Grass-fed Cattle Ranching

[yeosch25i]

Could you please get a news guy who knows how to read? Thanks. :)

[peakmoment]

Hi yeosch25i,

This is one of our first Peak Moment programs, early in 2006. We no longer have a news person...

Janaia

[spurrit]

They're hobbyists with hats, at best.

[peakmoment]

Hobby? Why be denigrating? There are many in our community very glad that they provide grass-fed beef to our local residents and restaurants. Many small efforts like this are needed to counter the huge factory farms and industrial agriculture. When fuel prices are sky-high, and meat trucked in from far away is $40/pound, I'd be glad to be on their short list of loyal customers.

[spurrit]

BTW, 100 head of cows will only make you about $10,000 a year. These are trust fund idiots playing rancher.

[peakmoment]

In our DVD "Come Home to Eat" with a panel of about 12 food producers in our area of the Sierra foothills, these folks and others talk about the realities of trying to make a living. Far from being "trust fund idiots", both of these people work at outside jobs because the land here isn't sufficiently productive (and the cost of importing feed too high) to make a living ranching.

[spurrit]

Great, just what we needed. Hippies and idiots misrepresenting how ranching works.

BTW, for those of you that want organic food, but bitch about hunting, have you ever considered that deer meat is about as organic as it gets?

[peakmoment]

This couple are ranchers describing how they go about it in this region. That may not match how it's done elsewhere, but they're certainly not lying about how they approach it.

[Ceg47241]

Look like he has decent cows, good ole black baldies. But grass fed beef is a joke. Takes a long time to finish an animal, therefore, ones turn-around is a looooong time period. Besides, the marbling is horrible.

[peakmoment]

Although David Gallino doesn't do this practice, one of our local producers of grass-fed beef has fine-tuned a method in which he raises the cattle in less than a year, and does not need to move them elsewhere during the dry, grass-less summer months.

[Zoo110986]

another approach is to make due with unfinished meat. Harder to cook, perhaps, but probably closer to wild game than anything, which isn't' a bad thing.

[wsteven82]

Okay, now with Joel Salatin in mind, doesn't these farmers complaining that it takes 17 acres per cow, and talking about trucking the cattle 150 miles one way back and forth just sound silly? It sounds to me like they aren't good grass farmers.

[wsteven82]

Look up dexter cattle. Dexters and other small cattle can survive on as little as a half acre so you could raise 25 or 30 of them on 17 acres. The secret is to become a good grass farmer.... if they just eat it down to dirt you're not going to make good use of your land.. you have to rotate them and give your ground time to recover. Google "intensive rotational grazing".

[peakmoment]

Thanks for the good input! We produced a DVD of Joel Salatin's practices, where he moves the cattle to different pasture areas every few days, depending on the season. The chickens come in after the cows, fertilizing and eating bugs. Neat system of using the land gently but fully. (on the peakmoment dot tv website).

[seancarm]

17 acres sounds kind of low. I'm not sure you can run a cow and calf on 17 acres in alot of the range states. While being a good grass farmer is important, rainfall is real important. Low rainfall equals low stocking rates

[Prsnsfrms]

@seancarm i like where i live..on an average year including ground to make hay...on atleast a medium sized scale (20 cows or more) it takes roughly 4-5 acres to a pair

[wsteven82]

17 acres per head... holy cow.

[peakmoment]

That's why so many are pointing out that we use fewer resources if we eat lower on the food chain (more nuts fruits and vegetables; poultry rather than beef, etc.). However, these cattle are raised on "marginal" lands not otherwise productive for food-growing because the soil is poor.

[egnilk66]

As was Joel Salatin's farm back in his dad's farming days... it was almost useless. Useless, that is, until they came along with rotational grass farming... Now it's great land to farm.