Backyard Beef

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To prevent bloat, take care to introduce livestock slowly to a lush stand of clover and then only when the animals have eaten fully of other grass or hay. Bloat seldom occurs on a mixed grass and clover pasture.

Seeding the paddocks can be done by broadcasting in winter or early spring when the soil is somewhat bared by grazing and cold weather. For small paddocks, you can run a garden tiller lightly over the sod after it has been grazed down and more bare earth is exposed. The freezing and thawing of the soil surface in late winter and early spring allows the seeds to come into good contact with the earth to sprout and grow.

New seedings are liable to be weedy, but after one year of grazing and a mowing, the clovers and grasses will dominate. A few weeds in a grazing regimen are not bad: They're often a better source of minerals than the grasses and clovers.

VARIATIONS

The pure pasture method can be adjusted to include some supplemental feed. Brad Billock and his wife, Ann, have extra acreage and a barn on their property, which is why they decided to start producing their own meat in the first place. Every year they raise one beef for themselves and one for friends. This way they earn enough money to cover most of the cost of both steers. Animals are happier if they have company, so two together thrive better than one.

Brad buys calves at about 300 pounds from local farmers. (The county fair is a good place to go livestock shopping.) He then feeds them out to about 1,000 pounds. In addition to an acre of grass for grazing, Brad feeds shelled corn and soybean meal, which he figures provides a little more than a third of the calves' food.

"Most cattle feeders believe animals fatten faster on cracked or milled corn," he says. "But shelled corn is cheaper and the calves gain well enough for our purposes. I add soybean meal to the ration for extra protein."

Brad also watches for free feed opportunities to supplement what he has to buy. For example, after sweet corn harvest he gathers the stalks and any ears left from all the gardens in the neighborhood to feed as silage. The calves will also eat pumpkins, squash and other garden surplus.

He keeps a salt-mineral block in the feed box for the calves to lick. They get their water from a big trough replenished by rainwater from the roof gutter on the barn.

Processing costs vary around the country, but in general, figure about $150 per steer. A calf purchased at 300 pounds costs around $300. If you want to play the proper accountant, you have to add costs for labor, land and hauling. A 1,000-pound steer will make about 600 pounds of meat. If you figure its value on what you'd pay at the supermarket, you come out well. If you figure value on what a steer sells for in the regular farm market, you make only a little profit beyond the superior taste of homegrown meat and your assurance of what drugs were administered, if any, while in your care.

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