Greetings from Hornitos Beef!

We are well into the second month of our 2021 Happy February! We are finished up with our calving season, and have healthy calves trotting behind their mamas through each field. This year we had a relatively uneventful calving season. This is a huge blessing with our cattle not needing assistance in delivering their offspring. We are calved out and have finished our branding for this year as well as turning out bulls.





"We trust our neighbors but always brand our cattle."

Cow calf pairs are gathered in from the pastures and cows are given a thorough vet check, where we look for any medical conditions or soundness issues. Each calf is branded and clearly marked with our ear notch and registered brand the Quarter Circle T Lazy S for identification purposes. Each field has a bull to cow ratio of 25 to 1. This means one bull can successfully cover approximately 25 cows, depending on terrain and libido. We take a lot of time and energy into selecting sires for our herd. This can help with conception rate, average birth weight of calves, as well as feed conversion (grass into pounds). We try our very best to have healthy and hearty calves as well as uniformity in each calf crop. Bulls only spend approximately two to three months with the cows before they are gathered and put into the bull pastures for the rest of the year. This helps the cows calve within a time-period of two to three months, so we do not have year-round calving. This also helps us manage each field and helps prevent overgrazing.



Each year we are at the mercies of Mother Nature to take care of the nutritional needs of our herd, only providing supplements of locally grown forage hay and Salt. Consumption of salt among cattle improves their digestive system. Salt helps in the production of chloride and chloride helps in the synthesis of hydrochloric acid in the stomach of the cattle. Hydrochloric acid helps in faster food digestion. Every cow needs to consume 11 to 15 grams of salt daily to stay healthy.

This year we are getting a wonderful start to our grass season. However, the ground is soaking up each storm we are blessed with. The seasonal creeks are running but have already slowed down and there is dust that rises-up from the well-travelled cattle trails to their regular watering spots and favorite grazing areas. Please continue to pray for rain this year, not just for our grass season, but for the central valley farmers and ranchers that depend on our annual rainfall and snowpack for summer crops and grazing.

What’s New at the Ranch?

The past couple of months we have had our USDA harvests and have been filling 1/2 and 1/4 Ranch Raised Beef Orders with Families and CAL Fire stations. Thank you for each order. We still have available USDA 1/2 Ranch Raised Beef ready for delivery. Please contact us or visit our Hornitos Beef website to get your order today.

We also have our Ranch Raised Ground 85/15 % BEEF Boxes available for purchase. With two lbs. pkg and ½ lb., pattie options. We have limited supply available on our one lbs. packages. Stay up to date with our notifications through our MeWe account as well as our Facebook page.

Order now!

We are still scheduling harvest dates as well as taking Beef Orders for 1/2 and 1/4 options.

Thank you to each of our Customers and Followers. We greatly appreciate your business and your referrals. Please contact us at Hornitos Beef if you have any questions or comments. Best Wishes From all of us at Hornitos Beef.