Home Grown Beef

There is a price increase this year as I'm trying to get this operation past break-even. You would think that feeding cattle just grass would be less expensive then feeding them all the fuel intensive produced corn and grains. So, it should be cheaper, yet he gets a premium, but he claims that it is break even; how does that work?

Grass-finished Beef Newsletter April 2012

OMEGA-3 is a group of fatty acids. Man was designed to maintain healthy with a diet that had a near balance of Omega-3’s, with another group of fatty acids, the Omega-6’s. Modern grain based, highly processed diets, high in cooking oils and fast foods, often have about 20 times more Omega-6, then Omega–3 in them. The Omega-3 that historically was especially well balanced in meat, and milk, which is now out of whack, because milk and beef cattle are all raised on grain.

The SOILS here in South Dakota are geologically young, being from the most recent Wisconsin glacial advance. They are still rich in many of the trace minerals that today have been leached out of older more weathered soils. The cattle get supplemental salt and minerals, but much is provided to the plants by the soil and of course from the plants to the animals. This method worked for several thousand years before commercial feedlots and we feel that it is still the best way.

There has been a large portion of all beef breeds in the U.S. that have been selected for high performance on hot high grain rations. I use cattle that are moderate framed older style genetics, that do well on just forages. Small groups that have survived the shift to mass-produced feed lot beef during the past 50 years. Typical cattle today have been bred to produce the most dollars in an industrial system. The ideal feedlot type beef animal is not the best grassfed animal.