Ricky's RamblingsElsa the Longhorn Cow I told ya’ll that I was going to talk about Elsa. Now, Elsa is a big-framed longhorn cow. When we bought her, she was a gangly ‘teenager’, all legs and bony, but after having all our animals on good, improved grasses and BMR6 hay, she has filled out and is as meaty as any Angus or Hereford cow you will ever see. (Now, don’t let your mouths go to waterin’, Little Darlin’ says our longhorns will never grace a dinner table!) A couple of weeks ago, Joe Ed came by and was looking at our cows. Joe Ed raises Angus cattle but they look like they belong in an Ace Reid cartoon. He was wanting to know how we could get Longhorns looking like ours do when his Angus are so skinny. He specifically pointed to Elsa and said that I must have a huge feed bill and must be really pumping the grain into her in order to get her to look like that. I told Joe Ed that we hardly feed any grain. Little Darlin’ takes out just enough sweet feed and alfalfa pellets so as to get her critters up into the corral for her to hand feed and pet them. (Yep, that’s right, Little Darlin’ even pets the cows, and, on occasion Belvedere, if he behaves himself). I told Joe Ed that his cattle would look better and he’d get better gains if they had something to eat other than buffalo grass and cactus. He informed me that he also fed hay. I asked Joe Ed if it was that hay he grew on the south field. He informed me it was and it had yielded just fine even though it was a standard sudan with just about as much Johnson grass and pigweed in it as sudan. He just started telling me that he liked feeding it because the cows really didn’t like it and they wouldn’t eat as much when Little Darlin’ walked up. Now, everyone who knows her knows everything on our place is well fed, including me, and to say that Joe Ed’s comment got her dander up is an understatement! She told Joe Ed that what was good enough for his cattle should be good enough for him and she would tell his wife not to feed him anything but turnip greens so he wouldn’t eat so much. Besides, she said, it wouldn’t hurt him to lose a few pounds anyway. (Now you understand why I was in such a lather to get our animals some good hay when I had messed up last year and didn’t get mine in, I hate turnip greens!) The moral to this story is that the quality of what cattle are fed has as much to do with how cattle perform, as does the breed. With high quality forages there is no need to add high levels of grain to help animal performance. Well, I guess I better go for now. Next time I hope to tell ya’ll about our calf crop, they should be on the ground by then. If not Mandy’s and Ginger’s bags are going to pop. P.S. Joe Ed’s wife did fix him turnip greens but he fed them to that ugly dawg. He said that it either reluctantly ate them or buried them after about a week. Joe Ed is now a reformed man; he’ll put BMR6 on that south field in the spring. |
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