Picking a breed

[Baymule]

Haha @greybeard Black Hide Fever!!! They guy we get hay from bought a bunch of longhorn heifers a few years ago. Nobody wanted them, he bought them for $125 each. He breeds them to a black part Angus bull, gets black calves. he hustles them off to the sale before the horns pop out and gets top dollar because they are black. People sure can be stupid.

You have some good looking cows. Ever kill out all the Chinese tallow trees?

 

[bnttyra]

We raise lowlines and I grew up on a ranch that had mostly angus and angus crosses. Knowing what I know now, I will stick with my lowlines! I absolutely love them. They are easy to handle, easy calvers (both of ours calved out this year with no help) and you get higher yields on the carcass. You don't need as much acreage as full size cattle and should only really feed them grass as they can bloat easy on grain. They are very mild in temperament and because their sizes are smaller they are even easy for kids to handle. We did raise several regular sized angus for our own freezer and we have a family of 4. That was almost too much meat and we did split it with our in laws. So we are looking forward to the smaller steers as that looks to be a better fit for us.

While I agree they can be somewhat expensive to get into, I found that steers weren't that much more and since you don't have to feed the grains, they end up being a bit cheaper to get ready for market. Lowline steers do seem to be a bit harder to locate I will say that but if you do the research you can certainly find them. Our cows weren't too expensive, about what our neighbor paid for his angus cross heifers but some of the better bred ones, the show stock, can get pretty pricey. My daughter's heifer was the reserved champion heifer at last year's 4H fair and this year she will be taking a steer and that same heifer with her first calf for the cow/calf pair. We are very excited about it as this will be the first lowline steer at our county fair.

Don't rule out lowlines as they are much better for the smaller acreage and very easy to deal with.

 

[bnttyra]

Besides, how can you not love a calf as cute at this!!