After an excellent couple of days in Montevideo, we travel four hours North East to Treinta Y Tres, Uruguay. Treinta Y Tres is a very rural town with a population of approximately 25,000. We arrived at Los Tilos Angus on Tuesday afternoon and started out learning some background about the farm. Los Tilos is a family business dedicated to beef production and promotion of Aberdeen Angus since the 1960s. Their mission is to offer Aberdeen Angus genetic products, bred and managed in natural and economically sustainable conditions. Their operation consists of five different farms; El Condado-replacement heifers, El Avestrus-purebred cattle, La Fortaleza-adult cows breeding, Los Rubios-Female yearlings, fattening cows, heifers’ first service, and bull preparations, Los Tilos-sale of male calves. Los Tilos is roughly an 8400-acre operation. They have 6570 acres of which is grazing. Los Tilos’ land type is mostly rolling hills, which had some amazing scenery. Their land reminded me of the mid-west in the united states. On the farm, they had 1614 pregnant cows, 328 sheep, and 121 horses. We started by looking at a group of cattle and determining their body condition score. After scoring about 30 calves, we regrouped and compared our scores with the owner’s scores. The cattle looked very healthy even though they had been going through a drought in the past few months. We then walked through three different paddocks looking at the forage quality of each paddock and talking about how they could improve the quality. One thing that stood out to me about Los Tilos was that they were always trying to improve their operation to produce the best product. After a long walk through the rolling hills of the ranch, we went to one of the ruins for a dinner provided by the family. We ended the night with great food and getting able to talk to the family about their operation.
