(Grass-fed) ground beef is 65% lower in saturated fat and its New York strips are 35% lower than conventional beef, as measured by the USDA. “Any feedlot-fattened animal has a much higher level of saturated fat than a forage-fed steer,” says Dr. Steve Atchley.

It makes sense. Grass is a low-starch, high-protein fibrous food, in contrast to carbohydrate-rich, low-fiber corn and soybeans. When animals are 100% grass-fed, their meat is not only lower in saturated fats but also slightly higher in omega-3 fatty acids, the healthy fats found in salmon and flaxseed, which studies indicate may help prevent heart disease and bolster the immune system. Ground beef and milk from grass-finished cattle also have more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which recent data suggest may help prevent breast cancer, diabetes and other ailments. Moreover, grass-finished meat is higher than grain-finished meat in vitamin A and vitamin E, two antioxidants thought to boost resistance to disease.

Link to the full article at Time.com – “The Grass-Fed Revolution”

Thanks to our friends at Family Friendly Farm in Cape Girardeau, MO for sending us to time.com to find these articles. Be sure to check them out for your local food buying needs – this year, in addition to carrying our pork and grass-fed beef in their on-farm store, they are carrying a number of other local products, including pastured eggs, grass-fed milk, pastured broilers, veal, turkey, lamb, catfish, homemade bread, honey, organic vegetables, and even local soap!

I’ve written before about how much I love to move the cows each day to new pasture. It’s because it seems to make them so happy and it just seems like you’re helping them do what they were created to do, graze. We’ll, allowing the hogs to forage for their own food is much like moving the cows to a new paddock. The hogs are visibly excited when they are allowed to root around and find nuts, clover, etc. When I drove up to the farm they were piled on each other and sleeping but they jumped at the chance to do this…

This year will mark the first year that we’ve planted a crop specifically for late fall/winter grazing, so we’re excited to see how long we’re able to keep the cows on the pasture this winter. For now, they are still happily grazing on the cool season pasture – alfalfa, orchardgrass, volunteer summer annuals (foxtail is their favorite), and some sparse MaxQ fescue. They are about to rotate through the bermuda pasture one more time (lightly), and then will be back on the cool season grasses.

So for our extended grazing crop, we’re currently seeding 2 different types of forage ahead of the cattle. Our choices were Surrey ryegrass and turnips, both of which are well known for quick establishment and hardiness during colder weather in addition to producing solid weight gains for the cattle. If all goes well, they’ll be strip grazing the ryegrass and turnips when snow is on the ground here in Missouri… and we will be dealing with significantly fewer round bales this winter. We’ll let you know how it goes.

Steven and I are learning first hand the work load increase that any small farm, grass fed dairy incurs. Steven wakes up one hour earlier to make his trek out to the paddock where the cows are grazing. (The walk gets progressively shorter since the rotationally grazing mob is on their way back to the barn. Every day, the walk is 30 feet shorter.) For the majority of dairies, they cut out this trek to the pasture by keeping the cows in sandy stalls or a dry lot and bringing them hay and grain.

Ivy is the cow. Milk is her game. She is a dehorned, black Irish Dexter cow and despite her eight years as “just a cow” she has become a quite trusty and calm milk machine. Steven halters her and leads her to the barn. He built a milking stanchion last year in hopes that one day he would be able to lead one of these dual purpose bovines up onto the raised platform to get a taste of this solar powered butter, cheese, ice cream, and milk. The crest of Ivy’s shoulder is just above my waste, so you could imagine the problems one may have when trying to milk udders that are so close to the ground.  We milk with a “short bucket” and a raised cow.

Day after day, Ivy gets more and more comfortable with her new roll. She knows where the stanchion is and will walk up into it and put her head through to chomp down on some delicious alfalfa cubes. I’ll admit, she liked my husband way more than me at first. She landed three kicks of about 30 tries when I first tried to take a turn at milking. Now when I see her shifting her weight, I rub the cow equivalent of a shin on her back leg until she calms and levels her weight back out. When you’re so “personal” when the cow and your head is totally in HER space, you can tell when she starts to have thoughts of kicking.

Milking is definitely a learned technique. You just have to learn it by doing it. Steven gets her going and the bucket gets all foamy. I tried and I was barely able to get a squirt out! Now, I am proud to say, that I can hum the melody to “I’m a Soul Man” to keep a rhythm and milk our three quarters of a gallon. Oh, yeah! Sure, she still gives Steven more milk, but my skills are growing.

When Steven milks both morning and evening, we are getting just over two gallons a day.  All this milk, what to do? What to do? Well make butter of course! Dexter milk has a fair share of cream. The lush alfalfa, clover, and orchard grass pastures make fine milk with plenty of cream. One quarter or more of each jar is cream after 24 hours. It takes longer to separate and float to the top than Jersey milk because the fat globules are smaller.

We’ve been exploring Gelato making. So far, we’ve had two batches that were C to F grades. This was due to our rookie mistakes. Now we are just pulling out two more batches, one vanilla and one Nutella. They are better but we may need to get a gelato maker as it seems that the speed of the paddles are slower when making real gelato.

For all of you who don’t know why one would go through the trouble to milk a cow I’ll just sum up some of the reasons. First, Ivy is 100% grass fed. Her milk has benefits similar to meat that is grass fed. The milk fat is healthy. Ivy is not fed “preventative” or sub therapeutic  antibiotics. So this is not in her milk. She is not given any bovine growth hormones to increase her production. Her body is cycling like a natural cow, a healthy cow, a womanly cow, as God designed. She’s giving the amount of milk that God intended her to give, not artificially over-producing for the sake of business profits.  Hormones come from the cow into her milk mainly in the fat molecules, so if there are added hormones (or naturally elevated estrogen due to the cow being pregnant) they are found in the cream & butter.  Ivy’s cream and butter, on the other hand, contain (probably) higher levels of CLAs and better ratios of EFAs.

Read more on Eat Wild

Anyone else have experience with a milk cow that you’d like to share? Anyone milking a Dexter? Anyone have any stories about Raw Milk benifites that you’ve experienced?

I’m moving the cows every day between 5:00 and 6:00 pm. We’ve got 6 Dexter cows, 6 Dexter calves of all ages, 1 Dexter Bull, and 5 Belted Galloway yearlings. All of these bovines are grazing paddocks each day that are right at 0.14 acres. That’s just over 1/8 of an acre. At this time, May 30th, each paddock is starting at knee high and over, of alfalfa, clover (ladino and red), orchard grass, and a little Max Q fescue. There is a small amount of weeds and I’m starting to see crabgrass and some other grasses that I haven’t identified yet. We are now on our second rotation since…. I believe March 27th of this year. This is the date that we let the cows off of their winter paddock by the barn and stopped feeding hay. We did supplement with just a little hay to help them keep from bloating though. When we first started rotating the cows were grazing most of the forage off, after a couple of weeks we were able to get the right paddock size that caused the cows to trample any forage that they didn’t eat. This has been spectacular for the regrowth!

Now, in the second rotation the grass is tall and the cows are continuing to do lots of trampling, now as much as 40 or 50%. If we were grazing existing pasture I might feel bad about all that trampling but we have to keep reminding ourselves that 13 months ago this “pasture” was all dirt! Being crow crop land for 30 years or more, the organic matter was very low and this trampled forage is helping to build soil and create the excellent soil fertility that we desire. It’s amazing to see how long moisture is held in the areas with tall forage and or trampled forage. It’s also great for us to see how soil life is thriving. We see many insects in the fields, worms in the ground, and dung beetles working hard to bury the manure! This is actually really important because the manure (fertilizer) is being moved closer to the plant’s roots, flies aren’t able to reproduce in the cow pies, and holes are left in the ground that help to absorb and store water when it rains.

On to some pictures of this years forage.

First is a picture of the grasses just starting to grow. We have really bad rows showing because of using a seed drill last year and it was worrisome to me in the beginning that we may have not left enough grass standing last year.

Next is a picture from just a little later. This is when we were allowing the herd to graze just a little each day, in preparation for the start of full grazing on the spring lush.

These pictures are probably 2 weeks into grazing. Each day the forage residue is a little different but this is a pretty good look at a typical move. The cows are eating tall (first rotation still) spring growth and leaving shorter, damaged forage behind with a high amount of manure deposited.

This is probably 2 weeks of rest.

The rest period on the first rotation was around 50 days but here is a picture at about 25 days rest. There is really no comparison to how it looks now.

This is my little girl sitting right in the middle of the salad bar at about it’s maximum height. I feel that allowing the forage to get tall and mature helps them to develop the root system that will benefit us in the future. Not to mention that our cows are our only tool to manage the farm at this point and they can only eat so fast!

Getting back to the thought that I had when starting this post, Moving the cows IS the best. I have such a great time moving the “mini mob” onto new forage each day, taking note of how the last paddock looks, now the new paddock looks, providing water and minerals to the animals, and walking backwards through the field to see how it’s all recovering and what is working the best. We do have an area that was trampled really badly when it got too muddy and it’s really interesting to see how it’s recovering over time too. If in the future we can get away from feeding hay at all, and just rotate cows onto clean salad bars each day, now that would be the ultimate job for me!

Do any of you have the same feelings about moving cows, have experience doing Management-Intensive Grazing or mob grazing, or have a similarly gratifying “chore” on the farm? I love comments!

Our two acres of Bermuda border the highway and were especially embarrassing because from the road you couldn’t hardly tell that there were any desirable grasses in the pasture. So, the mowing was a must! It was an interesting day. Bill was the guy with the tractor. He’s the same Bill that raises shrimp near by. The said tractor doesn’t have a working alternator so we spent the first 15 minutes jumping the tractor then hooked up the bush hog, a King Kutter. I was surprised how difficult it was to hook up as I’ve never used one before. It gave the impression that it wasn’t meant to be put on and off very often. None the less, I was very greatful to have the chance to borrow it. Bill sent me on my way and after driving a few miles to our farm I spent the next 2 or 3 hours mowing the worst of our weeds and seeded out grass. Just before I headed back to The Storks farm to return the tractor I let it die on me and had to try and jump it, remember, the alternator doesn’t work. Well, my 1500 truck wasn’t getting the job done so I ended up hooking it up to a battery charger over night and taking it back in the morning.

I couldn’t believe how it changed the look of our Bermuda pasture to have them cut down. There is actually a solid sod forming and by cutting it all off even it made it look so much better. Where I wondered if we even had any Bermuda, we’ve actually got tons of it!

I also mowed down one edge of a pasture that is mostly volunteer Foxtail grasses. They looked pretty, all seeded out but when you walked through it you could see that there was actually alot of bare ground at the ground level. I’m hoping that it will now be encouraged to fill in with the alfalfa, clovers and other grass seeds that we sowed more recently. I’m happy to report that we do have some new grasses germinating. They are either the MaxQ Fescue or more Orchard grass. There is also alot of oats that are reseeding from the oats that we planted in the spring as a nurse crop.

Now that we have a few more cows I’m looking forward to seeing how much better the pasture will look with faster rotations but the true magic will happen in a few years when we get closer to our total capacity.

-Once again, I wish I had pictures for you but I keep forgeting my camera.

About a week ago my wife and I picked up about 8 Walmart bags full of apples from her grandmothers yard. Nearly all of these apples would have gone to waste but now they are helping to add weight and flavor to our Red Wattle hogs.

We are blessed with numerous pecan trees and 2 large persimmon trees on our farm and hope to use these to help finish the hogs each year. This past week the first persimmons started to ripen and finally the hogs realized that these were good after all. It’s amazing how nasty something can taste until it is “ripe”! I’ve got high hopes for persimmons being a great hog feed. I’ve read that in Europe people used to finish hogs by pasturing them in persimmon groves. I tried a few of these little squishy fruits but can’t see them haveing a large presence in our kitchen because so much of the fruit is it’s large seeds. All the better for the hogs though, those guys love to munch on nuts! 

After the hurricane sent strong winds through on Sunday there were loads of persimmons and still green pecans on the ground so I’ve been gathering these and putting them in a trough for the hogs. They root through the fruit and find anything that’s ripe to gobble up. I’m hoping that like a tomato, these persimmons will ripen with time, after they’ve fallen from the tree.

Next I’m trying to get the hogs to try some Black Walnuts that are starting to fall, and even a few pawpaws that I was able to get from a neighbor. 

What kind of free wholesome foods have you found for your critters or yourself?

We talked to a number of people and read tons of literature on different forages. We wanted grasses that would last many years, would do well in warm and cool weather (through the whole growing season), and that would give the animals a varied diet.

We decided early on that we didn’t want fescue because we had heard so many grass farmers complain about it’s negative effects. The endophyte that infects all common fescue grass is great for the grass because it helps it to survive drought conditions and be hardy over all. The endophyte is not good however for mares and cattle. For mares it can cause an abortion and/or no milk to be produced, but in cattle the effects are more subtle with decreased conception and overall poor performance of cattle. While trying to put together a list of a few grasses and a few legumes to mix into our pastures it was very difficult to find any grass that is expected to persist as well as fescue and everyone around here would comment to us, “Well, everyone I know just plants fescue and clover”. This wasn’t what we wanted to hear, we were starting from scratch so we wanted to plant the BEST mix that we could, not just what was common.

Finally, we found out about a new type of fescue that was developed to incorporate the advantages of fescue but omit it’s disadvantages to the animals. This newly developed fescue is called MaxQ Fescue and has been “infected” with an endophyte that is very similar to the type that infects varieties like K31 but this endophyte seems to have no effect on horses or cattle.

We finally settled on a mix of orchard grass and MaxQ fescue for our grasses and alfalfa and ladino clover for our legumes. While ordering our fescue we were informed that it does not establish itself well in the spring so we held off on that, the most expensive of all the seed. We drilled our mixed pasture on about 8 acres on April 18th 2008. We would have liked to get this seed out sooner but the rains this year just would not let up! We’ve been really happy with the growth of these forages and have welcomed many other grasses such as foxtail, johnson, crab grass, etc. that came up for FREE! 

Because of the cost and hassel of drilling seed with a tractor, we just broadcast the MaxQ seed this past Saturday. We used a hand held seeder that throws the seed onto the ground and starting yesterday the cattle are grazing over this area to press the seed into the ground. Because this particular seed is so expensive and our pasture has done so well in most areas, we only planted fescue in the areas that looked like they could use it.

September 15th is supposed to be the optimal time for us to plant fescue in our area but because it will likely take our cows a month to rotate through this pasture, one paddock at a time, we planted a little early.

Have you had any experience developing a pasture from scratch? Any advice for us weekend grass farmers?

As you can see in this picture of Corretta and her new calf, it doesn't take much to keep the cows in their paddock. The tiny white line that you can see is the electric polywire. Boardering the corn is our perirmeter high tensile fence. In the distance you can see the other calf "creep feeding" by going under the portable fence to find grass.

Our livestock management is then focused on getting all the animals to consume as much pasture as possible. They are actually harvesting our crop for us rather than us using a combine, tractors, and trucks to harvest and haul the crop to the animals to be eaten. The most efficient way that we have found for the cattle to harvest our pasture and actually enhance the pasture rather than damage it is to move them every single day to a new paddock or piece of the pasture. We do this with a single strand of electric polywire that can be wound on a reel and set up with temporary step-in posts.

This type of grazing is called Management Intensive Grazing or MiG. Because our pasture is very new our stocking rate is not as good as it will be in the coming years. We have plenty of bare ground that is waiting for the right conditions and seed to come it’s way so that it can produce more forage. For now though we are staying pretty consistent with our paddock sizes each day. It’s working out that the cows are on about 1/8 of an acre per day. This is 4 cows, 2 yearlings, and 1 calf that is just starting to eat some grass. I’d say that this equals a little over 5 cow units or about 0.02 acres/cow/day. This isn’t much land per cow but then again this is only for one day.

I understand that this may seem a little confusing or like useless information but with these numbers we can see that over a 30 day rotation we are going to need about 3.57 acres. 30 days is the most often recommended rest period for pasture but we’re raising that to at least 60 days considering that we just planted our pasture this spring. This should give the forages plenty of time to develop root systems that will help them survive grazing and the winter freeze.

Hopefully every year our pasture space needed for each cow will decrease as our forage quality increases this should allow us to produce quite a bit of beef on our meager 10 acres.

* Keep in mind that our adult cows are only about 750lb Dexters, not 1200lb commercial cattle.