Ah, just look at that pretty girl, lounging in a pile of food. That there heifer in repose be the beeeeyootiful Betty Rose. So much sass and just enough class. She’s Abigail’s girl, hence the good looks – you know she doesn’t belong to Lois. Her daddy was a Dexter bull, so that means she will probably be petite her whole life.
I’m really interested in what good might come from crossing the small breeds (i.e. Dexters, Lowline Angus) with hearty Scottish and English breeds like Galloways and Devons. With grass-fed beef, we want animals with good carcass yields that efficiently convert grass to mass. We don’t really need to hang the biggest steer on the block. (One of the USDA auction reports down in PA last week listed a slaughter steer that weighed over 1700 lbs on the hoof. Holy what?!?! Looks like someone decided to take Paul Bunyan’s ox to the abattoir.) The proof is in the pudding, of course, but these very intriguing numbers come from the Lowline Angus website.
Two things to note: 1) Stocking rate is almost double the average of 6 other large/medium-framed cattle breeds. 2) Retail Meat Yield for small cattle is 66% higher than the average of the 6 other breeds. Also consider that these small cattle have 1/3 the nutritional requirements of larger animals, although that seems like a very low number and might be Lowline voodoo. Maybe someone can do the math for me, but 66% more yield per acre seems like a good thing, even if you’re feeding twice the number of animals one-third of the feed.
