Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living When do you slaughter?

What age or size do folks typically slaughter a black angus steer?

I have 3 steers that I’ve been feeding out on spent grain and pasture for the last few months. I believe they were calved March or April of last year and they’ve definitely put on some size since I’ve had them. Wondering at what point you start looking at diminishing returns and are just burning feed?

Will quality start to drop at some point?

Wish I had a scale!

We usually had fall calves and then slaughtered them the next fall..... year old calves. We left them on pasture until about a month before we wanted to slaughter. When we penned them, they had plenty of water and hay, but we also fed them sweet feed. Started them on about a qt a day per calf the first week, 2 qts the second, 3 the third week, and the last week a gallon a day.

We found that if we kept then up any longer, they got too fat.

about a year and half old we butcher beef,we also pen them up last 2 months plenty water,good hay and lots of corn.

We used to kill them around a year old, if a fall calf, because that is when it got cold. Spring calf might be a year and a half. We fattened them with corn, ran through a hammermill, cob, shuck and all. a little cottonseed meal would be added to that and lespedeza hay on the side. It made good beef. Usually our eating beef would be half dairy, from our personal milk cow and half Hereford. We sold the pure bred Herefords. Later we got rid of the Herefords and used mixed breed cows and an Angus bull. I think the half Hereford made better meat. miles

We did the same as pete53.
One farmer i worked for as a kid, perfectionist type, kept everything
spotless clean and nicely straw bedded twice daily.

Their steers got a nice short haircut during their last few days.
That got rid of any thing in their hair (unlikely) and cut down on
any hair that could get on the meat. Like I said a picky old bird.

We have done a lot of different ages. Right now we have a heifer that preged open. One fat heifer by herself at a sale would go so cheap we decided to butcher it.

We have butchered a three year old heiferette, maybe older.

we always butchered a spring born steer at about 1 1/2 years old. they would spend the last 6 weeks or 2 months on grain.

I like to finish feed a beef through the winter and kill it before weather gets hot.

They gain more in winter on feed as well.

Early Dec. allows my prime rib to age a little for Christmas dinner.

Year and a half or so old. Ran them on pasture till the fall then grained them, and butchered them by the sign in Jan.

We kill ours 18 mo to 24 mo old. We feed corn silage and high moisture corn. I try not to get hung up on age, but prefer to look em over for fat and judge em on that. Heifers usually get sloppy fat earlier than steers. I tell people that when a heifer looks fat, she's already too fat. Depends a lot on animal quality and feed quality. I usually look at their brisket and around their tail head for signs of fat. If you kill them before they're ready because your hung up on age, your not getting the most out of the animal. Just my two cents, but I kill beef for farmers every week and I see a lot of beef killed too young and a lot of old beef that should have been finished way earlier. Barry

Dad gave me a young bull this past year, the butcher kinda got tied up with the State and County fair auctions and the feeding ran about 6 weeks longer than planned..... BUT.

He ended up right around 1500#s, about 18-20 months old, on a pasture by himself, and eating about 4-5 GALLONS of feed a day for the last two months, he was getting enough that he didn;t eat much grass........

Butcher said, when I dropped him off, that he wouldn't have much fat being a bull...........

When I picked him up he said, I don;t know what you did but keep doing it, great looking beef...........

Tastes good too, and tender, hung for about 10 days.....

when I was 12 and my brother was 15 we started to help our uncle kill beef for a friend of his . he raised them then we did the killing & skinning and hanging in the cooler of the butcher. we did 8 or 10 a day in the fall .it was great to help out our uncle his kids were grown when our dad died and he took us every where with him tell we were grown. the man that owned the cows would give our mom a 1/2 cut and rapped cow each year for our help . it made us feel like we were helping out . good childhood up bringing I miss those days