: Building our Future

Building our Future

Winter 2020

We have calves coming this Spring, after taking them to a vet for AI. Excited to have calves again, and hoping we can get heifers! We will have 2 steers to sell for meat soon- one this year and one next. That will be our first sale for meat! Hoping that in about 4 years we will have a nice size herd so we can sell several steers a year for meat.

September 2019

Mitsu, #223 had her calf on August 22, and Machiko, #229 had hers on Sept 9th. Both bull calves! We have to get blood tests to check heritage to help us decide what to do with them. Options include keeping one for a herd bull, selling them as bulls, or keeping them as steers to raise for meat. All great options! We just need to make the decision soon!

June 2019

We purchased pregnant Wagyu heifers that are due in August! They came from Baycroft Wagyu in DePere, Wisconsin. The cows were delivered June 9th. So happy to continue our growth of our Wagyu herd! These new ones are full blood Wagyu and are candidates for embryo flushing which we are considering. Not only to help build our herd with implants, but we can also sell the embryos. Our focus right now, however is to build our herd so we can start direct marketing meat to restaurants and consumers as soon as possible.

January 2019

We sold 11 head to a friend of ours who was looking to transition from dairy to beef. It was a good deal for us and them! We are left with 4 cows, and 7 calves to start 2019. In the Spring, we will get 3 new calves, and we can sell the yearling steers. We plan to use the money to seed and fertilize our pastures and hayfields so we can get more hay this summer. And, we still plan to put in the winterized waterer by next Fall. We are also thinking about looking at a Wagyu bull to purchase.

2017- 2018 Switching to Wagyu Cattle

We implanted 6 of our cows with Wagyu embryos in August 2017. Only 2 of the cows had Wagyu calves in May 2018. The others lost the embryos and most of them got pregnant when the Angus bull arrived the next month. Even though we didn’t get as many calves as we wanted, we are off to a good start with two heifers! We will raise them to 24 months and then AI them with Wagyu semen to start growing our herd. The goal is to have 20-30 cows that can have calves each year so we can sell them to a Wagyu Feeder Ranch or direct market meat to consumers. There are several Wagyu operations in the Midwest. We joined the American Wagyu Association so we can register the calves and keep accurate records in this new endeavor. As we grow the Wagyu herd, we will be selling the Black Angus cattle. We want an all Wagyu herd in about 5 years. Wagyu are a Japanese cattle with high marble meat that are sold to high-end restaurants. The cattle are registered and quite expensive.

2006- purchased the Farm…

We struggled with ideas on repairing the old barn on the property, but in the end decided it was best to tear it down and start fresh. We put up a 30×54 pole shed in the summer of 2012. Craig did most of the work himself. Eventually the old house will also come down and there’s another shed that may be saved for extra storage.