Got Milk Cows?

The title of an article in this month's "BEEF" magazine. Anybody read it? Wes Ishmael writes that the dairy industry and sexed semen could be the answer to the beef cow shortage. Dairy heifers that don't make the cut - bred to beef bulls - are the ticket. Whaddya think? Imagine a dairy heifer bred to Sitz Upward.
Is there anyway you could feed that one hard enough? And maternal qualities as an added benefit. How could you not want all that in your herd? Where do we sign up for these quality replacements?

No Way Choc- Cow

Just happened to have that issue setting next to the computer and what I got out of the article was using more sexed beef breed semen in dairy cows rather then just producing more dairy heifers. I'm thinking 90 days of milk replacer then then rest of their life in a corral and feed bunk would take most of the profit out of that deal.

Would Sitz Upward increase or decrease the milk in a dairy cow? I don't get Beef magazine. I hate that thing and I called them and told them to no longer send their crap to me. The poor women said "but it's free". I said I didn't want it even if they paid me and I was tired of throwing it away so they quit sending it.

It is amazing how contented one can become, when cut off from the rat race, doomsday, better get bigger or die, media sensationalism, that fills bloated mailboxes, with a relentless tide of advertisements, for stuff that we can cease to function without.

I ate breakfast really early, and lunch late today, reminding me that food was really important. I like to eat, need to eat, have to eat. Most of the other stuff is just food like products, temporarily filling the void, without addressing the real issue at hand.


Bootheel......knee deep in clearing skies, sunsets, and renewed vision.

I didn't get it for awhile [BEEF magazine] because it generally is filled with pro packer BS. There is occasionally an interesting article. Jim Gerrish had a column for a very short time but probably got axed for saying cattlemen spend too much money on iron and useless junk produced by paying advertisers in such a publication.

Beef from the dairy is more widely used in Europe. Cows bred to exotic bulls providing a slaughter generation, often as "bull beef" but also a longer standing tradition of retaining beef x dairy heifers as beef cows. This worked very well through the 70s and 80s but really started to go downhill with the use of Holstein in the 90s. We had many good Hereford or Angus x friesian and Galloway x Ayrshire cows when I was a kid. They were a bit tougher to winter in a wet climate than straight beef breeds but they were generally productive and fertile. Not as crazy an idea as it sounds for people not ranching in the toughest environments. In truth some of the extreme end of the beef pure breeds are little different to the half dairy cows - like that red Angus cow I posted a few days back - frailer, milkier and less hardy than I like.

Some of this would depend on the operator, as usual. A number of dairies have a small pasturizer and use their sick cow milk to feed calves after being pasturized. This really drops the calf costs on buying milk replacer. I see pastures with holstein steers up to 650+ if they have pastures for them so the only difference would be that the steers would be beef crosses. But I do not see any of this being a big percentage of the US beef market.

Pasture is a dirty word to dairies here. After all it is space that could be used to put some more house trailers for illegal workers.

My isolated from the corporate world, freind, got a supply catalogue in yesterday, with all the required goods for modern confinement agriculture. He had never seen or heard of many of the products in it. From manure digesters, to toxic gas detectors, to rectum plugs, to splayed leg syndrome-fixeruppers.......he said wow, these people needing these products need to step back, think, observe, and ask, WHY. Made him laugh, me laugh, but at the same time it is a little worrysome, that this has become NORMAL, and is accepted. It is no wonder there is some non-ag folks out there, speaking loud and proud, to be against US. Do I have any answers?....not really, but something is going to give.