Our TN Adventure: Chuck & Tbone turn 6 months old!!!

Chuck and Tbone our steers are now 6 months old and doing awesome!!! They are super healthy and eating like champs. If you guys don't remember, Tbone & Chuck are our beef cross steers (can't have babies) that we are growing for meat for our family.

Chuck scratching his head on Tbone

The boys have done a super job with keeping the pasture down this summer. They have also been getting a daily ration of grain to help keep them in good condition. Chuck and Tbone will be with us over the next 5 months for winter. Once the spring arrives we will retape them to see how big they have grown and decide what will be done next with the boys.

Today I tape measured them to see how much they weigh. This is where it gets tricky. There is 2 ways to measure. The first way is just to measure the heart girth, which is around their body behind their front legs and then from their take that number to a chart I found online and convert it into pounds. This chart is for beef cattle so I know that it will be a little off since my cows are beef crosses.

The chart shows the following weights:

Chuck (brown & white) 436 lbs

Tbone (black) 390 lbs

The second way to measure is suppose to be a little more accurate. You still measure their heart girth, around their middle behind their front legs, but then you also need to measure from the front shoulder all the way back to the tailbone. Once you have these figures you need to do a little math.

Math is heart girth X heart girth X Length. Once you have this figure you divide it by 300. You answer is how much they weigh in lbs.

Using this measuring method the following weights are:

Chuck (brown & white) 378 lbs

Tbone (black) 341 lbs

I measured them this morning before they had their grain and had been out in the pasture all day so I feel that it was a good measurement. The only problem is the cows look big to me. Now if you know me well, you know that I have NO perception when I look at something. Meaning I can look at an animal and have NO idea what it weighs, same thing if I look at an empty room, I have NO idea if a certain piece of furniture will fit. So with that said, I think the boys weight are somewhere in between both these measurements.

Chuck (brown & white) approx 400 lbs

Tbone (black) approx. 370 lbs

Here is a pic of Hailey standing next to the boys so you can get and idea of how big they are now.

Chuck with Hailey

The top of the cows back comes up to Hailey's shoulder, (she is standing downhill next to them) So that makes them approx. 3 1/2 ft tall right now.

With the cows getting so big we have done some renovations to the barn so they can't go into it anymore. The reason for this is that 1/2 of the barn floor is on stilts, because the lay of the land, and we are afraid that once they get too big they will collapse the floor. They do have another smaller shelter they can go into that is on the ground to help them stay warm and dry but they aren't happy about it because they want to be with the goats, who they consider as their herd.

Jamie has built a half door on the goat barn so the goats can still get in and out but the cows can't get in at all.

New door to keep the cows out

We still have a door that goes all the way to the bottom so the goats can't get out too. The doors have been working out nicely. I close the door that goes all the way to the bottom so the goats don't bother the cows while they are eating. Once the cows are done eating I open up that door and close the half door so the goats can stay in the barn and not be bothered by the cows if they want. This was also done so when kidding time comes for the goats the babies will have a safe place to go to get away from the cows.

Chuck & Tbone peeking under the door to see what's going on.

Jamie also built an outside feeder. The feeder is for them for now but will be used by the goats too once the cows are gone.

New Outdoor Feeder

They still have their separate personalities too. Tbone, the black one, is not very interested in people unless you have food for him, He will run when he see's that red bucket and will stand by the hay feeder mooing for some hay. He does like to have is head and chin scratched but most of the time he likes to just hang out and watch what everybody is doing.

Chuck on the other hand loves people, he will be the first one to come up to you if your out in the pasture. He loves to have his whole face rubbed, especially his cheeks. He will stretch his head out really far so you can rub all of his cheeks and neck. He loves the grain too but is a little more patient for his turn. He also loves to moo. He will greet you first thing in the morning to say hello and will moo for hay also.

I know that your not suppose to have favorites but I clearly do with these two boys. I think I like Chuck so much because he is so laid back and relaxed, where Tbone is a little more hyper and unpredictable. This makes me nervous. I know that these boys are big and will get even bigger and for me it makes me nervous to have a hyper animal that big around. For this reason I am trying to convince Jamie to have Tbone be the first to go even if he is a little smaller than Chuck.

We still haven't decided on what we are going to do. We hope that once the spring arrives one of them will be big enough to send to the butcher. I would like to send one in the spring and then keep the other one for another year, which will help with the pasture for the summer but then we would have to pay to feed it over the winter. Jamie is still deciding. He is thinking about maybe selling the second one after the summer to get some money back on what it cost us to raise them but I think we should keep it and butcher it since he has told me that one should feed our family for the year. This way we wouldn't have to worry about any beef we would eat for at least 2 years.

I will do an update on them in about 3 months just to show you all how well they are and how much more they have grown.

Here are some other cute pictures of the boys.