We want to make sure you enjoy all of the health benefits of our grass fed beef. Here we discuss the differences of grass fed versus grass finished beef.

• SO WHAT DOES “GRASS FED” MEAN?
• All cattle are “grass fed” to a certain extent.  When they are born, they stand by their mom’s side and learn to eat grass and hay along with the milk they are getting until they are weaned.  When they are weaned from the mother cow, they usually are “backgrounded” or put on pasture to grow up to the size appropriate for feedlots, breeding, or whatever the producer has planned for the animal.  Most “cow/calf” producers can sell their weaned calves at the auction barn, hold them until they are backgrounded and ready for the feedlots, sell them to other producers to run in feedlots or retain ownership of them through the feedlot to the point the animal is ready to be processed in a packing house for market.
• GRASS FED AND FINISHED BEEF IS HALF THE CALORIES AND TWICE THE VITAMINS OF GRAIN FED BEEF.
• Cattle have a four part stomach which infuses vitamins and minerals from grass into their muscle tissues.  Vitamins A, D, E and other benefits from the grass fed and finished cattle, like Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA helps prevent cancer and heart disease) stop when the animal is removed from the grass diet.   The feed used in the feedlot may include some vitamins supplemented in the diet, but the natural source of vitamins stops when the animal no longer eats grass in the pasture. Instead of infusing these benefits into muscle tissue, the animal now infuses antibiotics into muscle tissue.  Pooling a number of different animals from different herds together brings the potential of sickness, so antibiotics are mixed in with the feed to keep them all healthy.
• The animal now goes from eating grass in the pasture and free ranging to consume its food, to joining 99 other animals in a pen being fed grains and feed mix in a feed bunk.  The goal is to fatten the animal, so he is not allowed to walk much or exercise, and the feedlot pen is just about big enough for the 100 animals kept there. He walks to the feed bunk to eat, to the water trough for his water and that is it.  There is no grass, and the poop from all of these animals ends up being the bed where they rest.
  MARBLING IS THE KEY
  Beef is graded as “Select”, “Choice” or “Prime”.  The reason you pay more for “Prime” is because the IMF or “Intramuscular Fat” is of higher content, meaning you will get a more tender, delicious steak.  Feedlots can produce Choice and Prime as they feed so much grain and other caloric sources that the cattle get fat. Taking an animal off of grass and processing the beef will generally not give you the flavor and taste you enjoy unless the grass fed producer goes to the extra steps to insure marbling.   Some grass fed producers will still finish on grains to help get the marbling, but they are trading off the health benefits of vitamins and calories to get flavor and tenderness.