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| My thoughts are I like to eat for myself a steer or heifer about 18-24 months of age for the better cuts of meat. A 2-3 year old open heifer for burger. As for the grain fed deal, I have a hard time with that. I've eaten a steer that wouldn't eat grain, you had to take him right off hay and force him to eat grain or starve. He would then eat grain, but if you gave him hay again he would quit the grain. It was the dammest thing I've ever seen. I had this pen of steers, and one heifer I was graining. The heifer was a pig, she looked good too. My FIL said he wanted the take the heifer, he told me the steer that wouldn't eat grain, would be tough. I really think about anything will be good, if they are gaining wieght as you feed them.
I said ok, so I took the wildest of those steers, he took the heifer. My meat was tender, it had a little diffent texure to it, but good. His heifer, the steaks had a outer rim on them that was tougher than hell on them, I thought he was full of crap so I took a package of them, and tried them myself, he was right! A little history about the heifer, as a calf at branding, I had a young kid wanting to rope calves, so we let him do some. He pulled her too tight, we were using ground head catches, and roper held calve by the heels. He pulled her too hard and hurt her back. She trailed the mother cow all summer, come fall I didn't sell her on the contract, because she had a little arch in her back, but she got along just fine.
If we would have taken her to sale barn, they would have stolen her! So we fed her, ran her with yearling heifers, FIL said she'll never breed up. So next fall took and put her in the pen to feed with the steers, next thing she started to make bag on her. I fiqured she wouldn't never have the calf alone with out being pulled. I was wrong, she had a very nice calf, so I left the calf on her for a few days, then pulled it and took it to our milkbarn to be fed with other bottle calves. Finished feeding her out, As it turned out It was the worst meat I had in a long time. I will never keep a off calf like that again. Only the best steers or open heifers for me.
As far aging a animal, around here, local butcher shops are too busy, to get them to age over 2 weeks. You have to make apointments almost a year in advance to get into one, I send enough business to one packing house they will try to slide a few in for me at least in a month's time on a spur of moment's notice.
I've tried them all different ways, grain fed, grass fed on good medow hay, fed alf. hay & crstaylix supplement, etc. I just couldn't see any real differnces, I think the biggest factor is genetics. I don't think you can ever feed toughness out of a animal. All the grain will do is favor the meat. | |
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Aging grass fed beef
