It Takes Three Years to Make a Hamburger

You're hungry for a "burger" - what do you do? Go to the grocery store shopping for supplies? Look in the refrigerator to see if the necessary food items are there? Decide which fast food place or local restaurant you'll visit? Any of these choices will probably satisfy your need.

When a cattle rancher starts thinking of hamburger, he focuses on long-range planning for the livestock enterprise.

First, the rancher makes sure his mother cows are healthy. He feeds them the right feeds through the winter to keep the cows strong. In April, the cows are taken to grass pasture. In June, the rancher takes the bulls to the pasture for the breeding season. In 9 months, usually in March or April, the baby calves are born. The calves will weigh approximately 85 pounds at birth. The calves will stay with their mothers in grass pastures all summer and into the early fall.

In November, the cow herd is taken out of the grass pasture. The calves are weaned and put in pens. The calves will be fed a growing ration of feeds - chopped corn ensilage, ground grains, protein supplements, and vitamins and minerals with a little salt.

All during the spring and summer, while the cow herd is in the grass pasture, the farmer/rancher has been growing feeds in preparation for feeding and finishing the calves: corn, milo, alfalfa hay, and other forages. He spends several days during July getting his machines - silage chopper, trucks, and tractors - ready for silage (chopped forages) harvest. When the corn or forage is "ready", the "big push" is on. The plants need to be "chopped" at the right stage so that the leaves are green and the grain is formed but soft enough to be sweet.

A silage chopper cuts four rows of corn or forage at a time and can cut, chop, and throw the corn silage into a truck at the rate of three tons per minute.

All the machines have to be greased, filled with fuel, and sometimes, something breaks down and needs to be repaired. The farmer/rancher calls this "broke-down" time. It means the machine is broken and the field operations are stopped for however long it takes to make repairs and get the machines going again on this important harvest. The rancher often takes his children to the field and they learn about the field operations by watching their elders work on and with the machines.

Corn is planted in rows and the machines follow the rows during harvest. The rows shown here are 1/4 mile (1,320 feet) long.

Sometimes, after a rain or prolonged wet weather, the fields are soft and the loaded trucks have to be pulled through the field. This makes harvest a longer, harder job.

The loaded trucks are taken to a pit silo (a deep trench) where they are unloaded.

The chopped forage is packed by big tractors running over it to push the air out. This will keep the feed from spoiling. In this pit, the forage will "ensile" - meaning it will ferment and be ready for mixing into a growing or finishing ration.

Grain for the cattle ration is harvested a bit later in the fall. Combines (machines that cut, thresh, and off-load grain) are used to harvest milo and corn. The grain is loaded into farm trucks and taken to bins for dry storage until it is time to make the cattle ration.

The three tall blue bins shown here are used by this ranching family to store "high-moisture" grain. The combines harvest this grain earlier in the season than the grain stored in dry storage. "High-moisture" grain is the best kind of grain for a cattle feeding ration because it is easier for the cattle to chew and digest. This means it will take less of this grain for the cattle to gain weight.

Chopped alfalfa is harvested by chopping it and throwing it into a big covered wagon. This wagon is lifted hydraulically and the alfalfa is dumped into a farm truck. This alfalfa hay is stored in a pit or standing silo for future use in the cattle ration.

The cattle are fed in bunks in feedlots with cattle of their own size and weight. The cattle remain in the feedlots until all the cattle in that pen are ready for processing - usually around 1,200 pounds. By this time, the cattle will be about 1 3/4 years old.

When the cattle are "ready to ship", the rancher orders trucks and the cattle are loaded and sent to a packing plant designed especially for processing beef animals. The packing plant will process the meat and ship it to various restaurants or stores. In many stores, the meat department will grind hamburgerfrom the meat it receives from the packing plant and sell the hamburger to customers like you.

It's taken THREE YEARS and lots of planning and hard work to make your "burger" possible. Enjoy!