. Perhaps she was about to calve. She was eating hay with the others, so he decided to check on her again in an hour. Experienced cows typically have their calves without assistance within an hour of when they start labor.

Matt returned to check Gordita. No sign of a calf. He decided to take her to the vet. He had planned to take animals to the butcher that day, so he loaded Gordita onto the trailer with the rest of the cows, and off they went. He dropped Gordita off first to allow time for the vet to examine her. When Matt returned, the vet came up and said, “Ain’t nobody home!” Gordita had already calved. She must have had the calf in the paddock to which she had escaped.

When Matt got home he and Zack searched the paddock where Matt had found Gordita the previous day. What he found very much surprised him: twins, male and female.

Having twins is quite rare for cows, and neither of them survived. We don’t know why—perhaps they were stillborn. It appeared that they never stood up after they were born. It was a disappointing day to be sure.

Now we were faced with a decision. From an economic standpoint, a cow MUST produce a calf every year in order to remain profitable. Cows eat way too much to be kept as pets. It is a hard truth, but it is like so many other truths in farming and life. Gordita was now on the cull list. It seemed she was getting too old to bear calves—we really didn’t know how old she was. We were a bit shaken by this decision because she is such a great cow and had given us two beautiful heifers in two years before this.

Matt called a friend and mentor who has been in the grass-fed cattle business for 30 years. His advice was a reminder that one of the best grass-fed herds in the world was produced out of five top-quality cows. If you have a fantastic cow, he said, you might want to give her a little grace from time to time.

Gordita is still with us, very pregnant, due to calve again in early March. Maybe if she gives us another heifer, we will name her Grace.

Gordita is simply lovely. She is smart, mellow, fairly friendly for a beef cow, and very motherly. Here is she is about 8 months pregnant--do you think it will be a bull or a heifer?

Gordita is simply lovely. She is smart, mellow, fairly friendly for a beef cow, and very motherly. Here is she is about 8 months pregnant–do you think it will be a bull or a heifer?

 
Thanks for reading! The next article will feature our Black Angus momma, and we need your help to name her once you hear her story!