We haven't tired ours yet, of course, but just throwing this out there. After some research, dairy breeds ARE supposed to have tasty meat, especially Jerseys.

We are not set up to breed cattle - we are only a small homestead, not trying to run a major operation We'd be giving them a much better life, on our pasture, than almost any other option for them I'm interested in getting another couple of dairy bull calves, and doing the same thing. The goal with all this is to raise our own food.Īll of this background is to get to my questions. The meat will be for us and some friends. We've decided to wait another year (Fall 2021) to take this steer to the slaughterhouse. The one who lives is a Holstein/Jersey cross. The other calf is now over a year old and very healthy! He's in with our sheep and donkey so has some company.

After a couple of months, it became clear that one of them was very sick, so I had the vet out here again, who mis-diagnosed the obvious (in retrospect) pneumonia. Is anyone else out there raising dairy breed steers for meat? We have 3 acres of pasture, and last spring, bought two dairy bull calves that were 6 and 8 weeks old, banded them and bottle fed them for a while (can't remember how long exactly, maybe 6 more weeks?).we had a vet out here to give them some vaccines (wish I could remember what they were exactly), and put them with our sheep.

Raising dairy bull calves for profit