Raising Kids in the Beef Business

Raising our kids so they understand the beef industry is part of what we do here on the Hunewill Ranch.

Aspen, Rhiannon, and Dalton - November 2013 when they first started working with their steers.  At this point Aspen's weighed 670, Rhiannon's weighed  820, and Dalton's weighed 760.  They were about 7 months old.

The Hunewill Ranch is in the beef business as well as the guest business and so the children who grow up on ranch experience raising steers and heifers through 4-H and FFA as a part of our identity as beef producers.  What this experience teaches our kids is how to humanely raise and produce beef on a small personal scale. How to look for good bulls and cows to get the best product that a consumer will want to  buy and how to have fun with it along the way.  

We start in November by picking out what animals will go and then we feed them and work with them for the next five and half months.  Some of the animals have gone before like Rhiannon’s cow Pumpkin had gone as a heifer last year and this year she was shown as a cow/calf pair with her new calf, Sweet Potato- next year Sweet Potato will go as a heifer.  Dalton’s heifer this year, Lulu, was part of his cow/calf pair last year. 

Kids learn that even on a cold winter morning the animals have to eat.

This year Dalton, Rhiannon, and Aspen competed with their animals at the Nevada Junior Livestock Show in Reno last week. But looking back through the years this is a family tradition.  Jeff, Betsy, and I  (Megan) competed throughout our youth. Then Jeff and Denise’s kids Blair and Leslie, then Jon and Betsy’s son, Tyler, and now my three kids are carry on the tradition.  So every decade since the 1960’s there have been members of our family showing out in Reno in May. 

The kids go to work outs with other kids and get the animals used to being hauled, weighed, and handled.

 

Rhiannon working with her cow/calf pair and Dalton's heifer looking on-May the week before the show.

When we pick the steers we pick the best looking steers with the gentlest dispositions that we can find in our herd.  Good dispositions are very important since a stressed out or high strung animal doesn’t gain well and isn’t easy to handle.  Jeff, Betsy and I learned this the hard way in our younger days we took some beautiful animals that kicked judges, drug us all over heck and gone, or ran us up fences.  As a rule when we started managing our large cattle herd we really tried to breed for disposition, among other traits, and we culled any animals that might pass on wild or dangerous disposition traits.  

By the time April and May arrive the animals, both heifers and steers, have gained and grown and are ready to show.  

Dalton and his steer at Nevada Junior Livestock Show- this steer weighed 1201 at this time and won the rate of gain contest for the show.  This means he put on more pounds than any other steer that competed. 

Rhiannon and her steer at the sale. He was a beauty and weighed 1313 and was the Champion Home Grown steer.

Aspen with her heifer Daisy.  This heifer was a twin( of two heifers)born in 2013 that we raised on a bottle till we grafted her on a cow that lost her calf.  She was Reserve Champion Home Grown at the show.

The heifers and the cow/calf pair come home with us to go back in the herd and spend the summer in Bridgeport on grass. For the steers this is the end of a very good life that we have shared with them. They were raised humanely, with good handling and great feed and we are proud to be in the beef business.  Aspen is a little sad to sell Ketchup, her steer, but she says he had a great life with us that he wouldn't have had otherwise. 

Lulu and Daisy back from their trip to the big city of Reno. They are getting turned out in Bridgeport and telling their heifer friends about the sites they saw. 

May 21,2014- Megan Hunewill