The Art of Breeding Devon - Quality
Man domesticated the cow many thousand years ago but the cows of antiquity are much different than the cattle roaming our pastures today. Almost all that change took place in a relatively few, recent years. And it has not been a change in the best interests of the cow…or our health. In the name of productivity and profit we have forced the cow into an assembly line, always searching for bigger and faster and always pulling her away from quality food.
Our forefathers knew they needed a smaller type cow that could consume and convert their grasses into a high quality milk-fat that was a vital food product. The same cow was used to pull his plow and provide meat for his family. I know of no other breed that was as much a triple purpose animal as the Devon; traits that had so much to do with the history of this country.
It may be stretching a point only a little to note, as we approach another celebration of the founding of our great country, that our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and what we call traditional American values all were developed by men who ate food that was grown in a local garden, ate grass fed meat and drank raw milk. All food was local; there was no supermarket.
Of course, today we don’t produce our own food. Dare I suggest that we also don’t seem to be producing the quality of statesmen of 200 years ago? I will suggest that there are few of us who, by the age of 60, aren’t on some form of medication. And I will point out that too many of our children are on medications, too. There’s not much doubt that the changes we have made on farms and pastures and in processing, to get more faster and cheaper, has been at the expense of healthy food.
Quality food is important in making a man intellectually capable of sustaining himself. By 1920 the cattle producers of America began breeding for high production (pounds, bushels or tons). It wasn’t long before they lost sight of the fact they were responsible for the health, longevity and intelligence of our people.
Today’s farmer grows up in a land of “thought control” and his information is carefully filtered. It is an environment paid for by big food processors, food producers, chemical companies, their hand-maidens in the universities and enforced by a government also bought and paid for by political contributions. All insist on creating hybrids and chemicals as the route to more and cheaper food.
But we must admit that the farmer was willingly enslaved in this “thought control”. The long finger of Nathan surely must be pointed first at us. We fell for the tons, pounds and bushels scam in a trade for money. We sold our souls (and quality food) for the almighty dollar.
The argument is, of course, that the industry won’t pay for quality food. And that is true. But the consumer will. There is proof of that in the hundreds, even thousands, of farmers’ markets springing up across the country; proof in the premiums being paid for organic foods and grass fed beef even in the supermarkets and most of all there is proof today in the panicked reaction of the industrial food industry and their government bureaucrats.
The resistance to the “thought police” is growing. More and more producers are discovering that purity in food begins with purity of genetics. “Hybrid quality” is an oxymoron. Among cattlemen, I see increased understanding that quality is a trait that must be concentrated and bred into a bull from your own herd. Eventually those qualities spread through your entire herd. Bring in outside male genetics and you just reintroduce heterosis and lose total control of any quality you may have achieved.
In a previous article I mentioned that quality is a genetic maternal characteristic; however, it is very important to remember that digestibility (utilization of grasses) is a characteristic passed along from the paternal side or Y chromosome. If your herd bull does not possess wide shoulders, you will experience low utilization of your grasses. Your high maintenance cows will lose too much body condition while lactating.
The smaller framed cow is the easiest to work with on your journey toward creating a gourmet beef producing herd. The smaller framed cow has much smaller bones (all bones) and the smaller bone is a dense bone (dense with calcium). The small dense bone will always have a finer texture of meat attached to it, which feels very good in the mouth and presents a fine eating experience. Large framed cows have a larger bone structure and will always have coarse stringy meat attached to it.
One of the better ways of judging a cow for tenderness (fine texture meat) is the size of the cannon bone which slowly blends into the ankle joint. The rib bones should be flat. Polled animals will have a round knob on the front top of the poll. The tail from top of switch up for 8-10 inches is small and you should be able to feel each of the boney joints. The hide will be very soft on the rib cage with many very close downward folds on the side of neck and shoulders. A soft hide with silky short hair has the highest level of blood flow (vascularity) which allows a glimpse into the immune response of the animal; this is a well developed gland and immune response for highest quality meat, milk and fats. A cow with the soft hide and very shinny silky hair coat with many dark whirls around her/his body represents the different glandular activity and a high level of well-being.
The hock area just under the Achilles tendon should be skin against skin for the least amount of connective tissue. If the area under the Achilles tendon is thick and full of connective tissue there is an unpleasant eating experience even if the meat is tender.
Look too for cows with little or no hair on the udder. These cows have more genetic potential for producing milk fats. Most will have dandruff in the long tail switch and in many cases the end of the tail bone will be yellow and the ear wax will be yellow as well. These characteristics are always associated with fine textured meat and high fat milk and meat fats.
It is important for our cows to be producers of A2 milk, which is a genetic trait combining two amino acids (in milk fats) in the mammary glands during milk production for the health of the calf and our health as consumers.
Why not draw up a checklist and get started today? Grade your own herd. Select and concentrate on your best and go and grow from there. Unlike all the “fixes” prescribed by the industrial experts, this will cost you nothing but a little patience. And you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are improving the HIL quotient of your neighbors. (If you’re just joining us, that’s their Health, Intelligence and Longevity.)
