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!

   This video has been shared on a number of other farm blogs in the last few days but for those of you that don’t frequent these other blogs I wanted to make sure you saw it. The video was done by the Wall Street Journal. (They’ve done a few nice ones lately) It’s a quick look at corn-fed and grass-fed beef. 

  I think it’s got some valuable information but wonder about some things that are stated. For example, both the grass farmer and the feed lot owner mention how little profit they are getting per animal. There are so many variables to profit margin that I still believe we can try and keep our overhead low and make a profit with grass fed beef but I can understand that with 7 or 8 dollar corn it’s pretty hard to make a profit on commodity beef. 

   Any thoughts? Do you care what you eat, eats? Does any of this surprise you?

What is Salad Bar Beef?

“Salad Bar Beef” is a term used to describe cattle that have been fed a wide variety of grasses and legumes.  The whole notion here is that we’re extending the old phrase “you are what you eat” to “you are what you eat, eats”.  In other words, when you eat an animal product, you’re essentially eating a bit of whatever that animal ate in its lifetime.  And every day when our cattle are moved to a new paddock, they have a “salad bar” in front of them – consisting of a wide variety of grasses and legumes… just the kind of thing that your doctor would probably suggest that you eat!

Health Benefits

Our salad bar beef is healthier both for what our cattle eat and what they don’t eat.  Our cattle are given no hormones and no routine antibiotics.  Grass is essentially the only thing going into their bodies, other than the salt/kelp mix that they have access to for their mineral needs.  Kelp is dried seaweed, and is a natural source of trace minerals.

So what impact does this diet have on you?  In addition to minimizing potentially cancer-causing hormones and unnecessary antibiotics, grass-fed beef is better for your body overall.  According to Loren Cordain, a professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Colorado State University, grass-fed beef resembles the wild game our ancestors ate.  It contains less fat, less saturated fat, more CLA (an anti-cancer fat) and more omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed beef.  This means that the fat in grass-fed beef has more “good” fat, much like salmon, which has also been touted as a good source of healthy fat.

Quality / Taste

The heath benefits of salad bar beef would be of limited value if the beef ended up tasting awful.  But the beautiful thing is that beef that is finished on grass is wonderful – in our opinion, it makes other beef pale in comparison.  But don’t take our word for it:

Which steak tastes the best? – Slate Magazine

Environment / Sustainability

About 70% of the corn grown in the United States is fed to animals.  Instead of letting cattle pack on the pounds by eating grass, we move them all to centralized feed lots and ship in corn for them to eat.  We believe that it is a more sustainable option to let the cattle harvest their own food – by eating the grass directly from the ground.  This article from the New York Times Magazine lays out the life of a typical steer… it is well worth a read for anyone interested in the food that they eat:

New York Times Magazine – “This Steer’s Life”

How can I order?

Please let us know if you’d like to purchase salad bar beef from us.  We are building a list of folks who would like to be notified when we next have beef for sale.