Interesting comments.

This cow really doesn't look thin - I'd say she is at least a BCS 6 or 6.5. I realize it is a cow, not a younger animal. The locker says they will hang/age it as long as I want - I am going to go with 21 days. I told them to use there own judgement when they get into butchering. I would be happy with all hamburger if it looks like the best use of the carcass. They suggest they could add some fat if needed, but looking at this cow today I don't think they will have to.

Basically this is an experiment. My wife and I have raised 8 kids so we are not in the habit of eating steak anyway! The cattle have been on all they want of good beef hay with average of a couple pounds a day of grain mostly corn. This is not just a skinny old pasture cow.

My guys like having a cookout lunch at the plant on Friday afternoons so if nothing else we'll have hamburgers for a couple weeks. If we grill enough onions with them I'm sure they will get eaten.

I don't do the grocery shopping for our family so I haven't really kept up with the price of hamburger but checking at HyVee after a show recently I was amazed at how high the store prices are for "hamburger". They also have 2 different grades - "Amana" and "regular". I'm afraid to ask where the "regular" comes from...

My wife is also into the leaner ground beef so we'll see how it goes. She is really good at cooking - she'll probably make even 5 yr old cow taste good in some dish.

Very interesting discussion. In the future we will try to cull them earlier. I just can't see selling a 5 yr old open cow for 40 cents a pound at the sale barn when we know her well...I'd rather put another 30-40 cents carcass wt into processing and see what we get. In the future we will be processing 18-20 month old steers and open heifers.

Thanks again to all,

Jim at Dawn