How Old Are Your Cows?

I often get asked how old our cows are. We raise beef cows, and we have cows in a wide range of ages, from just a few days old to 15 years old!

How Old Are Your Cows?

John and I raise beef cattle on a cow-calf farm. That means that our cows have babies (calves) every year. We sell the calves when they are around 6 months old, and we keep the cows. Someone else buys the calves and raises them for another year until they are the right age and size to become beef. Technically, those farms don’t have cows at all!

Our cattle range from very young (this year’s calves) to quite old. Our oldest cow is 15 years old! Most of the ladies are between 5-10 years old.

It’s better for us to keep cows from year to year. We get to know the cow’s personalities, and it lets the cows sort out the dominance order in the herd. Usually the older cows are the boss cows (the “alpha” cows), but sometimes a younger girl will have a dominant personality and want to take over that role.

This is cow 5J02. She is 11 years old this year.

Her number tells me that she was born in 2005 (the “5”) and she was the second calf born on our farm that year (the “02”). We use this number system every year. That means that in 2015 we also had a calf called 5J02. (Actually, that calf was 5F02. We usually use the “F” for Feutz, but for some reason in 2005 we used “J” for John. Anyway.) It’s not a big problem on our farm to have two cows with the same number like that. 5F02 born in 2005 will look very different than 5F02 born in 2015, even as they start to get older.

This is cow #3. She’s our oldest cow, at 15 years old. She is starting to have some problems with arthritis, and she has lost most of her teeth. We have cows in 2 different places, and she used to be in the larger herd on the larger pasture. As she got older, she started having trouble getting around the larger pasture, and was starting to be bullied away from the food. Last summer we moved her to a smaller pasture with fewer cows so she could keep up. She quickly became the boss of that herd, and is doing great! She is due to have a calf in just a week or two.

These ladies range from 4-10 years old.

We have some cows that are registered Angus. That’s like a purebred dog. The registered Angus bull calves (boys) get sold as breeding stock. We keep the registered Angus heifer calves (girls). We breed them when they are a little over a year old, and they’ll have their first calf around the time they turn 2 years old. We have other cows that are commercial beef cattle – that just means that they are like the mutts of the beef cow world. We sell both the bull and heifer calves (boys and girls) after weaning. These calves will go live on another farm for about a year, until they reach market weight. My friend Sarah talks about the difference between grain-fed and grass-fed cattle in this post on This Farm Family’s Life.

What other questions do you have about food and farming? Leave me a comment below! I’ll answer in the comments, and I may even turn your question into a full post here or on AgriCultured.

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