Beef Cattle

So you’re looking at getting into beef cattle farming? Look no further farmer! You’ve come to the right place and this article should give you the basics of starting your own beef cattle operation. This article is designed to help you set up your first small 10 cow beef ranch, but your setup can be however you like!

Step 1

Ensure that you have space for your cows! To do this, you will need to head to the Global Market and look for “Agricultural” land. We will start with a pasture as this is cheaper than constructing a building or feed lot, and you can determine your pasture size based on your plans.

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Step 2
After you have purchased enough acres, you will need to go and turn the land into pasture. This can be done in Interactions > Land > Agricultural. This has a preparation cost of $10,000 per acre, so be prepared! In addition, it will take a few hours per acre that is prepared. This is the process of getting large rocks, brush, and trees cleared from the pasture area, as well as having it fenced in.

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Step 3

Once the land has been prepped, it will show as prepped. At this point you can go to the Global Market > Animals > Cows and you should see the list of available breeds to purchase. Pick any beef breed, and we will buy 9 Heifers (Females) and 1 Bull (Male). You will also select what pasture you want to send them to, and any that you own that are prepped and have space available will show up.

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Step 4

Once you have purchased the cows, they will show in the pasture details page as shown below. From here on out, it’s simply a job of caring for your cattle until they reach maturity, at which point you can continue to raise them or send them to be butchered depending on your farms needs at the time.

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Tips

• Cows fed on pasture only will put on weight the slowest, at a rate of 10-15kg a day (Game Month)

• Cows fed on pasture with supplemental hay will put on weight a bit faster, at 12-18kg a day.

• Cows in a feedlot provided with hay and grain will put on weight fastest, at 15-23kg a day.

• As you can see, you can more quickly get animals to ideal weight with feed lots or supplemental feed, but this requires more manual work.

• A female cow is pregnant for approximately 9 days (Game Months)

• A new calf must remain in the same facility as it’s mother for 6 months.

• Pastures have enough space for 5 days of feed, Feed lots have enough space for 3 days of feed.

• Many stats can be improved through Agriculture research, so consider building a research facility (If you are making a Agricultural Subsidiary!)

Cows are very early in their first iteration, and many features are yet to come to bring more depth, realism, and fun to them. However, we hope this article will help get you started, and we look forward to seeing you run the next successful Nauts ranch!