Beef Is it Whats For Dinner
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Beef
The process of producing, marketing, and promoting beef is a very strenuous and complicated duty. There are various steps and processes that a rancher must go through to get the beef from the field to your plates.
When calves are born they are typically castrated if they are male, and dehorned if they have horns (dehorning has declined due to genetic modifications). And they are usually artificially inseminated for many reasons but the foremost reason is safety of the animal. The calves are then weaned, or taken off the mother's milk (205 days of age). This is done to allow the cow to return to her normal estrous cycle. When the calves have been weaned off of there mothers milk they are then fed a new high protein diet which is usually in the form of cake or pre-mixed feed. The feeds that they eat help maximize the calves' growth yields (growth compared to amount of feed) which are essential in raising cattle. When the cattle have completed weaning and reach approximately 400 lbs they are taken to an auction or sale barn where they are sold to a feed lot. Feed lots vary by size where commercial lots have an enormous 100,000 head of cattle, and private lots have 4,000 head...