Last month, I posted an update about how my wife and I are raising a cow for beef. This is a summary of our activity and costs for month 14. As always, let’s first check Bambi’s growth. Here he is at thirteen months old:



       And here he is at fourteen months old:



       I had a hard time getting a good picture this month due to lighting levels and moving cows. (Still haven’t gotten Bambi to say cheese…) It’s hard to tell from the pictures, but he did seem to be a bit bigger to me than the last time I saw him. He should certainly bulk up now that he’s being fed a high corn diet. We’ll see how he looks in a month!

Costs & Time

       I’ve finally got the costs for boarding Bambi included in this update. I’m paying about $1/day for boarding him, which seems to be a reasonable rate. (Is it? Anyone know for sure?) This is actually a better deal than feeding him myself, but that’s because farmers are able to buy feed in bulk and/or grow most of it themselves.

• Cost of Bambi – Free!
• Castration & Dehorning – $16.00
• Milk Replacer – $45.54
• Miscellaneous – $46.87
• Feed – $362.77
• Hay – $88.00
• Straw – $20.00
• Medicine – $5.00
• Boarding – $100.00
• Total Spent – $684.18
• Time – 102 hours

       I paid ahead for the next month or so for Bambi’s last bit of boarding costs, so next month there won’t be much to add. The final update (after he’s slaughtered) will include the last $10 or so for boarding plus the butcher fees. I’m not sure yet, but I’m estimating butcher fees will be around $300. So maybe I’ll have a final cost of right under $1,000 (more if I include the cost of my time). I have no idea how much meat I’ll get, so it remains to be seen how this all works out financially.

       This month Bambi moved from one farm to another. Why? Well, the friends that have him now are the ones who will be taking him to the butcher when they take their cow, so it just makes things a little easier. But also, several people recommended finishing Bambi by feeding him lots of corn for the last couple of months and we can’t do that where he was staying before. He was in with many other cows, so we couldn’t feed him anything special. Now that he’s at our other friends’ farm, he’ll be staying with just one other cow and they’ll both be on a heavy grain diet.

       Other than that, there’s not much to talk about. We’re still looking for a freezer. I think I’ll need at least 14-16 cubic feet of storage space for the meat. And we still have to decide on the cuts we want, but there’s plenty of time left for that. I’ll probably focus on getting these things done in November before he goes to the butcher in December.

       If you haven’t already make sure you sign up for free updates to Provident Planning so you don’t miss out on the final steps in the process of raising a cow for beef!

       Last month, I posted an update about how my wife and I are raising a cow for beef. This is a summary of our activity and costs for month 13. As always, let’s first check Bambi’s growth. Here he is at twelve months old:



       And here he is at thirteen months old:



       I don’t see much difference between this month and last month. But the pictures were taken from slightly different angles so it’s hard to tell. Bambi’s not one for posing exactly the way you tell him! I’m not too worried about his weight gain though. I think he’ll be fine.

Costs & Time

       I’ve been on my friends to give us a cost for keeping Bambi on their farm, but they’ve yet to give me a price. I’m going to keep asking, but if they don’t give me a price I’ll just end up paying them $30/month because that’s the best estimate I can come up with. (Anyone have an idea what it should cost to board a 700-800 pound steer?) I won’t be able to update the costs until I get that sorted out. But for your reference, here are our total costs so far:

• Cost of Bambi – Free!
• Castration & Dehorning – $16.00
• Milk Replacer – $45.54
• Miscellaneous – $46.87
• Feed – $362.77
• Hay – $88.00
• Straw – $20.00
• Medicine – $5.00
• Total Spent – $584.18
• Time – 102 hours

       I’d guess the total costs will be about $650 after we get a payment figured out for our friends.

       The big news for this month is that I finally have Bambi’s slaughter date! He’ll go off to that big pasture in the sky on December 2, 2010. (No, I don’t believe animals have souls, but it sounded nice…right?)

       So the two big things I have to do before then are find a chest freezer and decide what cuts we want. We have been planning to purchase a chest freezer anyway to store up any good deals we find and for keeping veggies and such. So I’m not considering this an additional cost for raising a steer. But you’d certainly need something beyond your regular top-of-the-fridge freezer if you’re going to be getting an entire steer (or even 1/4 or 1/2 of one). I haven’t been trying very hard to find a freezer yet, but that’s something I have to do before Bambi comes back in little vacuum sealed packages.

       We don’t need to decide which cuts of beef we want until the day before Bambi goes to the butcher. I have to say it’s a bit of a daunting process for a first-timer. There are many options and a few cuts I’ve never heard of before. (And I’m pretty familiar with my critter cuts thanks to Alton Brown!) Thankfully, the butcher we’re sending Bambi to has a very helpful beef processing form with plenty of explanatory notes and I can always call if I have questions.

       I’m still not sure what the cost will be for butchering, but we won’t be getting any beef processed (jerky, dried beef, etc.) so that will keep the costs down. I also doubt we’ll get patties since burgers are better when you pat them out yourself (in my opinion). If anyone has experience with butchering a steer and wants to offer some tips, I’m all ears!

       And if you haven’t already make sure you sign up for free updates to Provident Planning so you don’t miss out on the final steps in the process of raising a cow for beef!

       Last month, I posted an update about how my wife and I are raising a cow for beef. This is a summary of our activity and costs for month 12. Bambi just turned one year old on Saturday. Happy birthday, Bambi! As always, let’s first check Bambi’s growth. Here he is at eleven months old:



       And here he is at twelve months old:



       I’m not really sure how much Bambi weighs right now, and I probably won’t know again until he goes to the butcher. Now that he’s living with other cows and has little interaction with humans it would probably be difficult to check him with a weight tape. But I can definitely see an improvement between these two pictures. He’s a bit stockier and more filled out.

Costs & Time

       Thanks to moving Bambi to our friends’ pasture, I haven’t spent any time on raising him this past month. I will be paying our friends some amount per month, but they haven’t let me know what it will be yet. I’m thinking it should be somewhere between $20-40/month. I was spending about $40-60/month to feed Bambi, but it won’t cost our friends that much since they have a large pasture. He’s still being fed some grain, but he gets most of his fill from the pasture. So I don’t really have anything to report in terms of time or money spent this past month. But here are our total costs so far for your reference:

• Cost of Bambi – Free!
• Castration & Dehorning – $16.00
• Milk Replacer – $45.54
• Miscellaneous – $46.87
• Feed – $362.77
• Hay – $88.00
• Straw – $20.00
• Medicine – $5.00
• Total Spent – $584.18
• Time – 102 hours

       If you want a more accurate estimate after a year, let’s figure on about $620 so far.

       Moving Bambi to our friends’ farm was probably the best decision I’ve made. It’s nice not having to move him around our yard, feed him every day, and refill his water buckets several times a day. We couldn’t have simply paid our friends to keep him from the beginning because bottle feeding requires a good bit of time.

       But it would have been better for us to raise him on the bottle, get him used to eating grain and grass, and then send him back to our friends. Then, we could have paid them a set amount to cover his boarding costs. This would have saved us some money (maybe about $160?) and a ton of time (probably well over 60 hours). The nice thing is that it doesn’t take any extra time for our friends to feed Bambi since they already have other cows to care for.

       We’ve found another friend from church who can send Bambi up to be butchered when he sends his cow in November. All that’s left now is to get it scheduled with the butcher and decide how we’d like things cut, packed, and processed (jerky, sweet bologna, etc.). I’ll be learning about that process in the next month or so because we need to get it scheduled soon.

       Make sure you sign up for free updates to Provident Planning if you don’t want to miss out on the final steps in the process of raising a cow for beef!