Anybody know anything about raisin' cattle?

What is your forage base? Cool season or warm season? Do you have KY31 fescue? (It has its own set of problems.) What are your Summer's like? Hot and humid? If you have mostly cool season grasses they will play out in the summer. Even with low stocking rates the cool season grass will be big mature and not have much nutritional value at all and will go dormant in the summer. Calves will gain about 1 to 1.5 pounds a day in ideal conditions on grass maybe more with annual forages. But if it gets as hot and humid as it does here in Arkansas they will not gain much June, July or August. They may even go backwards. This may not apply to you I don't know your climate again call that county extension agent! 

I grew up on a hog farm, so not exactly the same, but some strong similarities.  This doesn't sound like it would be very profitable and it'd still be a hassle.  I'd rent the pasture area out to a local farmer that wants to put some cows on it and work out a deal where you go in on half a cow from a meat locker.  Basically fill a deep freezer once a year or something.  How you find the guy to rent it to, I don't know.

Meh, i bet if you went on a farming forum and told them you wanted to start racing or do some crazy engine swap they would tell you not to waste your time or money. I got the same reactions on here when i asked about growing hay. 

The fact of the matter is people have been farming since the beginning. If you have ground, fences, and some sort of shelter for them you are 90% done. You can do it, you may very well enjoy doing it. You might even turn an ok profit at it.

Go to the extension office and go to the library, learn the basics. Then talk to local cattle guys and learn some more. It aint rocket surgery. After the first year you will know about a billion times more than you do now.

In reply to gearheadmb :

Thanks, man. This is my line of thinking.

My college roommate's dad farmed cattle. He would stand by the fence and talk to them. Over time the steers would start coming over to say hi. By then it would be about time to send them off to be eaten.

I thought that was a bit weird but he was a nice guy.

I don't doubt you can do it.  I think you are smart, and talented, and can learn most everything.

I don't think you can do it without investing a lot of effort, which may be a big impact on the businesses you already have.

SVreX said:

I don't doubt you can do it.  I think you are smart, and talented, and can learn most everything.

I don't think you can do it without investing a lot of effort, which may be a big impact on the businesses you already have.

+1 to this.  Cows lived long before we did E36 M3.  You are a resourceful guy, you would figure it out, but is it worth your time versus just buying some steaks and hooning around on some empty land?  Hong Norr junk car or mini bike races seem like a great use of that acreage, count me in if you do, even an 900 mile drive away  

https://youtu.be/JChwFoCxVC8

In reply to Sonic :

If all goes well, we'll be selling the shop soon, and the new shop will be on the farm. No more 80 mile/day commute. No more retail. 5-minute walk to the shop vs. 40 minute drive.

So this would be more of a "Keep one for food, sell a few to offset property taxes, feed my genetically inherent need to 'Grow things,' teach the girls where food comes from, learn more/pass the knowledge down, make good use of the land, be self-sufficient" thing, than a "Wow! I could make tons of $$$ doing this" thing.

Also "Dr0nk Monkey Speedway" is already cut, and the $1500 Disco and 400k mile Integra are totally expendable, so c'mon down!!! You know you're welcome ANY_TIME!!!

So, when there is more than one of them they are called cattle. Females are cows and males are bulls, but what are they? A cow is a female what?

I somehow made it 47 years on this planet before I realized there was not a commonly used name for these animals.

Hen/Rooster/Chicken

Woman/Man/Human

Sow/Boar/Pig

Doe/Buck/Deer

Cow/Bull/_____?

It took me some t pondering to figure out the answer, but it doesn't seem to be in common usage.

You're forgetting Steers.

It's like a Bull but it drives a Camry.

A female that has had a calf is a cow.  A female that hasn't had a calf is a heifer.  An intact male is a bull.  A castrated male is a steer.  Technically more than one cow, calf, bull, heifer, steer is cattle, but generally they are often all called "cows".  So a cow is a cow, but could be a bull in certain company.

In reply to Apis Mellifera :

I agree that is what they are generally called, but it is not technically correct. Would you ever say a cow is a female cow and a bull is a male cow? That is strange. Like saying a woman is a female man and a man is a male man. Silly.

The name of the animal apparently is beeve. Seems to be a little known, little used word for a very common animal. More than one could be referred to as beeves, but commonly referred to as cattle.

In reply to Apis Mellifera :

Also freemartins, if you want to really get pedantic.

In reply to T.J.

Bovine

T.J. said:

In reply to Apis Mellifera :

I agree that is what they are generally called, but it is not technically correct. Would you ever say a cow is a female cow and a bull is a male cow? That is strange. Like saying a woman is a female man and a man is a male man. Silly.

The name of the animal apparently is beeve. Seems to be a little known, little used word for a very common animal. More than one could be referred to as beeves, but commonly referred to as cattle.

No, "beeves" is the plural of "beef." That's like calling a pig "pork."

In reply to bigdaddylee82 :

Bovines include bison, water buffalo, yaks and some antelopes. So, that's not it. It would be like calling me a male primate instead of a male human. Both are true, but one is specific and one lumps me in with chimpanzees and gorillas.

I thought this was pretty interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle#Etymology

In reply to dculberson :

I don't think so. It's more like calling a pig a pig. A beeve is what a cow or a bull is. More than one could be called beeves, but it seems that cattle is the commonly used word.

Beeves is, strangely enough, also defined as the plural of beef, so in that sense it is sort of like calling two pigs porks, but the word seems to have more than one definition.

Either way, I just find it fascinating that something so common has no common name.

dculberson said:

I thought this was pretty interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle#Etymology

Yep, I read that a couple weeks ago. It seems to be about the best summation of the issue. I guess it explains it pretty well that cow is pretty much the word used as a singular form of cattle even though it is technically incorrect.

T.J. said:

In reply to Apis Mellifera :

I agree that is what they are generally called, but it is not technically correct. Would you ever say a cow is a female cow and a bull is a male cow? That is strange. Like saying a woman is a female man and a man is a male man. Silly.

I have it on good authority to not engage in societal discussions that likely will turn political, so I won't address the the female man vs. male man issue directly.  Furthermore since the Postal Service is involved, it it likely a federal crime.

That said, if one shouted, "Hey!  Look at the cows!" and one member of the cattle in question had DNA containing both X and Y chromosomes and also a set of bollocks, then yes, a bull could be a cow.  I have a BS in Animal and Veterinary Science and I am very familiar with the terms beeve and it's plural beeves.  Though the terms originated in reference to a breed of venomous cattle that were once hunted for sport, a "beeve" is now what it best described as a brace used to treat arthritic knees in post-menopausal female cows.

T.J. said:

In reply to Apis Mellifera :

Would you ever say a cow is a female cow and a bull is a male cow? That is strange. Like saying a woman is a female man and a man is a male man. Silly.

Why is that silly?  Mankind is made up of female men and male men.  When  you say "mankind has..." whatever, you're not referring to only the 49% that have penises.

Wow, this conversation took an interesting turn! 

Also, I shall now say my in laws raise porks. 

I'm still hung up on "breed of venomous cattle"

Poison milk? Mad cow disease? Fangs?

I can't shake this picture of a cow hiding in a pile of leaves or on a tree branch waiting for some kind of mobile grasses to come waltzing by so it can jump out and bite it. 

T.J. said:

In reply to dculberson :

I don't think so. It's more like calling a pig a pig. A beeve is what a cow or a bull is. More than one could be called beeves, but it seems that cattle is the commonly used word.

Where did you find that info? I admittedly didn't do an indepth research project on it, but the only references I saw to "beeve" were sketch at best and seemed to be back formed from "beeves" being the plural of "beef," so people dropped the "s" to form "beeve." And "beef" can refer to an adult cow, steer, or bull raised for meat, but that doesn't mean "beeve" is somehow the correct word for bos taurus. Look up "beeve" in Merriam-Webster and it doesn't resolve to mean "cow or bull," other than as their meat producing function.

In reply to dculberson :

What about bos indicus?