Let me tell you about the roast I cooked

Normally I'd save roasts for times when we have company, but I was anxious to see what the meat from our steer was going to be like.  At the butcher shop up the road, they weigh the meat they're going to put into hamburger, then grind everybody's hamburger together.  It's much easier for them that way.  Cliff butchered for many years, and he understands why they do this, although it isn't how they did it at the Country Butcher Shop where he worked.  Anyhow, when we use our ground beef, it isn't just our animal, but a combination of meat from many cows.  
We didn't save any roasts from the last steer we had butchered, because he was a dwarf-looking animal of indeterminate age.  I only bought him so my heifer, Secret, who turned out to be sterile, would not be the only cow on the place.  When I realized Secret was never going to breed, we had her friend butchered and sold her.  
This steer (I am being nice and not calling him by name, in case that would bother some of my readers) was only one year old, and really big and fat as Jerseys go.  Cliff decided to take the risk and have some steaks and roasts made.  
We have raised and butchered our own beef before; we've also had quality beef quarters from a butcher shop.  But we have never tasted any beef this flavorful and tender. 
I don't know if it's because he was still getting two gallons of his mother's milk daily, or because he was so young.  
I could eat roast this good every day, but I won't; I'll save the others for when we have company.

In answer to a reader's questions:

1. At what age will this calf be in your freezer?

Probably when he's around a year old, maybe older, depending on whether we have plentiful pasture. We won't give him grain or try to fatten him at all; we'll have him mostly put in ground beef except for the organ meats and the fillets, just like we did the last steer.

2. Do you call for someone to slaughter or Cliff does it himself?

Cliff working at the butcher shop in the '70's.

Cliff butchered for many years of his life, so he is capable of doing it; we butchered a couple of hogs in his shop four years ago, and again in 2007.

However, all the years he spent butchering left him with arthritis in his hands and shoulder. If he butchers an animal now, he pays dearly for weeks afterward with pain in his arthritic joints.

And then there's always the risk of a family member losing a digit in the process of helping.

So these days we haul the animal a mile up the road to the local butcher shop.

Muhd, those questions were anything but silly.

If anyone else has questions about milk cows or butchering at home, feel free to ask and I'll edit this entry and add them, along with my answers.

Small Farm Girl asks, "We have beef cattle; can you milk them?"

Indeed you can, if they are gentle enough. However, you'd be robbing the calf. A beef cow normally gives just enough milk for one baby (perhaps one to three gallons a day), and the baby needs all of it. Dairy cows have been bred down through the centuries to give much more milk than a calf needs. Some Holsteins give over ten gallons of milk a day at their peak of production.

Beef cows are, well, beefy; they've been bred so that what they eat goes to beef. That's why they have lots of meat on their bones, whereas dairy cows are bred to utilize their food to make milk. This is why my Jersey is so skinny. If you butcher a dairy cow, the meat is good; but the steaks are small and the meat doesn't have the tendency to marble like a beef animal. One item of interest: the fat on a Jersey, when you butcher her, is yellow, for the same reason a Jersey cow's cream is yellow. I think it's something about the way they convert chlorophyll and beta-carotene, if I remember correctly.