|The Life of a Beef Cow
- A calf weighs about 80 pounds at birth. The calf drinks mother's
milk and eats grass for the first six months, until it is weaned
from its mother. It weighs about 400 pounds at this time.
- From then on the calf eats grass and hay in the field until it
is a year old, when it weighs around 700 to 800 pounds.
- A cow's diet is mainly grass and hay, with some feed
supplements. Ruminate animals like cows and deer have a complex
three or four part stomach that allows them to digest grass. They
"chew the cud", which means they re-chew the food they've already
chewed slightly and swallowed.
- Yearlings are usually sold at a sale barn and trucked to
feedlots. They are fed grain and hay in the feedlot, then sold to a
packing house when they weigh around 1000 to 1100 pounds.
- A cow that weighs 1000 pounds will make a carcass weighing about
615 pounds. The carcass makes about 432 pounds of meat.