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Northeast Missouri | I don't spend much time in sale barns, and when there I've never really kept track of how much blind or half-blind 500 lb calves are often docked--maybe split off from a group of otherwise good quality calves. I know bigger operations don't really want ones that are a hassle to handle or work. Plus, they may have "social trouble" getting adjusted when thrown in with a sizeable group of calves put together from several sources and drylotted in a big pen.
But we had significant pinkeye problems last year, plus my shoulder surgery meant that I just didn't get all of them caught & treated before ending up with permanent blindness. Only one or two were "completely" blind (or really, they can see light around the white scar tissue when they get close to things, so not completely blind), but we had several with one blind eye and one partialy blind eye--still pretty much impaired. So I haven't usually feed cattle other than to keep one for beef, but I fed these half dozen head and they did well--as I expected they would, finding the feed and water was not a problem in a 1/2-acre lot where they stayed the entire time.
Sold them the other day. The small end were a bit lighter than I had thought--1072 lbs.--but they sold for $190/lb. And the 1300 pounders sold for ~$184.
They did well enough (compared to what they'd have brought as 500 lb. calves last fall) that it gets me to thinking about feeding out some blind calves every year--but hopefully not ones I had raised, this time.<g> They'd take a little more time and TLC to get a group accumulated (not easy to communicate to an order buyer how blind a calf would be acceptable to me) and settled in, but it might be worthwhile.
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Typical discount for half-blind stockers?
