Female cows OOP, OT WAS:Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: college and slaughter... (was Cooking Cats

[Phlip]

Johnna skrev:

> I grew up on a farm and we certainly butchered and ate female cows and
> ones that were heifers and never bred. One or two never weaned, so they
> were sold or butchered. There are always a number you decide not to keep
> for the herd and some of those get eaten at the same age as a steer.
> Other were sold at the livestick market. We also had one miscarry a
> first calf in which case she wasn't kept either.

Johnna has the right of it. While, as a general rule, you keep the cows,
geld the bulls and raise them for slaughter, there are any number of reasons
why you might slaughter a heifer. One is, obviously, she's sub-standard for
breeding purposes- another is that you have too many head, and you need to
cut back.

Another is that you're raising beef cattle, not milk cows. As a general
rule, you want to keep females for a dairy operation, more so than you would
steers, obviously, but odd things can happen.

As an example, the veal calf that I butchered for the Coronation feast was a
heifer- specificly, a milk breed heifer. I got her from a farmer who was
raising her for beef- the reason being, that she was one of a set of twins,
and the other twin was a bull calf. Since most heifers in that birth
arrangement are sterile, obviously she was of no use for milk. For those of
you who don't know, a heifer must be bred and have a calf in order to
produce milk.

Once slaughtered, btw, steers and heifers of the same age are no different,
once they're turned into sides of meat. The reason for gelding the males is
to prevent the toughening that the testosterone and other hormones cause in
the connective tissues of intact males.

Phlip