Backyard Beef

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BUTCHERING

Brad Billock raises two head of cattle each year, one for his family and one for friends, which enables him to earn enough money to cover the costs of raising and processing

both steers.

Butchering a beef is a daunting home enterprise if you don't have the proper tools and know-how, so Brad bought a horse trailer to haul the steers to the slaughterhouse. (In some areas there are slaughter-and-butchering operations that will do it all at your place.) He figured he would help pay for the trailer by renting it out to others in the neighborhood who raise backyard beef, but so far he has been too kindhearted to take any money.

The trailer makes loading cattle much easier than a truck because the floor can be lowered down almost to ground level and the animals can walk on without fear. My cow, sniffing at the bucket of corn in my hand, followed me right into the trailer. In the old days we used to have to force animals up a slanted ramp into high-bed trucks, always a frantic and difficult job.

Even with a modern trailer, it pays to pen your beef in the barn and back the trailer to the door a day before you attempt to load. Keep the trailer door and barn door open so the animal can peer inside the trailer and get used to it before loading. Put a little corn or good hay in the trailer. The animal may walk in of its own accord or be more inclined to board when you urge it.

FULL CIRCLE

Advanced grass farming is really only in its infancy, but many books and farm magazines are available to keep you informed of progress. (The Stockman GrassFarmer is one of my favorites.) But even the most progressive commercial grazing programs don't consider ideas the backyard beef devotee can try. For example, you could use one of your paddocks each myear for a combination vegetable garden and sweet corn patch. The calves can eat what corn you don't harvest, along with the surplus vegetables. Just turn them into the garden paddock after the season is over. They'll eat late weeds, too. You can lightly till that plot and broadcast grass and clover seeds in winter or early spring to re-establish your grasses and clovers.

There's much art and science in managing a rotational grazing system, and there are more possibilities than first meet the eye. If you make vegetable gardens and grain plots part of your backyard pasture rotation and grow your own supply of fish in the pond or tank that provides your animals with water, you will have created a complete, small-scale food-production system. You will have attained what some professional graziers are beginning to accomplish on larger acreages: a low-cost, environmentally intelligent husbandry where most of the work of food production is done by grazing animals and what you do is mostly brainwork.

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