Food Production, to us, means taking on a few responsibilities – like making sure food is safe and nutritious and safeguarding the environment. In the case of beef, it means caring for sentient beings. Our charge, every day – snow and wind, sun and rain, hot and cold, day and night – is to meet our cattle’s innate needs so as to enhance their quality of life.
Food safety is key. We use USDA inspected processing facilities. Because we don’t use feedlot diets, we minimize e. coli risk. Our cattle receive no growth promotants in the form of hormones, implants, antibiotics or ionophores. They DO get growth promotant in the form of fresh daily pasture – it actually works quite well!
Cattle welfare, to us, means interfering as little as possible with the cattle’s essence of being, while still managing our herd. For example, cattle would naturally graze an area, then move on. We need fences to keep our cattle home, but we move our cattle daily to new grass during grazing season to try to mimic what they would naturally do. We choose to vaccinate and deworm our cattle to ensure their health and productivity. We also breed using artificial insemination to enhance genetic performance. That means we need to have a way to capture and restrain cattle. To minimize stress on our cattle when we do choose to handle them, we built a corral system based on a Temple Grandin design (she does know what she’s talking about, by the way). In the summer we put up back fences so that cattle can get to shade. In the winter we put out extra bedding when the weather is bad. We use quiet weanersto reduce stress at weaning time. We have invested in significant infrastructure so that waterers can move with the cows on pasture, meaning they don’t have to walk far to drink.
When we “bought the farm”, much of the ground was in corn, even though it was classified as highly erodible. Soil fertility levels were abysmal (I was impressed that key nutrients for grass production even registered in the “low” category. We have turned the highly erodable land back to sod and continue to use amendments to improve soil fertility (primarily poultry litter). We partnered with NRCS to set up a rotational grazing system that also keeps cattle out of the streams to protect water resources. In addition, we planted trees and shrubs to enhance wildlife habitat.