Many years ago I heard someone say, "If you just eliminate everything white from your diet, you will get healthier." White flour, white rice, white sugar, milk products (but what if it was raw, A2, Grass-Finished, nutrient-rich, high butterfat...you get the idea. There are exceptions to every rule), etc. Is that the epitome of health? NO, but a good first step to turning the corner.
With that in mind, I was trying to come up with something similar for the phenotype for easy keeping cows. Any sharp "corners" on cows indicate a higher maintenance cow.
A friend sent me an article Dr. Jones recently wrote. It was very timely because I have been thinking about the methane production of cows. Now why would I be thinking about that? Because SOMEONE said that grass finished beef produces more methane than grain finished beef.
Hmmmm. Really? What kind of animals, feed-stuffs and grazing practices did they use to come up with this AND who paid for the studies???
There are a number of different reasons we find ourselves with the cows we have and the production/cost state we are in. The main cattle reasons are based on: genetics, phenotype, butterfat, glandular function and rumen development. There are grass, mineral, toxin and grazing-system reasons as well. The first article in this series dealt with how the cows' lines (phenotype) affects your bottom line. Now let's zero in on butterfat.
The average beef cow in North America produces somewhere between 150 to 200 pounds of butterfat in a year. Some have more, a lot more. I heard a speaker at a recent conference say that they were getting very good at predicting how much feedgroups of different classes of animals would eat based on the different kinds of feed stuffs placed in front of them. However, he said they could not predict individual consumption among these groups. "Some animals were eating half as much as other animals in the groups."
