Composting Andy – A Percheron Gelding

[Carl Russell]

If there is food value in an animal, then there is nutrient value as well.

Working to have a closed system of managing nutrients means that killing calves, or sick chickens, or whatever, and composting them is entirely useful way of utilizing the animal.

My perspective, although compassionate about the needs of others, is one in which the production of our farm is primarily a way to improve and accumulate available nutrients and organic matter at this particular site, as we develop a sustainable operation, and not one of transferring them through market, or charity, to someone somewhere else.

At the foundation of our management is a small scale production of livestock, so we rarely have “unwanted” animals, but if the “problem” were to arise, I would find composting the carcass preferable to trying to find someone else to benefit.

Otherwise, I could just start taking wheel barrow loads of compost into town and give them away.

Don’t get me wrong, we already share the wealth we develop here, but it really is a case by case evaluation, and one person’s “waste”, is another’s bank account.

I agree, running a farm that has as a side effect, animals and products, like bull calves from a dairy, that have little or no value makes very little sense to me, but allowing yourself to become leveraged into producing primarily for one market is the real problem. However, if farmers would realize the value that their products have right on the farm, then they wouldn’t “dump” them into markets that can’t support them. Just like too many zucchinis, toss ’em into the compost pile, and reuse them.

Carl

[Robert MoonShadow]

Carl ~ I agree that it’s a business design problem at base… designing a business (farming) where there is a monoculture of any sort locks oneself into that narrow profit source. But as you mentioned about the surplus zucchinni – composting it isn’t wasting it. But neglecting to compensate the following year is a failure of good farming (and business) sense. If you constantly have a surplus, then perhaps that needs to be evaluated. But I’m referring to the mindset involved with the dairymen (and certainly not all dairymen). They find the resources to nurture & feed the heifer calves, but solely because the bull calves don’t have sufficient market value they’re killed out of hand. It’s a mindset thing = you refer to composting by way of seeing its value as a nutrient source; they’re killing it not from that mindset, but out of the motivation of getting rid of an inconvienience. They know they’re going to have on average 50% of their calves as bulls –> they should plan to deal with that as part of their business, whether in setting aside the resources to develop them as a marketable meat source or steers meant for oxen or something. Planning to use the bull calves as a nutrient source alone isn’t wise planning: at most, 70% of the nutrients are captured in finished compost… a net loss of a minimum of 30%. I don’t have a perfect solution for dealing with the excess bull calves, but I suspect that your assessment is accurate: it’s got to do with the overall way they run the farm. I just think that there’s a world of difference between composting a dead animal & killing an unwanted animal out-of-hand, because someone chooses not to deal with an inconvienience that they created in the first place. As I said to start with; I’ll compost anything that dies here {or moves slow enough I think it’s dead >>> I swear that neighbor didn’t seem like he was only napping!} but I don’t kill the buckling goats just because they’re not potiential breeders – I developed a market for them amongst people who have small acreage of scrubbrush. I see no difference between the attitudes of that type of dairyman & the farmers of the 40s & 50s who, after buying a nice big tractor, found their faithful & enduring draft horses suddenly “inconvienient”.

[Plowboy]

Robert I think if you reread my post you’ll see that this is a temporary problem as last year bull calves were bringing over $100 if they were near 100#. We even kept some of them for a couple weeks so they were well started and heavy. Jerseys have always been a problem but the larger breeds there has usually been at least a marginal market. This is probably a short term thing so I don’t see where every farmer that is already suffering from low milk prices should be building a facility to deal with bull calves. Even the finished beef market isn’t that great now. We have yet to dispatch any healthy calves here. For farmers to take on another losing venture would put many over the edge when they are already on shaky ground. You see that there is food value in these calves but it takes time and money to put it there that most dairymen are short of at this time.

[Robert MoonShadow]

Plowboy: As you said, it’s a temporary problem for you… I responded to others that indicated that it was a recurring one. I’m just saying that if it is recurring or long-term, then it should be dealt with in a better way. From your tone, you don’t seem to find it altogether satisfactory, yourself – am I right? So I was just putting forth an alternative way of seeing the issue. All I can ever do is to put forth my opinions that are based on my own life-experiences; thus, I cannot nor want to dictate to others. For instance; if I personally, having experienced this as you did, I would then antiscipate it happening again in the future, and would really try to find a more satisfactory (in my opinion) solution – and hope that it’s never neccesary. That’s all I was trying to point out, really… because to just shine it on seems to me to be neglectful of my duty as an animal husbandman to foresee & circumvent possible problems for all my animals – especially the ones that have little monetary value. Maybe it’s just my own personal weirdness, (quite possible, in fact), that I see the equation this way: the milk produced by the cow is actually intended for her calf. I take that milk. I owe some sort of responsibility to that calf. I feel the same way about the Earth: I take substenance from the Earth: I am morally bound to replace & replenish that. I realize that I don’t have the same attitude towards the Earth & animals as most modern farmers do… I’m proud of that, actually. Again, these are just my own viewpoints, and as such, have equal value as all others, which is to say, that they are no more right or wrong than others.

[Carl Russell]

Robert MoonShadow;6180 wrote:

……They know they’re going to have on average 50% of their calves as bulls –> they should plan to deal with that as part of their business,…. .

Yeah, basically we’re on the same page. I just saw this statement, and had to share that in the absurdity of the “modern” paradigm you can spend more money on AI pre-sexed semen. 🙁

Carl

[near horse]

There are many paradigms of modern ag that are just ridiculous.

In the beef industry for example – you can be docked for producing too large of an animal as well as too small. The ribeye has to 1) fit in the box 2) be of a size that person could consume it in one meal. So the larger continental breeds, Charolais, Simmental …., can be discounted because the ribeye was too big. On top of that, dairy breeds are discounted for various reasons but some include they don’t “finish” as rapidly, marble as well, carcass yield is lower…. THE best steaks I have had came from 4 yr old Jersey steers that would have normally been hamburger. The system is totally screwed up.

Just a note – as you probably know, there’s a price split paid to the producer on whether his animal grades “choice” or “select” with choice being up to $10/hundredweight higher. But when you go buy meat retail, there’s no difference in the cost of choice or select steaks – they’re the same (at the higher rate). Who gets that “extra” consumer cash? Not the grower.

For any that are interested, there’s a producer near Walla Walla, WA that has developed a mobile slaughter unit from a 40′ semi box that meets USDA standards. Just bring it to your place, walk the cattle right up …. His name is Joel Huesby of “Thundering Hooves Farm” so there’s some hope but we need to break out of the ADM/Cargill models.

[Robert MoonShadow]

Geoff ~
Do you have contact onfo for this guy? I wonder if he does goats?….

[Carl Russell]

Robert MoonShadow;6180 wrote:

…….. Planning to use the bull calves as a nutrient source alone isn’t wise planning: at most, 70% of the nutrients are captured in finished compost… a net loss of a minimum of 30%……

Actually I have to say that this is probably a better return than the actual amount of the overall body that is utilized for meat.

There is a beef producer in Vermont who has all of the offal from his animals trucked back to his farm from the slaughter house so that he can compost it, getting the best of both worlds, cash for the flesh, and recapturing the nutrients that are typically considered waste.

Carl

[jen judkins]

Being somewhat of a super ‘mega tasker’, I’m confused by this thread. What makes a bull calve such a loser? Meat is meat, IMHO…don’t care if it is male or female. So is this just a dairy farmer issue or what?

Back when I lived in SW colorado, my neighbors who raise cattle…mostly for meat…had a party every spring. They gelded the bull calves, then served up the Rocky Mountain Oysters as party favors. Not my taste, but those calves went to slaughter just like thier sisters.

So why can’t dairy farmers multitask and simply send the bull calves to a separate market. Here in my own neighborhood, the local dairy farmers (well were..they sold out a year or so ago), would simply give the bull calves to their sons who then raised them for meat. Yum!

I’m solidly with Robert. There certainly could be a better solution than euthanasia, IMO.

[Robert MoonShadow]

Carl ~ There you go! That’s an intelligent use of resource! (also known as sqeezing the last oink out of the pig). Now if that guy could just convince the slaughter house that he’s doing them a favor, he could charge them for it, too!
Jen ~ I don’t undertand it, myself, so I can’t answer that one. Seeing as how they do it all for the heifers, anyways – but the heifers are destined for the milk line, which, I presume, is much more profitable than the meat.
If I lived in the area, I’d pick those bull-calves up for a pittance (or free, since they’re gonna kill it anyways), buy a couple of “retired” milk cows from a big dairy when they go to cull them, and use them to supply the milk for the calves. Even without the colustrum, many will make it – and those that don’t = compost, which monetarily is worth more than the gas to go get them. (Hell, if they’re reasonably close, hitch up the team & wagon instead of driving).
“Just a 1-eyed way of looking at things”

[near horse]

Interestingly, in beef cattle the heifers are less desirable (unless you want to keep them for breeding replacements) because they come into heat, ride each other and can cause injury (to the other cattle) as well as being less efficient in feed conversion. So producers will add MGA to the diet (help me out here becorson) to stop heifer cycling. Anyway, once again,

it’s a business design problem at base

.

The arguments about efficiency really become evident when you talk about 20, 30, 50,000 head feedlots where keeping animals on feed for 2 or 3 extra days costs tens of thousands of dollars. But the model for food production has been moving toward monoculture or specialization for quite a long time. As profit margins get smaller, the model says add animal units (look at dairies, hog units, poultry production ….) or get out. That just can’t work for us small guys so we need a different model.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert MoonShadow
…….. Planning to use the bull calves as a nutrient source alone isn’t wise planning: at most, 70% of the nutrients are captured in finished compost… a net loss of a minimum of 30%……

Actually I have to say that this is probably a better return than the actual amount of the overall body that is utilized for meat.

The thing to remember is that you can eat meat but you can’t eat compost – directly:( That is similar to one of the arguments for having herbivorous animals in agriculture – they can harvest plant materials that are completely unavailable to us and convert them into a form that we can use.

Also, much of animal tissue is water (80% of muscle) so while returning nutrients back to your soil is laudible (and I wholeheartedly support it and do it), it is truly a small return vs. what was removed.

Any biomass you remove from your land removes nutrients – including hay, veggies whatever. So obviously there needs to be material added back.

In another post I’ll bring up an interesting book looking at one aspect of the history of modern ag.

Oh yeah, Robert –
For contact information, Joel Huesby has a website under Thundering Hooves Farm (or ranch) but I don’t think he operates as a mobile slaughtering unit. He has the semi and bought a butcher shop in Walla Walla for the cold storage and is doing some retail cuts there. Their operation includes turkeys and other species so he might be amenable to goats. If you haven’t already checked into it, the hispanic communities are usually screaming for goat – almost every time I go to a dairy the guys there (that know we have some goats) ask us to sell them some. You might be able to establish a small but reliable clientele down in Caldwell/Nampa/Ontario area.

[Carl Russell]

The point I was making is not that I would replace meat value with compost, but when faced with the “economics” of a market/use for an animal that is as poor as beef is from unwanted bull calves, the real return to the nutrient cycle on the farm is much greater if they are composted, then if they are sold for next to nothing, letting everything go, and eventually most likely not used to feed hungry people, but to be ground into mystery meat and sold to wasteful kids of busy parents at a fast food joint.

(It is very similar to the market for pulp or chipwood. These low grade forest products can definitely be sold, the market is there, but the financial return is just barely better than the cost of getting it out. The end products are electricity and paper, which are wasted in huge quantities. Killing these trees when they compete with higher quality trees, and leaving them to rot IS their highest and best use, but most people see that as wasteful.)

Carl

[near horse]

they compete with higher quality trees, and leaving them to rot IS their highest and best use, but most people see that as wasteful.)

Throughout this discussion (and life) we are making value judgements. I understand what you’re saying but “higher quality” is in the eyes of the evaluator – it may differ if you want high dollar straight sawlogs vs something else (perhaps a woodpecker tree).

leaving them to rot IS their highest and best use

Again, we are making that determination. It is not inherent.

most likely not used to feed hungry people, but to be ground into mystery meat and sold to wasteful kids of busy parents at a fast food joint.

OUCH! Hungry people only eat steak, ribs and chops? I agree that it is irritating as h..l to see a waste of food while farm prices are crap for most of us. But we eat lots of weird things – rocky mtn oysters, tripe, menudo, tongue, sausage, chorizo … Why not ground meat?

I think I am on the same side of the argument as you are Carl just wanting people to recognize that it takes a lot of resources to create a calf and the return in nutrients is very small if you just kill it and compost it. They are really bad “green manure crops”.

[CharlyBonifaz]

over here some farmers have specialized in these unwanted dairy bull calves and they are marketed as high quality “rosé beef”; they are kept and fed through their exponential growth (up to about 600pds./9 months), when that levels off, they are butchered. cheap calf and short time investment makes it interesting…
elke

[Howie]

I went to visit one of my Amish friends today. He shipped his cows last week. He said his milk check did not pay the grain bill and he was not going to pay the feed company just so he could milk cows.:(

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