Charolais Connection • March 2014 23

Tucked in the rolling hillsbetween Stirling and

Campbellford, Ontario, is adiversified family operation that isdoing things extremely well.

Russett Farms has 600‐700 steers onfeed at one time. They buy themajority of them at Hoard’s Stationstocker sales. “The cattle are just asgood in Ontario, but we just don’thave the numbers. Sometimes wehave to get some from Quebec or thewest. We’re only five miles fromHoard’s and I like to go and watchthe markets and do my own buying.Some people don’t like to buy theirown because they are too busy. If youneed a calculator to figure out if youcan make money on a steer, yourmargin is just too close. If we have tosource from the west or Quebec, Ihave to use an order buyer.”

“We buy all whites and buckskinsif we can. They are growthier anddeeper bodied. If they eat an extra 4lb. per day, they’re gaining. Thosetucked up calves have no capacityand just don’t do well. We prefer ared mother using Charolais bulls andwe prefer French over purebred ifpossible. Hoard’s has a weekly sale

that is a dairy bull calf drop and theydo get into a few veal. Most of theyear they sell 100‐400 stockers everyweek, in the fall there would bemore. We try to buy at the QuinteStocker Sales because they aresupported by better cattlemen andgood farmers, who do a good jobvaccinating. They have 6 of them a year. Bysupporting, this sale we get to knowwhose cattle do well for us andwhose cattle we have trouble with. Ithink it is better to support people inthe area. We don’t like to buy calves,they are just toomuch trouble toget going. We alsodon’t redovaccinations unlesswe don’t knowwhat they havereceived and theyhave not beendouble moved.

Darrell Russettcarries a little bookin his pocketwhere he writesdown everythinghe needs to know

but he pretty much rememberseverything. Sandra, his wife, has triedto get him to utilize more technology,but he finds it easier to stick with his own system.

Their son Rodney has joined himon the farm full time. They growabout 400 acres of corn, 100 acres ofwheat, 200 acres of soy beans, 300acres of hay, 80 acres of barley and 80acres of barley and peas which theytake off early, 50 days after planting,to put as green feed in the silo as afirst cut. The alfalfa, which wasunderseeded, is cut for silage as a

GOOD MANAGEMENT THE KEYPROFILE Candace By

Russett Farms

Rodney & Darrell Russett

second cut.They seed winter wheat after soy

beans. “We really like soy straw inthe finish steer ration. We try to getour hay off early and because of that,there is no rough scratch in the gutfor roughage. Everything is just toosoft. Soy straw has a lot of pods, it isalmost like a brush, it is good scratchin the gut to make things digest. Lastyear we fed beef cows wheat straw toextend our feed because of thedrought and they ate it like hay, butit was so soft it was like velvet.”

They buy wet distiller’s grain froma corn‐ethanol plant. It is 70%moisture content, but it never runs. Itis more solid and jiggles like jelly. Itdries out a bit as it sits in the pit, butsince they bring it in every twoweeks, it still stays soft.

“We tried using round bales, butwe just find square baling goes faster.When we were doing round bales, itfelt like you spent half your daywaiting for the bales to tie. I figuredit out and I would spend two and ahalf days with my foot on the clutch

for one cut,” he shares with a laugh.For people this busy and on the go, itjust didn’t seem productive enough.“We also know when we use squarebales, we can take a flake from thebale that weighs 20 lb. It is easy tomeasure how much we are putting inthe mixer for our feed ration. Roundbales just don’t lend themselves tomeasured feed rations. We mix 13 lb.distiller’s grain, 8 lb. high moisturecorn, 5 lb. dry corn, 1 lb. of hay, 1 lb.soy straw. They auger flight theration into the trough in the pens.

“We can handle 600‐700 head nowat one time. With a little more space,they would do better and it would beless work for us. We used to milk 20‐25 dairy cows, but we are convertingthat space into more feeding area. We

scrape and bed every other day now.“We just purchased a new

hydraulic chute to help us processthe steers. We have a problem withstrawberry foot rot and control it byrunning them through a foot bath.The nutritionist said foot baths won’twork but he hasn’t come up with anyother option for us to try. It would benice to find something else, as theformaldahyde and water isn’t themost pleasant for us. If thestrawberry is bad, we do it threetimes in a row and then when it is incheck we do it once a week formaintenance. Once we have done itonce, it only takes about a half hourto put them all through. You know ifyou are doing it right if they walkthrough and go lay down or shake

“We buy all whites and

buckskins if we can. They are

growthier and deeper bodied”

Top: Hay Storage; Left: Feeding system;Below: Squeeze chute and foot bath

24 Charolais Connection • March 2014

Tilage Radishes used for fall pasture

their feet and lick them. If they haveit, the stinging causes these reactionsafter the bath. You know you have aproblem if you notice the steersstanding like a horse, lifting one leg.One might think that disinfecting thecement pads they stand on would bean option, but it only lasts for onehour and just isn’t effective.”

They run a turn and a half of steers through the operation eachyear, sending a load every otherweek. “We like to buy them at 750 lb.and take them to 1600 lb, we like1000 lb dressed.”

They have been marketing theirproduct to Riding Regency inToronto. They want thick cattle thatare at least an AA. None of theirfeeders get Zilmax or Optiflex. Theyall get Rumensin in the feed and theyhaven’t had an A grade in years.“Some people say it isn’t worth it tosort. They buy in a load and they sella load. We prefer to pick our loads.We find if you have one steer thatisn’t doing as well, if you give him acouple of weeks, you have a productthat is worth something. If you shiphim before he is ready, you have aproduct that is worth nothing.

“You have to use good geneticbulls. Any old cow can raise a calf,but the bull is 80‐90% of the calf. Youcan take a pretty plain set ofHereford cows and throw a reallygood French Charolais bull on themand get a vastly improved product.”

Outside of their 200 acre soy beancash crop, everything else goes outunder a skin.

They use a manure spreader tobed. There is a pallet factory inTweed where they purchase sawdustfor bedding the cattle close to finish.This way they aren’t eating straw. Wedon’t want to use straw that is finerfor bedding. We want something thatwill really soak up the moisture. Wefind the manure spreader doesn’tmake it finer. Corn stalk isphenominal for wicking up water.Corn stalk breaks down better thanstraw because it is so brittle. Itspreads really fine on the fields whenit is cleaned from the pens. You don’teven see it. They spread in thesummer and stock pile in the winter.

They spread right on hay land andthere are no lumps. They like tospread on the frost of the morning inthe spring.

They normally get three cuts of hayeach year. They put up 1400 balesdry and the rest goes into haylage.They put up 500 square bales of redclover for winter feed for their cowherd. They used 200 bales of wheatstraw last year to stretch the haybecause of a feed shortage due todrought.

They have been selling to Regencyin Toronto for two years. Before thatthey sold to St. Helen’s in Torontoand before that in Cookstown. Nowthings seem better to sell live.Sometimes they sell into the cashmarket, but they have also beencontracting one load per month. Sofar the contracts are bringing moremoney than the cash market. Whenthis article was written in September

of 2013, Darrell had some contracteduntil June of 2014.

Russett Farms also has 30commercial females and 19 bredheifers. These cattle are winteredoutdoors on 6‐7 acres totallysurrounded by trees for shelter. Theycalve the cows starting April 1 andthe heifers starting June 1. In thefollowing year, they back the heifersup to fit with the cowherd calvinginterval. When they feed their owncalves, they definitely have moreflexibility with calving and weaningperiods. They just have too muchtrouble with ice in March to messaround with calving.

The cows are fall pastured on oats,barley and tilage radishes by movingportable fences until the snow getstoo deep. More tilage radishes havebeen seeded in the area in the lasttwo or three years. It is seeded onwheat and they use liquid manureand the radishes to break up packed

Manure spreader

Canada Beef sign on the store front

Straw spreader

Hay flakes are about 20 pounds each for ease of measuring

“We like to buy them at 750 lb.

and take them to 1600 lb,

we like 1000 lb dressed”

Charolais Connection • March 2014 25

continued on page 28

28 Charolais Connection • March 2014

Above: Meat cuts & scale-education is part of marketing beef;

Left: It takes labour but the cattleare kept very clean;

Bottom: Sandra Russett with herfreezers and retail space

land. Radishes are the only thing thatwill store nitrogen, phosphorus andpotash for release in the spring.

He was buying Hereford heifers for replacements, but now ischanging to Simmental.

They have two problems in thearea. One is a real problem withracoons. They hunt them everychance they get. They have black andbrown hounds for hunting. They willlet anyone hunt the racoons on theirproperty, they just do too muchdamage by trampling crops.

The second problem is in findingenough grazing land. Much of therougher area has been sold tonaturalists where there should becows. The people moving from urbanareas, don’t want to rent the land topeople who could utilize it forgrazing. “I have been trying to getthose acreages rezoned asrecreational land so they at least willhave to pay the correct tax on them.If they don’t want recreational taxrates, they’ll have to show the land isbeing used for agricultural purposes.So far the township has not moved inthis direction.”

They purchased some land forDarrell’s dad to build a house sixteenyears ago and it had 18 acres of apple

orchard on it. It took two full timepeople to keep it operating. It wasjust too much, so they have cut itback to seven acres, and Sandra canmanage to sell all of them at themarket. This year they will bring inonly two pickers and that waySandra should be able to marketthem weekly as fast as they arepicked. It will take about two monthsto complete all of the picking. Theyhave quite a variety of apples:MacIntosh, Gala, Honey Crisp,

Cortland, Northern Spy. Their meat issold in individual packages. If peoplewant a quarter or a half, they go to thefarm directly to make arrangements.They market approximately twentyhead each year through meat sales.The market has changed to peopledoing their weekly meat shoppingthere. Many people just don’t havefreezers for quarters and halves andtend to buy for one week at a time.

They market a selected breedcontinued on page 30

Above: Farm from the road; Below: Growing steers

“You have to use good

genetic bulls. Any old cow

can raise a calf, but the

bull is 80-90% of the calf.

You can take a pretty plain

set of Hereford cows and

throw a really good

French Charolais bull on

them and get a vastly

improved product.”

30 Charolais Connection • March 2014

which fits the meat market trade asthey can guarantee no hormoneshave ever been given to the animaland it is easy to keep them straightfrom their other steers.

They operate a small store on thefarm, mostly for November through

April, but some people do come outduring the Market months as well.The exposure from the market hasincreased their store traffic during the non‐market seasons.

Our time was well spent andenjoyed as we learned about this

operation and yes, they do a lot right.As Darrell comments, “In today’smarket, with today’s margins, I don’tsee where there’s room to do it anyother way.”