Feed Lot Magazine Online, Unique Gourmet Beef Operation Starts with Baby Calves

Farmer-feeders have long existed in the corn belt, but Sue and Harold Zimmerman have added several new twists to the idea.

The couple have established a branded beef product in a state known for its dairy product.

Sue's Moos Gourmet Beef is sold only through their store, The Family Farm Market, just outside Janesville, Wis. The beef they sell is raised on their place in a confined feeding operation.

Although they started out in the dairy business, they soon moved to producing beef.

"We started raising calves, 40 of them at a time," Sue said.

They built a nursery where they could feed them 116 at a time. That led to selling feeder cattle, 300 pound Holstein feeders, all over the United States.

The idea when they built the nursery was to have a 100 top quality feeders that they could sell on a load. They discovered that they'd always have some left over.

Now, they take week old baby calves and feed them, have them slaughtered and market the beef right there on the farm. Half of the first floor of their old farm house is a walk-in freezer.

Harold said that they are actually preconditioning the calves as they feed them and preparing them for a finishing ration.

"The average steer going to market has been on a truck seven times in its life cycle to get to market," Harold said. "Our cattle are on a truck to market twice. Once in, and once out.

"Normally, every time you load the animals on a truck, you're looking at about a 30 day set back because it's going to a different location. It's different feed. It's different water. Maybe it's a different environment. Different management.

He said that means the average steer going though the feeding cycle will have an additional seven months before market.

"We're sending cattle to market at 10 months time where everyone else is 18 months to two years," Harold said. "And there are a lot of good producers who take longer than that."

Harold said that also accounts for inconsistencies in quality.

While he said Sue's Moos beef could be taken nationally, Harold said there is still plenty of demand just to be met locally.

When they started raising feeder cattle, they always had a few left over, so they would feed these out themselves.

"That led us into finishing more of these cattle," Harold said.

In the late 1960s, they were finishing all of them for the white table cloth market in New York City.

"Along came 1972 when corn hit four dollars, beans hit $12, cattle hit $80 for the first time in history," Harold said.

The processor was forward contracting his product and got caught in the squeeze between live cattle and the beef. It put him out of business, and that almost put the Zimmermanns out of business.

They turned to selling their own beef at the farm. "We put signs out on the highway," he said. "I took out a quarter page ad in a shopper."

Their promotion was so successful, they never looked back.

She said a lot of people who drive by regularly shop four or five times a week. People do not shop like they did 10 years ago.

"We have a lot of people where both parents work, and they pick up supper on the way home," she said. "We have individually packed items. They don't have to thaw them. They just have to throw them on the grill."

They also have pre-cooked, ready-to-eat roast beef.

"We're going into more of the pre-cooked things," she said. "People like it." They use a licensed processor that cooks the meat to their specifications.

"We don't use any preservatives or any chemicals," she said. "We have all our own recipes." The meat is all natural, but it's not certified organic.

"Truthfully, we've stayed away from that just for the reason that some certified organic is grass fed," she said. "This is all grain fed, right from babies."

She said she has customers that have tried organic meats but weren't pleased with them.

Their cattle are all Holstein steers, and they are all on a high energy feeding program.

"We've raised them that way since the 1960s when corn was a buck a bushel," she said. "We've been through the five dollar stuff and the dollar stuff."

Their steers are young, 10 to 11 months old. They slaughter at 1080 to 1100 pounds. "They're real tender when they're that young," she said.

The Zimmermanns bring them in when they are only a week old, and they're fed in barns similar to dairy cattle. They are not grazed, and they are not moved from place to place.

They used to buy the calves from the neighborhood, but to get the quantity they needed, they had to reach out to other parts of the state. With the huge dairy herds in Wisconsin, they've not run into any shortage of Holstein steers.

There are over a million calves in Wisconsin that go other places. The Zimmermanns have decided to add some value to some of those calves at home.

When they started, they had calves coming in every day. Now, they buy in quantity and take delivery about every six weeks.

"I do not like calves every day," Sue said. "When you have a nursery and you're bringing calves in every day, that's very, very hard. You can't get everything out and everything down and start over again."

They have a huge supply of corn in this area, Sue said. "We use corn and a protein pellet," she said. They don't feed any hay or silage. "The only thing we need is dry shelled corn," she said.

The farm has facilities for about 300 head. This used to be an old dairy. "Everything is under roof," Sue said. "Holsteins love to be under roof. They don't like the open lot kind of thing."

It's all environmentally controlled. "Holsteins are one of the few animals that are used for beef that really appreciate that," she laughs.

When they started in the 1960s, she said, they had open sided sheds, and the Holsteins would not go out on nasty, rainy days.

"We had to put the feeders inside," she said. "You don't want it inside where you've got to clean it out, but they don't go out. Holsteins are like that. They like it inside."

"It's a totally different feeding operation when you're feeding Holsteins compared to tradition beef cattle," Harold said. "They're not in the same league. They don't perform the same. They just don't work the same."

Harold has all their feed records on computer. He knows what each animal has done. He has full identification in each steer.

"Holsteins perform very, very consistently," Sue said.

"We're not cattle producers," Harold said. "We're manufacturers." According to Sue, they are, "Manufacturers and Marketers." "Marketing is still the key to the whole operation."

Right now, they have about 200 head on feed at any given time, although they are expanding their facilities. "We have a lot more market than we have cattle coming out," Harold said.