We like to eat plenty of beef here at the Traditional Catholic Homestead! We also like to eat as healthy as possible, so we go in for grass fed/finished if we can. Last year we made the leap into raising our own, and this year we’re taking it a step further!
So after all my big talk of keeping up with the site and posting regularly, I went and dropped the laptop and broke the charger! Well I’ve got a new one now so I’m back at it. Anyway, last week we shipped the 3 steers off to be butchered! They averaged out at
about 1072 lbs. a piece, so I don’t feel like I did too bad finishing those guys off this year. The meat is pretty lean (according to the butcher), but that’s OK with us. I gave myself two days off from chasing cows around the pasture, and then was off to Southern Idaho to pick up the new stock.
We chose to go with Devon cattle this go around. They are an older breed that is kind of rare in these parts. Devon are a medium
framed animal, that were traditionally used as meat, dairy and draft animals. They finish off at a lower weight than most other commercial breeds, so they were kind of left behind in the selection for feedlot performance. With that they retain many of their desirable characteristics for grass based production.
This seemed like a good fit for us, since we are doing purely pasture based growing and finishing. We made the leap into breeding a raising our own stock. We are now the proud owners of one (hopefully) bread cow with a nice looking little bull calf at her side, and one bread heifer. This should be a pretty good start at a nice
grass herd, and hopefully will pay off in the long term. We figured if we are committing so becoming more self sufficient then we should make this move, besides the only people really making profits right now in the cattle industry are the cow/calf operations… so why not!
Anyway, that’s the latest excitement here on the Traditional Catholic Homestead! Wish us luck, we’re gonna need it!!! Not really since luck is kind of a pagan belief. We do gladly accept prayers though, and hopefully God will continue you bless our endeavors.
