Co-worker called me over the weekend with a question (my education is in Meat Science so he wanted my perspective). He breeds Angus cattle, sells the calves at or around 800 pounds. He's got a yearling bull that developed pink eye in both eyes, and is now totally blind. Rather than euthanize the animal, he wants to place it in a pen, grain feed it for 60-90 days, then process it. I suggested castrating it, then grain feed it. He thinks that would be too much stress on the animal. I'm inclined to think he'll get the grass fed flavor out of the beef with the grain, but it will be very lean and better for hamburger. So my question...can you successfully fatten a one year old Angus bull and get decent quality meat? By the way, the bull now weighs around 700 pounds. Thanks.

I realize he's trying to minimize his losses, but if he's totally blind, put him out of his misery and get whatever meat you can even if it's only good for hamburgers, stew meat, etc.

Old for fat cattle is 30 months of age at slaughter. I do agree with you, it needs to be castrated to add fat to the muscle. I don't think you will get any great steaks out of this one, but you never know until they're cut open. Worth a shot, and worse case you end up with a bunch of really good hamburger meat.

Waste of time and money for negligible payoff. Kill em now. Grind him up.

Plenty of 700# bull calves get castrated on their way to the pasture/feed lot....

Calicrate bander, tetanus antitoxin, and tetanus toxoid.

While he will not be a fat animal, he will be young and tender..

I would also pull him now and send him to kill. I wouldn't grind everything either. We would kill 1 a year mostly grass fed (not because of any strong disagreement w fattening animals but just convenience) and the steaks were not good steaks but we used them for fajitas and it was great for that purpose.

GSS said:

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Plenty of 700# bull calves get castrated on their way to the pasture/feed lot....

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Yep, unfortunately true. After 90 days on grain he'll be fine to eat. And depending on how bad the pinkeye is/was he may recover some vision.

Grinding would be the best thing. Don't waste extra time or money. Ground beef is what we consume the most of anyways. We just processed a calf my FIL had that was in a corn field and couldn't get out. Put the entire thing into ground beef and split between the families.

The calf is not too old to feed out and eat. The majority of the fed cattle supply today is under 20 months of age which this calf would be at time of harvest. It would make for better beef if you castrated him. If you put him in a smaller pen where he can find the water and the feed bunk he will do quite well. It takes roughly 75 days to turn the fat from yellow to white fat which is what you want. I would recommend feeding a higher energy ration for that 90 days. You might start him on a club calf starter ration then transition to a club calf finisher ration after 20-30 days on feed. Your biggest issue will be getting him loaded when its time to be harvested due to being blind. I would not automatically assume he will have to be completely ground into hamburger. I would ask your local processor if you could age the carcass 30-45 days. It will do a lot for the tenderness of the meat. I like to get the ribeyes, the strips, and tenderloins then grind the rest into hamburger. Good luck

If you want to get fat on him, castrate him (NOT WITH A BANDER) and begin feeding him grain. 90 days will give him time to recover from castration, gain some weight and convert the fat from yellow to white.

As mentioned before, 90 days may give him time to recover from the pink eye. If he's doing well in the feed pen, either turn him out or feed another 30-45 days for additional weight. Then have him processed.

If it's truly blind, you might put another calf in the pen with it. That'll give it another animal to listen to and follow around.

Jtp,
What do you have against using an appropriate sized (calicrate) bander on an animal that size?

I hurt my shoulder one year so instead of using my burdizzos I used bands. I couldn't tell a difference and I banded all sizes up to maybe 350-400 pounds.

I've debated just using bands as it's a lot easier on me.

A lot of old timers are against bands because of blackleg I believe which any good cattleman should vaccinate for. It's one of the things that are in the 8-way vaccine that is readily available at every Feedstore.

We have had a few bad experiences over the years. Realistically we feel like the calves recover faster with the "old" method.
I'm sure percentage wise the mortality rate between the two is within the margin of error. We found that the bigger the calves were when banding the more trouble we had. Just a personal opinion on the bands.

eatmorebeef said:

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The calf is not too old to feed out and eat. The majority of the fed cattle supply today is under 20 months of age which this calf would be at time of harvest. It would make for better beef if you castrated him. If you put him in a smaller pen where he can find the water and the feed bunk he will do quite well. It takes roughly 75 days to turn the fat from yellow to white fat which is what you want. I would recommend feeding a higher energy ration for that 90 days. You might start him on a club calf starter ration then transition to a club calf finisher ration after 20-30 days on feed. Your biggest issue will be getting him loaded when its time to be harvested due to being blind. I would not automatically assume he will have to be completely ground into hamburger. I would ask your local processor if you could age the carcass 30-45 days. It will do a lot for the tenderness of the meat. I like to get the ribeyes, the strips, and tenderloins then grind the rest into hamburger. Good luck

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First of all, this is a great post for something I have also been interested in..... because I have my own calves and never took the steps to do it. I have a meats processing specialization on my Ag Ed degree but never used it. Dr. Gary Smith is my hero in the world of college professors.

So, the 75 days thing .... do you have experience in this regard, or is there a link that I can read about the transition from yellow fat to white fat?

Allen76 said:

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eatmorebeef said:

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The calf is not too old to feed out and eat. The majority of the fed cattle supply today is under 20 months of age which this calf would be at time of harvest. It would make for better beef if you castrated him. If you put him in a smaller pen where he can find the water and the feed bunk he will do quite well. It takes roughly 75 days to turn the fat from yellow to white fat which is what you want. I would recommend feeding a higher energy ration for that 90 days. You might start him on a club calf starter ration then transition to a club calf finisher ration after 20-30 days on feed. Your biggest issue will be getting him loaded when its time to be harvested due to being blind. I would not automatically assume he will have to be completely ground into hamburger. I would ask your local processor if you could age the carcass 30-45 days. It will do a lot for the tenderness of the meat. I like to get the ribeyes, the strips, and tenderloins then grind the rest into hamburger. Good luck

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First of all, this is a great post for something I have also been interested in..... because I have my own calves and never took the steps to do it. I have a meats processing specialization on my Ag Ed degree but never used it. Dr. Gary Smith is my hero in the world of college professors.

So, the 75 days thing .... do you have experience in this regard, or is there a link that I can read about the transition from yellow fat to white fat?

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Don't have a link for you - sorry. But, the 75 day rule is general and will vary with the breed, feed, age, etc.

I will try and find you a link or research on this subject. That 75 days is really a general rule of thumb. Breed, how fat the animal is when placed on feed, and what type of pasture the animal was on prior to being put on feed all factor into the equation. For instance, a calf that was just grazing on native pasture will not take as long to change their fat as an animal that had been grazing winter wheat. The one on native grass might only take 60 days where the animal off wheat might be 90 days.

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Dr. Gary Smith is my hero in the world of college professors.

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Mine too...he's why I opted to pursue a Masters degree in the Meat Science section many years ago.

Agree with this 100%. I have seen more problems with banding than any other "cutting" method combined. And even if banding is correctly performed, a 700# bull would recover much faster if cut.

I want to thank all of you for your posts, which I've shared with my co-worker. Funny aside, he knew nothing of texags...as he's a Tennessee grad and we work in Gatlinburg. He was amazed by the responses and shocked that an A&M board would have this depth of perspective. As of today, I still don't know which direction he's heading. Regardless, I've really enjoyed reading this thread. I'll update when he's made his decision.

I have had the opposite experience. Of course, I usually only get to see the trainwrecks from knife cutting gone wrong, but in my experience larger calves have less complications with calicrate bands and appropriate tetanus prophylaxis.

This is our experience at the feedyard as well.

Same

Dogdoc said:

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I have had the opposite experience. Of course, I usually only get to see the trainwrecks from knife cutting gone wrong, but in my experience larger calves have less complications with calicrate bands and appropriate tetanus prophylaxis.

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Same here, most of the banding problems I see are after someone misapplied them.

Here's a New Mexico extension article about pain and castration methods. I also found another article that discussed weight gain, but can't locate it again. Basically, cut calves gained less weight the first week but outperformed banded calves during weeks 3 & 4, essentially making weight gain a wash.

https://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_b/B227/welcome.html

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Comparisons of castration methods have yielded mixed results, especially where average daily gain is considered. Generally, surgical castration elicits the most acute pain and least chronic pain. Conversely, banding normally causes the least acute pain (measured by cortisol response), but is associated with the longest duration of chronic pain. Calves studied in New Zealand castrated by a banding and emasculatome combination method took more than 20 days longer to reach the same stage of wound healing as calves castrated using surgical methods.

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, calves castrated by elastic band have been observed to exhibit a pain response to palpation of the scrotal area after castration up to 4 weeks longer than calves castrated by emasculatome or surgery, indicating that greater chronic pain sensation is associated with the banding castration method. Researchers in Nebraska, Australia, and New Mexico observed that inadequate band tension allows some blood flow to the scrotum and testes, causing swelling and hemorrhaging within the scrotum. This can result in delayed detachment of the testes and scrotum that leads to persistent wounds. This condition may be a result of the band not being tight enough for very young calves, or from using bands that are old and do not adequately return to shape once stretched. Persistent wounds have also been observed in calves castrated by elastic bands, even after the scrotum has sloughed off.

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The 2 other vets I work with also prefer surgical vs. banding. But as we all know, more than one way to skin a cat (or cut a bull!) and we all have our preferences.

One last thing, tetanus Antitoxin has unfortunately been on backorder for months now.

Cut him, feed him good corn based ration till he's 1200 pounds you might be surprised what you get. Large percentage of black hided animals grade choice or better.