Angus Cattle, Angus Asado

Some of the registered Black and Red Angus herd. Genetics seen here also consist of bloodlines from American  Angus herds. 

Alejendro had a top quality herd of Angus Cattle and even did embryo transfer 

Students viewing the cattle handling facilities made of all wood that had an extensive catwalk system. 

Discussing the cattle portion of Calderon  family farm I will focus on their Angus operation. Alejandro is the name of the owner of the operation. He has a herd of 350 black and red Angus cattle. In Argentina, black and red Angus are considered one breed, as compared to the U.S. where they are two seperate entities. His herd of 350 consists of 120 registered cattle and the remaining 230 are commercial cattle. With the 120 registered cattle, he raises seedstock bulls and heifers. Hosting his own bull sale each year. He sells the bulls as two-year olds and the heifers as yearlings. On average he sells 75 to 90 bulls, ranging in price from $2,000 to $4,000. The remaining calves he backgrounds, and then sells at the local market. 

Talking with Alejandro about his cow herd I also learned about some of his herdsman techniques. He artificially inseminates his whole cow herd in a 60 day period and then puts cleanup bulls out with the herd for 25 more days. Talking about how he feeds his cattle, I discovered that his herd of cows graze year round. They are not fed at all. But his bulls and background calves are fed different rations of hay, silage, and corn. Today, we viewed some of his yearling and two-year old bulls, along with some of his registered cow herd. 

An aspect of his operation that I greatly enjoyed, was the fact that he implements rotational grazing. He uses a grazing system that is similiar to the mob grazing system that some ranchers use in the U.S. With this system the cattle are moved to a different portion of the pasture everyday to graze new grass. This stimulates better quality and quantity of grass growth. It was a learing experience for me because we implement similiar grazing techniques on our own operation.

Overall, the visit to today's farm was very educational and very fun. I learned many different techniques and compared a lot of them to our own in the U.S. I am definitely looking forward to our next farm visit.

Submitted by Austin Effling, the portion of the cropping information from this farm was reported by classmate Derek Van Heek