Cattle Make Me Nervous

Each year we raise a beef steer to put in the freezer and feed our family. I’m still a little worked up about our negative experiences from last year.

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Since we bought our farm we have been raising our own beef. Each year we buy a weaned calf from a local farmer and finish it out on grain and pasture until it is time to head off to freezer camp. The beef is absolutely delicious and in regards to the final product we couldn’t be more satisfied.

Most of our focus here on the homestead is our dairy goat herd. If a goat gets out of line it’s not too hard to get them back in the barn but for the most part they are docile and as sweet as can be. If a 600-1200lb cow wants to act up there’s not much this ol’ boy is going to do about it.

The first steer we raised was a dream and was tame as could be. The second one was a little more standoffish and even jumped the fence on the first day but after that we had no more problems. However, last year we bought two at the same time and they were too much to handle. Their first day out on pasture they jumped every fence we had and were gone for a couple of days until a local wrangler could get them brought back to the farm. Our saving grace in this matter was the fact that these steers were large enough that we could just finish them out in the barn together for a few months and they never had to see pasture again. Even after going through all of that the beef was still excellent.

This year we’re doing things a little differently. We bought our calf from a farmer who hand feeds his animals every day. We’ll also be using an electric polywire fence with a plug-in energizer to keep him contained to his designated pasture. If that goes well we’ll probably explore some rotational grazing with him but for now he’ll have a home in the field by the barn.

Our experience last year really soured me on this whole cattle thing and made me feel like I was incapable of doing this anymore until we made some real infrastructure improvements. We are, however, doing it again because this is something I feel like is good for our family. Just because something is difficult I don’t want to shy away from it. We experience great growth in taking on hard things and overcoming challenges and I want my kids to know (and to reaffirm myself, as well) that if you set your mind to something, and learn from past mistakes, you can accomplish anything.

If this message resonates with you I hope you consider subscribing to the channel. If you want to learn more about how we raise our beef or some of the mistakes we’ve made along the way you can check out some of the other videos that we’ve done. See y’all soon!
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