Diversity Makes Great Beef

We’ve had a few cold nights with lows into the single digits, but we’re looking at some beautiful spring-like days now, with highs in the 50s and a tiny tinge of green grass on the south-facing parts of the ranch.  I rode by the beeves on the way back to the house, and they were stretched out and basking in the late winter sun, living the high life.

They are looking for that first hint of grazable green”¦tired of the cured out grasses of last season, and even of our hay.  They get dedicated to being the first to spot it.

The beeves have some things that need balancing in their bodies, and green grass will meet those needs head on.  I’m a firm believer in the idea that beeves are fully capable of identifying and targeting those plants they need to maximize their own health and efficiency, as long as the soil health underneath their feet is sufficient to provide the plants with nutrition density.

I’ve witnessed this.  I’ll let beeves into a new break of our diverse grasses and forbs nearly every other day, and I’ve seen individuals exhibit different preferences day to day.  There’s probably more than 30 grazable grass species on most of the ranch.  These cows will check out the day’s salad bar fare, and pick some different elements for their pasture plate each day.  One day, they inhale the alfalfa.  The next, it may be orchardgrass.  Why the difference?  Is it just what tastes good?  I have a hunch that there is more to it than that.

Take me, for example.  Sometimes, I’ll come in from the ranch thinking steak, with maybe just a salad on the side.  The next day, I’ll be thinking cole veggies, and we’ll make a cabbage, kale and onion stir fry in a little extra virgin olive oil.  No need for steak, or even red meat.  Is that just me? Personal preference based on preconceived notions?  It isn’t commercials (no TV).  I think if I had a 40 item salad bar each day, I would have a hankerin’ for different things as the week goes by.

For me, it wasn’t always this way.  I sensed a strong change in discernment about what I eat since I switched to entirely whole foods about 10 years ago.  It was like my processed food “fog” had to clear before I could hear my appetite speaking softly about what to eat that day.  You might think that’s a little over the top, like trying to hear your inner voice, but you would have a hard time convincing me otherwise.  I’m not some fruitcake touchy feely type hippie huggie person, after all.  Former forester, logger, current rancher nuts and bolts guy.

I had a veterinarian show up today on the ranch to sell me some premixed synthetic mineral product that is injectable.  He’s a really great guy, and super knowledgeable.  He asked what my mineral program was.  I told him just what I told you about my belief that cows can meet select wild forage to balance their own mineral/nutrition needs, and if it’s salt they need, we offer them rock salt taken from the mountains south of us in Utah.

He told me that I had no data that cows can meet their own nutrition needs this way.  My counter to that was just because there is no scientific research to support inferences we make from our own observations of cattle behavior doesn’t mean we can’t act on it.  The fact of the matter is that there will probably never be studies about these concepts, because the money stream for research usually comes from very large agribusiness entities that want to sell more stuff.

And they aren’t raising grass fed organic beef, especially in our wild environs, with nutritionally dense forage on uncompromised soils.

And that’s why I believe that protein raised in the context of wild and unfarmed landscapes is the only protein worth eating.  Before we ate our own beef, we harvested wild game—elk and deer.  They were not eating from agricultural fields, either.  Grass fed beef and “wild” game produced in a commodity farm landscape has more in common, nutritionally, with corn fed beef than grass fed beef raised in a wild landscape context like Alderspring’s.