As you can see by looking at our
cattle, they are happy and healthy inside and out. We have chosen to raise our cattle in a
certified organic, 100% grass-fed production system, which is much different
than industrial meat production and other conventional practices. We would like to highlight a few differences that we
feel are most important for you to understand when you are making the choice to
purchase meat in the future.
We want to start off with the
pasture grasses since they are the main food source for our cattle. We take great care to make sure our pasture has
a good mix of grasses and legumes. Since we have plenty of grasses already in
the pasture, each spring we use a practice called frost seeding to plant more
legumes (usually red clover for us). Frost seeding is putting the seed on top
of the pastures, usually during March, on days that alternate between freezing
at night and thawing during the day. Along with the spring rains, this helps
the seed make its way into the soil surface. Frost seeding offers several
potential advantages, including the ability to establish forage in undisturbed
sod, a reduced need for labor and energy compared to conventional seeding
methods, and the ability to establish forages with minimum equipment
investment. Once the pastures take off
and start growing in the spring, the cattle are anxious to start grazing. It’s
important, both for the health of the animals and the pastures, to manage their
grazing. We do this by dividing the pasture into smaller sections called
paddocks. We rotate our cattle from paddock to paddock every five days to make
sure they are getting the best of what each has to offer and adequately grazing
the grass in that area so it will regrow. Sometimes we over-winter animals as
well. Since our cattle are 100% grass-fed, you might be wondering what they eat
when the hillsides are covered with snow. Over the course of the summer, we
harvest alfalfa as well as premium pasture grasses, which sometimes are in
abundance compared to the amount our small herd can eat. We bale the grass and
alfalfa and store it in the barn to feed during the winter.
But what about those pesky weeds
that pop up in our pastures? We mow our lush pastures when we can to either
harvest the grasses or to manage the weeds. Sometimes we have to hand-dig some
of those stubborn weeds. There is a newer bad boy invasive species in town, and
its name is the multiflora rose. Our animals will eat off the new young shoots
to prevent any more spread, but even so it can get out of hand quickly. The other alternative that conventional farms
use is to spray herbicide directly onto their pastures, weeds and grasses
included. This creates a residue that stays on the good grasses and seeps into
the soil. Then you also have the run-off that occurs from these chemicals when
it rains and washes into area waterways. So with a little extra effort, and
sometimes ‘elbow grease’, we can control the weeds without contaminating the
environment or our animals’ food source.
One of the concerns with raising
beef cattle is managing internal parasites. In a conventional system animals
are treated with something called
anthelmintic products. Most of the products used are either avermectins/
milbemycins (ivermectin, dormectin, eprinomectin, and moxidectin) or
benzimidazoles (oxfendazole, albendazole, fendbendazole), (from UW
Extention Cooperative). If you are like
us, you are having a hard time even trying to pronounce those chemicals. The
chemical residue is then absorbed into the animal and accumulates in the organs
and fat to combat the parasites. Then what happens to the chemicals? You
guessed it - they work their way through the animal and are deposited into the
pastures and thus passed through to the pasture environment. We rotate our
animals to different paddocks every 5 days and they do not return to a paddock
again for at least a month. Because of this, we actually ‘break’ the life cycle
of the internal parasites. We also use Diatomaceous Earth (DE) to help kill off
those pesky buggers. We have the DE
mixed with the very desirable kelp meal, Redmond trace minerals salt and a drizzle of organic molasses that we
offer as a free choice ration, which they love. The DE and minerals move through the animal and
get deposited in random plops throughout the pasture. This is one way we
utilize our pasture and it also helps prevents fly larvae from hatching.
Our animals stay very healthy in
our pastures and are never confined or crowded. This helps to avoid any other health problems
that may naturally occur. In confinement operations, disease can spread easily
since the animal population is so dense. Because of this, conventionally raised
animals are routinely fed antibiotics in their feed, mineral blocks or are
given routine injections. This overuse has caused antibiotic resistant
bacteria, such as E. coli 0157. While
antibiotic use is prohibited in organic animal production, we would use an
antibiotic to save a life or prevent suffering in any of our animals. If an
antibiotic were to be used, we would sell that animal on the conventional
market as it would no longer be certified organic.
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| Mineral Feeder |
What about flies – we all despise
those little buggers too! But they can
cause great hardship and pain to cattle.
If not controlled, they can create and spread Pink-eye to the
animals. So how do we control the flies
you ask? Good question! We make a mixture of Organic Citronella and Organic
Sunflower oil and put it on strips in front of the mineral feeder. When the
cattle go into the feeder for minerals, the oil mixture is then distributed to
their faces and repels the flies. This
has been wonderfully effective for our cattle and we have not had any problems
since we implemented this system. The alternative
would be to use either a dust bag or Cattle Rub containing insecticides to
treat the animals. Some insecticides
used include Methoxychlor, Pyrethroids or Imaden, Permectrin Dust or Rabon
Dust. Those chemicals are absorbed into the animal’s skin and through the air
they breathe. The insecticides are then passed though the animal and into the
manure and pasture environment. This is not allowed in organic production.
Now we move to the back end of the
cow. We have already touched on a few
things that move through the cattle’s system, hence the reason we don’t give
them those bad things we call contaminants.
Because our cattle eat the luscious grass and legumes in our paddocks,
those little patty plops are great fertilizer for our pastures. Because we rotationally graze our animals, we
make sure to get a wide spread of ‘cow pies’ throughout the entire pasture
area. Some of you might think it’s not
so good to have those, I agree you don’t want to step in them, but because our
animals are spread out in the paddocks, we don’t have to ‘find a place’ for all
that concentrated manure in one spot. Our manure stays in the paddocks and
increases the pasture fertility. This means no hauling, no fossil fuel use and
no disposal problems. On the conventional feedlots or non-pastured cattle, with
so many animals crowded in one spot, and the average beef cow producing 10 tons
of manure a year, that can spell (or smell) trouble. All of that manure has to go somewhere! Where
it goes varies from feedlot to feedlot, but they have to find places to
dispose of what really ends up as a liability instead of a valuable asset.
When purchasing meat from our farm,
you can rest assured that our animals are well taken care of. We encourage you
to visit our farm and see for yourself.
If you have questions about our animal practices, make sure you ask your
farmers. We are here to help further aid
you in making an informed choice, one that you feel is best for you and your
family. If our meat is a part of that choice, we are happy to be your farm!
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