Raising Cattle for Beginners

Hi, welcome to the Big Bear Homestead and today we're going to do a brief introduction on cows. So today we're going to talk about cows. Now we're going to talk about cows over the next couple of weeks and over the next couple of weeks we're going to talk about the difference between the dairy breed and the meat breed or the beef breed. The cows that you have that are behind me are more of a mixture of dairy and beef breeds meaning they were their moms were a dairy heifer and their dads were a beef bull. You can do that you can roll the dice with those and sometimes you get ones that fill out real nice carry the traits more of a beef and then you have others like Harry Potter over there who carry more traits of a dairy cow. One of the major differences between a dairy cow and a beef cow besides what besides the obvious of making milk or not they both make milk but what I mean the milk production is higher in a dairy cow than it is in a beef cow is the fact that a dairy cow's metabolism is so much higher and we'll get into that more in the next breeds. The stuff I want to talk about today is your basic introduction to cows. This is more for your beginner or the person that's thinking about getting cows and what type of cow to get. Now when you're talking more about your dairy breed of cow you are looking at wanting to get into milk, cheese, butter, stuff like that. Now these cows if you're to keep them on grass they have to have more acreage per cow because of the fact that their metabolism is so much higher. So either I ought to have more land with more grass or you need to be able to supplement them more with more hay or supplemental feed. Now if the dairy cow is in milk that feed ratio goes up even higher but that we'll get into that in the other video. So your basic cow to land ratio what do you need? How much land do you need to raise a cow? How much pasture land do you need to raise a cow? Well that all depends on how you're going to do it. If you're going to turn it loose and just let it graze where it wants to graze you're going to need a larger number of acreage per cow. Your garden variety right off the fist to cuff you need about three acres per cow. Now if you do like how we do where we do intense grazing with beef cows you can lower that number to about four or five cows to ten cows per acre depending on the level of salad bar that you have in your pasture. Another thing that cows need is water. They need lots and lots and lots of water. Your average full grown cow will drink anywhere from 20 to 50 gallons of water a day. That's a lot of water. Now you can combat that if you have a creek or a pond on your property. The only problem with the pond aspect of it is the same way with the creek is that on hot days they will go into the pond or go into your creek to cool off and they will defecate in there and that kind of makes the water a little bit unhealthy for them later on down the road. So you're going to have to have a way to get them a tremendous amount of water. Now you can do the hose drag or you can find ways to pump water to your troughs. For these small guys right here they're not even a year old yet we have a 25 gallon water trough that we fill up two to sometimes three times a day. Now in the summertime your cows also need access to shade. They need to somewhere to be able to get out of the heat somewhere where it can be five to ten degrees cooler during the heat of the day. Your cows also need a place to where as they graze like this they can go lay down to chew their cud because a cow has four stomachs. He's an herbivore. He has four stomachs and so when they first eating like they're doing now it's going into the first chamber and they will regurgitate that chew it again in the smaller portions and then it goes into the second chamber. This is all developed through from when a lot of your herbivores like buffalo your deer your caribou they're out there on the range and they have to eat in a hurry because of natural predators so they'll mob mentality they'll do like they're doing right there and they will be side by side by side and eat and walk but they're doing it fast and so when they're doing this all that grass is going into their first chamber then later on you'll see them laying down and they have regurgitated it and it goes into the second to the third and then finally in the last stomach and then out the pooper. So they need an area preferably to be able to lay down in this in the shade to be able to relax and chew on their cud. A lot of people ask us what what type of grass is the best type of grass? Well there's not one grass that's superior for cows over another grass. You want to have a variety of grass. Now if you're going to do intense grazing like we do you want to keep the paddocks small like the paddock that I'm standing in right now has to be cut in half. This paddock is still too large for these guys. They've been in this area for two days and I don't like it. I want them one a 24-hour period in the paddock. The reason being is as you can see in spots where they eat they ate it down real heavy and then there's spots where the grass is still relatively tall. Calves and cows are like children. If you turn a child loose in a buffet restaurant and don't give them any direction and you don't make them do anything what are they going to go to first? They're going to go to the sweets to the ice creams and to the cakes. It's not until you force them to eat their vegetables that they'll eat them. They're the same way. So there's your basic introduction into cows. Next week we're going to talk about the major differences between a dairy cow and a beef cow. So thanks for coming by the Big Bear Homestead and like always have a nice day.