Corn usage - ethanol vs feed

proletariat

Mon Mar 12 14:18:34 -0700 2007

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Distillers grain is probably healthier for cattle.  It is not natural for cattle to eat corn - that's why they have to use antibiotics in the feed.

Corn usage - ethanol vs feed

TykeClone

Mon Mar 12 14:44:00 -0700 2007

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I think that a lot of the reason for the use of antibiotics in cattle (or hogs or poultry for that matter) is because of the nature of confinement raising of that livestock and to increase their productivity (the animal can gain weight more quickly if they are not busy fighting off disease).

As I said, I think that we'll see more and more midwest feed lots to take advantage of inexpensive distillers grain and that this will come, at least in part, at the expense of hog and poultry operations.

Having said that, corn fed beef is very tasty :)

we don't use any

zogger

Mon Mar 12 18:11:33 -0700 2007

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We feed corn, but only as a supplement for grazing on pasture and for in the winter especially when they are mostly on stored hay. And it is also practical, keeps them tamed up and coming to the barn regularly. I just spent a week trying to catch a wild cow that escaped locally and joined our herd, sheee-eesh that was hard. The cow was never tamed up and about as wild as they get, dangerous too, as she hadn't be de-horned and was pretty aggressive and mean. A little corn and a lot of patience and I was able to finally lure her into the barn so the owner could come get her.

Back to the corn, I know we have enough stored for next winter, as this past was a mild winter so we didn't use as much. No antibiotics used at all, I grind our feed myself, whole cobs, and some dried molasses and mineral, and that's it. Personally, I don't like the idea of feedlots, I like happy naturally grazing cows going to full size, but realistically, if you wait to grow the cow out to full size, right now the way the market is you lose serious money. I mean you won't make a penny, you'll lose money, might as well not even raise them.  You have to sell as close to 500 lbs weight as possible to get top bucks, then they go to the feedlots.  Guys who only have a couple a year can sell "halves" through the newspaper, etc, but after that it gets to be a chore, you need either two-three cows a year or a full trailer load and up, in between in numbers is awkward but is where most small and medium guys are at, like us. I am hoping this will eventually not be necessary and people switch back to local grown, etc, but it's hard to buck the meat packing "system" now the way things are. For the small and medium producers it is rock/hard place.

As to what cows can and can not eat, hooya, depends on how hungry they get., and the breed. Some can eat just as rough as bison, others you have to watch them. Ours are fairly tough, even eat a lot of leaves off of trees when they can reach them. They seem to digest corn just fine and they certainly like it. It might not be historically a natural food for them, but they seem to have adapted OK.

we don't use any

President4242

Mon Mar 12 19:02:09 -0700 2007

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Guys who only have a couple a year can sell "halves" through the newspaper, etc, but after that it gets to be a chore, you need either two-three cows a year or a full trailer load and up, in between in numbers is awkward but is where most small and medium guys are at, like us.

My family is in this boat- 2 to 10 head at a whack.  This year we found out mobile slaughter has gone out of business in the mid Willamette Valley- had to do it all ourselves.  Next year, we'll be going for the full trailer load method; it was just too much work not to hire it out and the only way left to hire it out is to take the beef to the butcher live.

We don't feed corn at all- our Angus-Herford mix forages just fine, and even keeps the himilayan blackberries down somwhat.

But yes, we earn very little money at it, and nobody appreciates local grown organic beef anymore.

we don't use any

TykeClone

Mon Mar 12 19:27:31 -0700 2007

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I bought a side of beef from a local guy last year and I think it was about the best beef I've ever purchased. He raises 3-5 head per year (which actually surprised me - I didn't know he did that until he was shopping some around). Good corn fed beef is the best tasting meat that there is!

As for pricing, I was able to purchase the meat + the processing for the same cost per pound as what I would pay for ground beef at the grocery store - and I got all of the good cuts with it!

You're right about butchers being fewer and far between anymore. It used to be that every town had a "locker" where a local butcher worked. Now, between health codes and the rise of feedlots and confinement operations, small butchers are becoming an endangered species.

we don't use any

proletariat

Mon Mar 12 21:02:33 -0700 2007

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If you all would do just a little checking you would find that it is true that feeding cows corn as the majority of their diet they must have antibiotics.  Corn fed beef may taste good but it's unhealthy for both cows and people.  Here is a quote from an interview with Terry Gross about the topic with Michael Pollan:

Mr. POLLAN: Yeah. The only way you can keep a cow alive getting this much corn would be with antibiotics. And they get large quantities of antibiotics with their feed every day. They get rumensin, which is technically an ionophore. It's a kind of antibiotic that helps with the bloat and the acidosis. And then they get tylosin, which is in the erythromycin family. And that antibiotic cuts down on the incidence of liver disease, and without that, they would all have liver disease probably.

Michael Pollan is a writer for the New York Times who bought a calf and followed it through the feedlots and interviewed the people involved in the cattle industry for his story.  Read the interview with Terry Gross here:

http://www.math.uic.edu/~takata/some_articles/FreshAir_Michael_Pollon_on_beef_industry,_hormones,_antibiotics.html

we don't use any

President4242

Tue Mar 13 13:05:12 -0700 2007

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Ah, but that is FEEDLOT raised.  Small farmers use pasture to avoid the feedlots, and thus ours need far less antibiotics(though I'd have to ask- what's wrong with erythromycin?)

The problem with corn feed.

proletariat

Tue Mar 13 13:32:52 -0700 2007

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I think you've missed the point.  It doesn't matter whether the cows are in your back yard, on  a little tiny farm or a in huge feedlot - if you feed them mainly corn (70% corn and above)  the cows can not naturally handle the change in their stomachs.  They MUST have antibiotics or they WILL DIE. 

What's wrong with antibiotics is you start creating antibiotic resistant bacteria that get into the beef and make people sick.  That's one reason there's a problem.  The other reason is that with corn feed the pH in the cows stomachs begins to be very like that of people's stomachs and you get bacteria that can go from the cow's stomach to the person's stomach and survive and make them sick.  With grass fed beef the pH is so different that you don't have that problem.

The problem with corn feed.

President4242

Tue Mar 13 13:57:29 -0700 2007

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I think you've missed the point.  It doesn't matter whether the cows are in your back yard, on  a little tiny farm or a in huge feedlot - if you feed them mainly corn (70% corn and above)  the cows can not naturally handle the change in their stomachs.

I think you slightly misunderstood what I said- small headcount herds aren't fed 70% corn and above.  They're fed primarily pasture grass, with corn as a supplement at best.

I've never eaten a cow's stomach though....usually we bury that part. 

The problem with corn feed.

proletariat

Tue Mar 13 15:35:41 -0700 2007

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No, people don't eat cow stomachs but sometimes during slaughter the cows stomach contents contaminate the beef.  That's one reason why people can get really sick from beef and there are beef recalls.

Keep your cows on a low corn diet and they won't have that problem and the beef is healthier for people - higher content of good fat, omega 3's.  The New York Times article was really fascinating and I recommend reading it.  It will change many peoeple's view of beef and the "corn fed" myths.

we don't use any

President4242

Tue Mar 13 13:03:13 -0700 2007

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As for pricing, I was able to purchase the meat + the processing for the same cost per pound as what I would pay for ground beef at the grocery store - and I got all of the good cuts with it!

I typically pay about twice as much for hamburger- and about 8 times less for steaks and roasts.  What most people don't understand is that by buying the entire half, you get *everything* at the same cost of cutting & wrapping, unlike in the grocery store where the price of the hamburger is subsidized by the cost of more expensive cuts.

Ours isn't corn fed- we're in the Pacific Northwest where corn is expensive.  We feed seed cleanings instead- a byproduct of the lawn seed industry which is common here.

we don't use any

TykeClone

Tue Mar 13 13:08:11 -0700 2007

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I think a lot of the taste is acquired from what you're used to. Around here, pretty much most of the wild game is also corn fed because those animals also have easy access to it.

Sorry about sneaking in the same story that you did - I was interrupted several times before I could get it done! It is interesting to see the difference in reaction to the same article between the various regions of the country.

we don't use any

President4242

Tue Mar 13 13:58:42 -0700 2007

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Only on Technocrat could EXACTLY the same story result in two very different, but still very interesting, discussons.

we don't use any

Thomas Lord

Tue Mar 13 09:14:25 -0700 2007

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But yes, we earn very little money at it, and nobody appreciates local grown organic beef anymore.

Depends in what part of the country you are and, of course, in some places you have to stretch the definition of "local" a little bit.    It seems to be pretty popular here in the posher parts of the Bay Area and that leaves a nice choice for people like me who can't afford lots of beef:  spend $X for a "cheaper" cut of grass-fed organic or the same $X for a "better" cut of something else.  The former simply tastes better, nevermind the warm fuzzies of a greener purchasing decision.

(Housing is such that freezers around here are either absent or usually small and, anyway, who wants to freeze beef if they can avoid it and, also, in earthquake country the logic of how you stock up, when you can, is probably a bit different than in regions with a different profile of disasters-we're-all-waiting-for.)

We're also fairly awash in quite affordable free range poultry (that actually ranges freely), if you're willing to roast whole birds or do your own final steps of butchering.  Plus, enough people are willing to pay a pretty good premium for cut-up breasts so, from time to time, there are good prices on other parts.

Here in Berkeley, there's a thrice-weekly, long-running, pretty good organic farmer's market that visits various parts of town.   I will guess that, before too much longer, there will be enough of a market developed there that maybe we'll see a proper retail store front, assuming enough of the individualist farmers can stomach the burdens of working in that format.   It's a tough road because they can't compete on price with industrial-scale-organic trucked and flown in from far away (though, let's examine that again next year :-).

In our school's, we've got kids working organic plots and following up all the way through preparing and consuming a few school lunches.   With that goes a curriculum about why that's worth doing.    That was all started up with private fending from some of our leading local "foodies" and folks are working hard to spread the program elsewhere in the nation.

I think the general sentiment among the consumers here is that maybe if we all purchase real earnestly that these markets will grow.    Its discouraging to hear about the struggles you guys are reporting.

I'm proud to live in a town where these kinds of things are happening even though, personally, at this time, I'm strictly on the consumer end of the equations.


-t

we don't use any

TykeClone

Tue Mar 13 09:17:24 -0700 2007

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We're also fairly awash in quite affordable free range poultry (that actually ranges freely), if you're willing to roast whole birds or do your own final steps of butchering. Plus, enough people are willing to pay a pretty good premium for cut-up breasts so, from time to time, there are good prices on other parts.

I'm getting a vision of Berkeley overrun with gangs of chickens and other birds and that you just reach out to grab one for a meal :)

we don't use any

Thomas Lord

Tue Mar 13 09:28:54 -0700 2007

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You pretty much have to scoot the f-ers out from under your car before you start it up.   As I write this, one handed, I'm holding a tennis racket in the other to keep the strays who've wandered into the Internet Cafe from pecking at my keyboard.

Still, we put up with it.   We need the eggs.

-t

oh what the heck

Thomas Lord

Tue Mar 13 09:39:30 -0700 2007

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As long as I'm reporting....

In point of fact it is a modestly popular hobby in the urban parts and in the surrounding pseudo-rural parts to raise a few birds.   There may be 10s or even hundreds of people doing that, as far as one can tell from local news reporting.  None of that is for the market, though.  Also, the bird-flu issue is a bit of a bother, in that regard.

Looking at all that "Hey, I know, let's plant an English Lawn" land in the suburbs and bedroom communities ... I do wonder what tomorrow will bring and can imagine lots of good possibilities.

He says as we appear to be entering the (first? :-( ) year of yet another drought.
-t

oh what the heck

TykeClone

Tue Mar 13 11:25:34 -0700 2007

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Just the thought of flocks of chickens hanging around urban street corners struck me as funny this morning.

I can certainly see raising a couple of birds, if you're in to that kind of thing, where ever you might hang your hat. In small numbers they don't smell bad, don't make a lot of noise, and should be fairly easy to keep.

we don't use any

GuyFawkes

Tue Mar 13 07:58:26 -0700 2007

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A friend of mine used to raise free range (god's sun and god's grass, as he put it) beef not far from me (Devon used to produce a third of the UK's meat and milk) with minimal husbandry and intervention, really good looking animals that showed a *lot* more individual personality than normal farmed cows, (we used to have a cow when I was a lad on the smallholding) and a good old butcher that would only buy meat on the hoof.

Then the BSE bullshit came along, I ended up running an incinerator, bloody good beef with bugger all wrong with it burned to ash for being 30 months old, not even BSE suspected.

Maybe 4 or 5 animals every shift were BSE suspected, they had the extra tags on the ear and ass, I used to behead them (behind the ears so you got the top bit of spinal cord) and send the heads to the ministry for testing, then incinerate the body.

You can drive for miles through the country now and barely see any livestock.

It isn't just the gene pool of livestock that is gone, it is the gene pool of people like Brian with generations of experience and true love for their animals.

There is now only one butcher, and he is 3 miles away, who can tell me what field his meat went "moo" in, left in Exeter.

Tragic doesn't begin to describe it.

Keep the meat for yourself and trade it barter style.

markets and immigration

Thomas Lord

Tue Mar 13 09:26:03 -0700 2007

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If butchering is one of the choke-points that is keeping sane farmers from market, I wonder if some clever folks won't start building bridges in two directions: hallal markets to a wider range of consumers and producers to those markets.   There is, I suspect, a lot of trust-building that'll take before it takes off, but.....  would be timely in more than one way.

Previous immigrant communities into melting-pot western cultures went (and in many cases still are going) through a period where, initially, they are served largely by markets that buy exclusively from in-group suppliers and cater exclusively to in-group customers -- and then later, things open up a bit more, wheat from chaff and all that, and some intensely sane and valuable trade routes emerge.  

-t

markets and immigration

President4242

Tue Mar 13 14:00:35 -0700 2007

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Can you explain a bit more?  I'm sure my brother would be interested....

markets and immigration

Thomas Lord

Tue Mar 13 22:44:01 -0700 2007

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What's to explain?   You have, on the one hand, a predominately immigrant or "nisei" Islamic community that, especially in Europe, is under intense but random and highly problematic criticism for "failure to assimilate" (said criticism not being entirely without merit).  And that culture -- well, parts of it -- have some strict standards about permissable ways to slaughter cattle for food and, at least around here, their own in-group butcher-shops at the retail level.   On the other hand, you have some sane cattlefolk raising their animals properly but having trouble competing in retail markets.  and on the the third hand, you have an upper-tier consumer market looking for tasty quality combined with sustainable production.

So, put these together.  Shop for world peace.  Introduce X to Y.  Make new friends.

-t