Critters - cattle, horses, dogs

[Sunbeam56]

Somebody ask about the critters? 

[Sunbeam56]

Moos

[Sunbeam56]

bad dogs! 

[lorraine1960]

ahh i love it...makes me miss my farm....lorraine

[Esther]

Love the coloring of the bossies noses and around their eyes. Very cute.

UM, I guess me too Lorraine. But I've been off the farm much longer than I was on a farm.

[bunny56lbc]

OOOOOOOO , you're horses are BEAUTIFUL ! I used to have  an Appalossa mare that I raised & trained to ride . Even raised a few foals off of her , she had some nice colorful one's too ...but she died at the ripe old age of 27 . It broke my heart when she died ( they're like family when ya have them that long ) & I could'nt bring myself to get any more .
I do miss horseback rideing tho ....awww well so much for the good old day's .

bonnie

[SueSTx]

I bet Rascel can't get into the trailer anymore.   

[miguynmkoi]

Sunbeam, ALL your animals are so beautiful!! 

[karen J]

I know I asked about the critters (different thread) and probably many others did as well after seeing your cute cow pics. Seeing a cow grazing on the food that nature intended them to eat (vegetation) seems to be a rare sight these days, but it is a joyful and welcome sight. I think it is important to note that If you're buying typical "grocery store" beef, it has come from an inhumane feed lot. Those feed lot cows are feed "scientific" mixtures of corn, soy, hormones, antibiotics, molasses, & chemicals. Instead of fertilizer, their poop is put into toxic lagoons that are polluting the Gulf. Why? Makes me wonder why there is something wrong with plain old grasses? The energy of the sun is enough to grow a cow, but is it enough to grow cows for 6 billion people?
I like debating that point.
I'd really like to debate the problem of feeding 6 billion people adequate protein & fat, in a sustainable way.
End of rant.

It is very enlightening and heartening to know that some people (like you) still care and raise their animals on pasture.

[Sunbeam56]

Its harder to get a cow fat on just grass. Around here we have to supplement their feed. The native grasses do not have sufficient protein - when we began this experiment, we discovered to our surprise, that you can starve a cow on native grasses that are knee deep.
We feed a mineral/molasses mix. Molasses is syrup made from sugar cane - its not weird.
We do NOT add hormones or antibiotics to speed up the growth of the animals.
And we have disced and seeded the pasture with bermuda. Bermuda grass has a higher protein content.

We also feed 10% sweet - which is a mix made for horses. Primarily just to keep the animals tame. Most of my critters are actually excessively tame. They think I'm a runty cow - and don't hesitate to treat me like one - pushing me out of their way.  I don't have the weight to push back - although I'm meaner and have been aggressive when they threaten my toes. 

You can buy "grass fed" beef at the whole foods/organic foods markets. Its more expensive, because it takes longer to have a harvestable animal. And the label doesn't mean that all they eat is grass - just that grass is the dominant portion of their diet.
Its typically leaner beef - so you have to learn to cook it. Can't just throw it on the grill like stockyard raised Angus.

A typical South Texas calf is harvested at 18 months. We keep ours until 22 months or older. Our animals aren't bigger than harvest calves - we just enjoy them longer.

They are pets until the day that they are harvested.
Like huge dumb dogs.
Cows are something like I imagine autistic children would be. Very smart about food. Very dumb about just about other things. 
They know their names, and come when the food bucket is rattled.

This bull, Lucas, pretty much stays home. The bull we had before, Mo, was a lady's man - he wouldn't stay in the fences.  We had a couple of paternity claims... And had to retrieve him in the middle of the night one time, when a friend reported him wandering down the road. 

Lucas goes in the freezer next year. You can't keep a bull more than a couple of years, or they start looking at their daughters. Joline and Pink are his kids. We may keep Joline.
Genetically, he's produced beautiful babies, but he has horns. Horns are not desirable in a small farm, like ours. And he's not as tame as I would like.
Of course, we only have Mo to compare him with. And Mo was extremely easy to handle.

[Joyce]

GREAT pix Savannah! 

[EagleEye]

Karen,
You really have to get  back up here to Wisconsin again. If you look, you will see cows and cattle grazing all over the place. Most of the farmers do what is called rotational grazing, which simply means, moving the cattle from one pasture to the next based on numbers of cattle, and how much they eat. etc. Of course they also get feed eveyday.
When I'm out hunting, I can alwyays tell when Glen is feeding the cattle. They are loud. And happy to see him.
The farmer where I hunt has always done that.

Sunbeam,
Rascal is one awesome longhorn--He is really a cool dude.
It must be nice to have the room for all of the animals. A guy that I work with raises one steer at a time, gets it from his brother who has the family farm. Says it is really great meat. Myself, I'm still a venison guy.
I've never been interested in horses, but if I could would raise a steer.

Steve

[tweetybaby2005]

Ooohhh, love all your animals, especially the horses and dogs.      We are thinking of putting a couple of pygmy (sp??) goats on our 5 acres.  We will see when we start building the house there in a few years.

Kuan

[Sunbeam56]

Rascal was well named. He's a love. Mischievous, tho.
I can walk up and scratch him behind his horns, where his feet don't reach.
But when Butch comes over with a round bale on his tractor - Rascal has to fight the tractor. 

Every now and again, Butch brings over a bale of straw - not really any good to eat - and sets it out in the pasture for Rascal to play with. You should see him toss around a 1200 pound round bale of straw
He sure has fun.

[Sunbeam56]

So, Roark rode Annie Mae for the first time tonight.
We don't have a saddle for her that is size appropriate for Roark.
He got off walking a little funny. 

He loves this horse.

[karen J]

Its harder to get a cow fat on just grass. Around here we have to supplement their feed. The native grasses do not have sufficient protein - when we began this experiment, we discovered to our surprise, that you can starve a cow on native grasses that are knee deep.
We feed a mineral/molasses mix. Molasses is syrup made from sugar cane - its not weird.
We do NOT add hormones or antibiotics to speed up the growth of the animals.
And we have disced and seeded the pasture with bermuda. Bermuda grass has a higher protein content.

We also feed 10% sweet - which is a mix made for horses. Primarily just to keep the animals tame. Most of my critters are actually excessively tame. They think I'm a runty cow - and don't hesitate to treat me like one - pushing me out of their way.  I don't have the weight to push back - although I'm meaner and have been aggressive when they threaten my toes. 

You can buy "grass fed" beef at the whole foods/organic foods markets. Its more expensive, because it takes longer to have a harvestable animal. And the label doesn't mean that all they eat is grass - just that grass is the dominant portion of their diet.
Its typically leaner beef - so you have to learn to cook it. Can't just throw it on the grill like stockyard raised Angus.

A typical South Texas calf is harvested at 18 months. We keep ours until 22 months or older. Our animals aren't bigger than harvest calves - we just enjoy them longer.

They are pets until the day that they are harvested.
Like huge dumb dogs.
Cows are something like I imagine autistic children would be. Very smart about food. Very dumb about just about other things. 
They know their names, and come when the food bucket is rattled.

This bull, Lucas, pretty much stays home. The bull we had before, Mo, was a lady's man - he wouldn't stay in the fences.  We had a couple of paternity claims... And had to retrieve him in the middle of the night one time, when a friend reported him wandering down the road. 

Lucas goes in the freezer next year. You can't keep a bull more than a couple of years, or they start looking at their daughters. Joline and Pink are his kids. We may keep Joline.
Genetically, he's produced beautiful babies, but he has horns. Horns are not desirable in a small farm, like ours. And he's not as tame as I would like.
Of course, we only have Mo to compare him with. And Mo was extremely easy to handle.

Oh I totally get that. Before we found a farmer we were buying the expensive stuff at "Whole Paycheck" (Whole Foods) 

The farmers we found raises theirs similar to yours. They feed them the sweet and some corn as a supplement to the pasture, no hormones, antibiotics, or steroids. I think it's a good mix, the flavor & texture speaks for itself. We want happy cows. Can't afford it all the time, but our farmer makes it affordable to us 90% of the time. It takes a lot longer to raise a pasture-fed cow and we're willing to pay the extra. But once we developed a good-customer relationship with our farmer, the price is actually much more attractive than feed-lot beef. Value is subjective in many ways. We like the fact that our cows are not unhappy, standing in poo, polluting the Gulf. The poo from our cows is fertilizing our veggies.

[/quote author=EagleEye]Karen,
You really have to get  back up here to Wisconsin again. If you look, you will see cows and cattle grazing all over the place. Most of the farmers do what is called rotational grazing, which simply means, moving the cattle from one pasture to the next based on numbers of cattle, and how much they eat. etc. Of course they also get feed eveyday.
When I'm out hunting, I can alwyays tell when Glen is feeding the cattle. They are loud. Smiley And happy to see him. Wink
The farmer where I hunt has always done that.[/quote]

Rotational grazing is genius. "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan is what got me into that whole thing. He wrote about how Joel (HOWELL  ) Salatin built a farm on the principle of rotational grazing combined with modern technology (easy to move electric fences), and intense management. subsequently building a farm producing as much as is humanely possible using zero "factory" practices. The chickens are let loose EXACTLY three days after the cows were there, and eat the fly larvae that could potentially infect the cows. It goes on and on, but my dream is to have a Salatin like farm or at least live near Polyface farm in Virginia.

I met a Wisconsin gal called Michelle (Dietzler Family Farms) at the Grayslake Farmers Market who essentially does the same thing, although she abandoned purely "grass fed" because her customers weren't thrilled with the taste (longer to raise, high omega3 "fishy" taste). Her beef is really good too. And, she brought me 20 lounds of fat for free!  I rendered all of it and cherish it like it is gold. 

[Roark]

Karen;

I think the sad truth is most folks think that meat comes from little packages at the store and don't ever think there is an actual animal behind it all.  Sounds silly, but it's true.

One of the things holding-back the whole "totally natural" beef is the appearance.  Fact is, folks think it looks gross:

1).  The fat on grass-fed beef isn't white.  It's yellow (due to the uptake of all that good-stuff in the grass... just like Nature intended it!).  Sorta like rice or milk, folks think "white is good, yellow is bad"... and there just isn't any educating them once they've got set in their ways.

2).  The marbling in grass-fed/no-hormones beef is very, very thin.  You can select for this by a certain degree genetically, but in the end you have to have rely to a large part on synthetics to get the animal to marble "acceptably" (at least by todays standards!). 

3).  It's bloody. When you do a humane slaughter (instead of dragging a mostly-alive animal around bleeding and dripping with a couple of hooks in their pelvis and a cut across their neck veins), lots of the blood remains in the carcass, meaning meat, meaning it winds-up in the package at the time of sale.  Folks just don't like to look at blood, even though studies prove you WANT it in there for taste and texture reasons.

We produce *way* more beef than we can ever eat, so we wind-up giving away the burger and the cheaper cuts.  Folks are always amazed when they can suddenly taste the beef and don't need the A-1 Sauce.

Parting comment:  I like the intensively-managed ethic you relayed in your post above, but find *one* little issue with it.   The chickens need to be let-out free-range with the cattle.  This is what we do.  When a cow poops, the chickens ignore it for a day or two and then suddenly they get all over once it's lost some moisture.  There isn't any possibility of bugs, and the chickens get the benefit of the undigested "stuff" which the larger animal didn't get.  (And, in truth, I think the cows like the company.  Every now and then you'll see a bird perched atop one of the cows which doesn't seem to mind at all).

Gotta jump.  Dinnertime and we're having home-grown steak again.  heheheh!

[Joyce]

Sounds delicious. 
My brother is single, and has a bunch of married friends who act single and go upstate about once a month to a cabin up by Gore Mountain.
They whoop it up for a weekend and come home with a massive hangover, somehow managing the 6-8 hour drive home.
But my brother also brings me organic beef raised on his friends farm.
It's unbelievably good. I can't eat store bought packaged 'sterile' meat any more. 

[Pa Nancy]

What beautiful animals. I just LOVE that Rascal. He's so cool.

[Desertponder]

Everyone looks fat and happy. The horses are beautiful.
Personally, I could never deal with being aquainted with my dinner.
When DH was working for his one friend who owns a ranch a few
years ago, he used to give us ground beef and steak all the time.
There was a huge difference in how it tasted. I can barely stand the store
bought stuff these days but can't afford to buy home grown from someone.
There are many members of the fire dept. that will go in together and split a beef
but I never have that kind of money to plunk down when they are doing it.

[LeeAnne151]

As someone who has been waiting for her first horse for forty years now, I'm jealous.....

I've never ridden a draft horse but I am told they are great rides. Is Annie Mae a Belgian?

I helped a friend pull a calf once but that is as close as I've gotten to raising beef. We do have organic mostly grass fed beef available here and I try to buy it as much as I can afford. Our neighbors and my brother buy in bulk and they give us some too. One local chain of fast food here, Burgerville, uses Oregon Country Beef which is a cooperative of small ranchers that are organic and pasture raised.

Nationwide though, most beef is raised on feed lots, not on "the range" They give it antibiotics because grain in such large doses makes them sick. Cattle are designed to graze and not to eat grain. It worries me about what effect all those antibiotics and hormones have on people. Not to mention the inhumane conditions the animals are raised in and are slaughtered in.

[Roark]

As someone who has been waiting for her first horse for forty years now, I'm jealous.....

I've never ridden a draft horse but I am told they are great rides. Is Annie Mae a Belgian?

Annie Mae is a Suffolk Punch, which is another member of the "fuzzy-foot" crowd.  This breed of horse is programmed both genetically and via personality to PULL THINGS. Simply put, they love it.  In Scotland they used to have competitions where they chained the horse to an immovable object and timed how long it took the horse to dig themselves in up to their belly.  This falls far short of being cruel however, because nobody was whipping the horse.  The horse simply WANTED to move that thing, and would actually die trying if someone didn't say "WHOA" at the right moment.  Did I mention they like to pull?.  Sorta like a grass-powered tow-truck... in other words... she's about right for the Roarkster.

Annie Mae stands about 16 1/2 hands, but at 5 years old, she's still growing and I think we'll be pushing 17 hands when she's done.  In horse-size, she's definitely in the top of the class, but wait until you see a full-blow Percheron!  (Maybe I can get Marie/Toragoi to post pictures of her "Odin". HINT-HINT!!   I think you could probably park my horse under hers. heheheh).

As to the quality of ride, I'm told she's pretty darned smooth for a fuzzy-foot.  I don't have much experience myself, so I'm sorta lost in the judging department.   All I know is she's the quintessential red-head:  It takes a trip to the jeweler and a half-hour of begging before you'll even be considered for a date, and if you *do* get one, there isn't any guarantee you're going riding.  (But once you're on, you'd best strap-in, shut-up, and hold on.  She'll go everywhere SHE wants to go, and you're just along for the ride.  But if you've dated redhead before, this isn't anything new to you. hehehe).

(((LMAO!!!))) (((DUCKING!)))

BTW:  This was all Savannah's fault.  I wasn't thrilled about horses until she introduced me to Annie Mae.  Now I think she's a little jealous off all the time I'm spending with my "Little Girl".

Roark

[Joyce]

They breed Percherons here at Entenmann's Farm (same company that is the famous Bakery in the supermarkets).
Also breed Belgians. (black Percherons too)
Every year at Christmas, Bill and Charlie (Belgians) pull an old fashioned sleigh around at the Hallockville Farm Museum all decked out in black leather and brass hardware, red wood sleigh.
My husband Bill (Retired USMC Major) and his ROTC Cadets volunteer for the Xmas Show for parking attendants and tour guides, and my hubby's coworkers name is Charlie (retired Navy Seal).
So when Bill and Charlie: the Belgian horses show up, and then there is Bill and Charlie humans, and everyone is shouting Bill and Charlie,
get's confusing.   

The horses listen better than the men. 

[KatFish]

Yep, us redheads tend to keeep things interesting 

[LeeAnne151]

Seriously, I almost asked if she was a Suffolk Punch but they are so rare in the USA that I asked Belgian since I knew for sure she wasn't a Shire, Clydesdale or Percheron. I had never seen a chestnut Belgian without a flaxen mane and tail but I have never seen a Suffolk Punch in all my years of doing "horsey things"

They have draft horse pulls here during some of the county fairs. I see quite a few as a drive around for my work, saw a herd of Texas Longhorns recently and a herd of bison and there are some bison down the street from my father's and there is a reindeer farm and a Clydesdale breeder but never a Suffolk Punch.

[Roark]

Seriously, I almost asked if she was a Suffolk Punch but they are so rare in the USA that I asked Belgian since I knew for sure she wasn't a Shire, Clydesdale or Percheron. I had never seen a chestnut Belgian without a flaxen mane and tail but I have never seen a Suffolk Punch in all my years of doing "horsey things"

They have draft horse pulls here during some of the county fairs. I see quite a few as a drive around for my work, saw a herd of Texas Longhorns recently and a herd of bison and there are some bison down the street from my father's and there is a reindeer farm and a Clydesdale breeder but never a Suffolk Punch.

Your hesitancy at guessing a Suffolk Punch is understandable!  There are only about 1300 of these horses left.  About 200 of these are in Texas.   Most of the rest are in England.

If you would like an introduction, c'mon down this way! I'll show you how spectacularly (little!) I know about horses, and Savannah will feed you 'till you pop.   You can meet the longhorn, too. (He's a pet). 

Bring a cooler and we'll send you home with some beef!

Roark

[LeeAnne151]

Someday I do hope to tour Texas again. Not only do I have online friends in Texas but I have "real life" friends who live there as well.

I was looking at a livestock conservation website at Suffolks just now and found this breed of cattle:
http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/dutchbelt.html

I saw a small herd recently in Vancouver Washington.

I think I've seen these donkeys recently too:
http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/other/donkey/poitou/

Sad that so many breeds are in danger. Genetic diversity is a good thing....

I saw an unusual goat yesterday in Cloverdale BC but have been unable to identify him so far.

[Sunbeam56]

Annie Mae had a long life in the five short years before we found her. I don't know the complete story - but at one time she was in Wyoming.
When she entered the dependable part of the story, she was a rescue. She had been starved and was full of worms. A friend of mine found her, and started feeding her before she ever bought her. We got her after that.
She's young, and so a little head strong. But willing and gentle.
The only remnant of her bad experiences is she has a profound appreciation of food. 

Rascal is my pet. 

[karen J]

Parting comment:  I like the intensively-managed ethic you relayed in your post above, but find *one* little issue with it.   The chickens need to be let-out free-range with the cattle.  This is what we do.  When a cow poops, the chickens ignore it for a day or two and then suddenly they get all over once it's lost some moisture.  There isn't any possibility of bugs, and the chickens get the benefit of the undigested "stuff" which the larger animal didn't get.  (And, in truth, I think the cows like the company.  Every now and then you'll see a bird perched atop one of the cows which doesn't seem to mind at all).

Gotta jump.  Dinnertime and we're having home-grown steak again.  heheheh!

I probably should not have said what I said (when I said "exactly"  ) without referring to the source. Joel Salatin has a thing he calls an "eggmobile", and as part of his intensively managed farm, this involves dragging the eggmobile around after the cows. If I may "read" you a little segment of Pollan's book, I think you'd agree that you are both accomplishing the same thing, the only difference being "scale". Here it is:

"

In nature you'll always find birds following herbivores," Joel explained, when I asked him for the theory behind the Eggmobile. "The egret perched on the rhino's nose, the pheasants and turkeys trailing after the bison- that's a symbiotic relationship we're trying to imitate". In each case the birds dine on the insects that would otherwise bother the herbivore; they also pick insect larvae and parasites out of the animal's droppings, breaking the cycle of infestation and disease. "To mimic this symbiosis on a domestic scale, we follow the cattle in their rotation with the Eggmobile. I call these gals our sanitation crew."
     Joel climbed onto the tractor, threw it into gear, and slowly towed the rickety contraption fifty yards or so across the meadow to a paddock the cattle had vacated three days earlier. It seems the chickens eschew fresh manure, so he waits three or four days before bringing them in- but not a day longer. That's because the fly larvae in the manure are on a four-day cycle, he explained. "Three days is ideal. That gives the grubs a chance to fatten up nicely, the way the hens like them, but not quite long enough to hatch into flies." The result is prodigious amounts of protein for the hens, the insects supplying as much as a third of their total diet- and making their eggs unusually rich and tasty. By means of this simple little management trick, Joel is able to use his cattle's waste to "grow" large quantities of high-protein chicken feed for free; he says the trims his cost of producing eggs by twenty-five cents per dozen. [...] The cows further oblige the chickens by shearing the grass; chickens can't navigate in grass more than about six inches tall."

-Michael Pollan, "Omnivore's Dilemma"

When I read that book I was so impressed that I found a local organic/pasture pork & chicken farmer and tried the eggs. I was hooked. The eggs are amazing: giant, bright orange yolks that stand up, amazing flavor, all different color eggs (even green). Nothing like a battery raised feed lot CAFO egg that I used to get for 99 cents a dozen.
I know that Pollan has his own agenda (eat mostly plants?!) that is 180* degrees from mine (Obligate Carnivore  ), but honestly- that book changed the way I eat.

[karen J]

Major Edit: Forgot to say that I respect your experience and knowledge as a farmer more than I trust Pollan's journalism. He is, after all, a journalist, not a farmer. And I don't know if he is describing Salatin's practices through the lens of his own bias, if he has one. Hope that makes sense.

Sunbeam56, That Rascal is precious. Wish I had one as a pet.

Are the pictures of Annie May before she came to you or after? I don't know much about horses, but she looks pretty good. No bones sticking out like the ones I see on Animal Planet.