Castrate v Non Castrated - Beef fattening

[oliver1921]

I was wondering if anyone had any experience of fattening entire bulls rather than castrating - in some breeds it is said to finish earlier with more flavour to the meat - what are the weights and returns like. we have no problem with bulls running as a group - as long as the girls are well away. Any advice would be welcomed

[ann]

Hi Oliver

my personal opion is that the flavour of the meat comes with the age, so I put rings on them when they are born and run them up to 30mths for the non shorts and the shorts usually finish earlier.



As a point of intrest my brother is a commercial beef farmer and now the subs have been removed he is no longer producing bull beef, all his males have been steered.

:p :p

[Ted Neal]

Hello Oliver
The bull beef tends to be much leaner. The steers add a nice bit of fat and marbling to add to the taste. Bulls can be a real pain as you are not able to run them with young heifers - something you can do with steers.

[monica waltho]

Hi Oliver,
We used to have a bull finishing unit and yes they do finish sooner but these went commercially-since we changed to rare breeds we found that our local rare breeds butcher will not have bulls.
Monica

[Duncan MacIntyre]

Although we have only slaughtered a few Dexters for freezer, it does give the ultimate test of eating it yourself, and the two bulls we have slaughtered have been the two least tasty and tender. We have slaughtered one heifer, she was by a long margin the best eating. Bulls are also more difficult to put good fat cover on which affects the cooking quality, and the length of time our butcher feels it is wise to hang them because the carcase tends to dry more with bulls with less fat cover. I have no experience as a vet of anyone trying to finish bulls outside, all the bull beef units I know have them inside and very intensively fed. Whatever way you keep them bulls Dexter or other breeds are dangerous, one of the reasons bull finishing units have them inside generally where feeding and bedding can be done without anyone having to enter the pen. I am not saying it would necessarily turn out this way, but I would be a bit cautious that they would not provide the sort of Dexter beef you expect. Commericial finishers generally do not keep any bulls these days unless they know in advance that they have a market for them, otherwise they turn into an expensive feeding exercise and difficult to sell.

Duncan