Category Archives: Grass-fed Beef

2019 Custom Grass-fed Beef Processing

Custom Grass-fed Beef Sale

We have a very limited number of spots on a batch of grass-fed beef going in for processing around July 3. Read on for details on how to fill your freezer with fresh beef cut just for you!
Our beef is 100% grass-fed and grass-finished, and is fat, marbled, and excellent quality. No tubs, no cubes, no grains, no licks–just rotational grazing, good breeding, good minerals, and plenty of finishing time! 

Grass-fed Beef by the Half

Halves are expected to hang at 250-325 pounds. Take-home poundage (excluding fat/organs) expected to be about 160-220 pounds. Including processing cost, this translates to between 8.5% and 13% savings over retail prices, depending on whether you opt for a half or whole. That’s a final savings amount of at least $135 and as much as $280 on a larger whole!
Price is $4.50/lb hanging for a half (does not include processing).
Processing typically runs about $1.23/lb before extra charges (for sausage, etc).
Payments are to be made in 3 parts:

  1. Deposit to reserve is $300, paid online prior to June 24. Space is limited–first come, first served!
  2. Balance to be paid via mailed check after hanging weight is determined. (To pay online, add 3% convenience fee.)
  3. Processing to be paid via phone directly to processor prior to pickup (Panola County Processing)—ready in mid- to late-July. 

Pickup can be either at the butcher in Carthage, at the ranch in Jefferson, or via our next drop point of your choice in Tyler, Longview, Marshall, or Shreveport after beef is picked up from butcher. We will work with you on this once an exact pickup date is known.
Save even more if you want the whole animal! Only $4.20/lb (plus processing) for a whole. Get with friends to reserve a whole cow! You can expect to save an additional $150 or more compared with a half. Be sure to purchase 2 deposits to hold both “sides.” 

What to Expect

This batch of steers is young and fat and will make excellent beef. Your price is based on the carcass or “hanging” weight of the animal after the entrails, hide, and hooves/head are removed. The carcass is then aged to improve flavor and tenderness, and will shrink a bit during this time due to moisture loss. Then, when surplus fat and edges are cut away and various muscles are deboned, the yield is reduced to an approximate 66% of the hanging weight, depending on your cutting preferences. So if your side hung at 250 pounds, you can expect to get approximately 66% of that back as “cuts,” or a final take-home yield  of 165 pounds. 
We’ll walk you through the cutting process to help you get exactly what you’ll love, and we can make recommendations specific to our animals that will ensure your satisfaction. 
Here’s a very rough breakdown of what you will receive with typical cutting:

  • Steaks (Strip, Filet, Ribeye, Sirloin, Fajita): 15% of cuts yield
  • Roasts (Chuck, Arm, Shank, Round, Rump): 30% of cuts yield (but highly customizable)
  • Burger, Round Steak, Stew Meat: 40% of cuts yield (highly customizable)
  • Other cuts (Ribs, Brisket): 10% of cuts yield
  • Liver, Organs, Bones: 5% of cuts yield

**These numbers are estimates only and will vary based on the anatomy of your animal and on your cutting requests. 

How Much Freezer Space Will It Take?

We find that planning for 1 cubic foot per 25 pounds of meat works well to be able to navigate your freezer inventory reasonably easily. According to this estimate, you will need at least 7 cubic feet to store a typical half beef, or 1 mid-size home chest freezer (empty). But in case the animals run a little larger, it never hurts to plan for extra freezer space! Be sure to check your freezer regularly to make sure it’s working.

How to Get Started

Ready to sign up for your half of beef? Hop over to our online reservation site: https://squareup.com/store/shady-grove-ranch/
After you place your deposit, we’ll get in touch to complete your cutting orders. Thanks for supporting our work!

Place a Beef Deposit

Beef Drought Sale – September 2018

Custom Beef Drought Sale

We’re offering a one-time special prior to September 10 on custom-processed bulk beef to lighten the burden on our pastures during this increasing drought situation in East Texas.

Our beef is 100% grass-fed and grass-finished, and is fat, marbled, and excellent quality. No tubs, no cubes, no grains, no licks–just rotational grazing, good breeding, good minerals, and plenty of finishing time! 

Grass-fed Beef by the Half

Halves are expected to hang at 250-275 pounds. Take-home poundage (excluding fat/organs) expected to be about 160-185 pounds.

Price is $4.50/lb hanging for a half (does not include processing).

Processing typically runs about $1/lb before extra charges (for sausage, etc).

Payments are to be made in 3 parts:

  1. Deposit to reserve is $300, paid online prior to September 10. Space is limited–first come, first served!
  2. Balance to be paid via mailed check after hanging weight is determined. (To pay online, add 3% convenience fee.)
  3. Processing to be paid upon pickup—ready in early October.

Pickup can be either at the butcher in Carthage, at the ranch in Jefferson, or via our next drop point of your choice in Tyler, Longview, Marshall, or Shreveport after beef is picked up from butcher. We will work with you on this once an exact pickup date is known.

Save 10% if you want the whole animal! Only $4.05/lb (plus processing) for a whole. Get with friends to reserve a whole cow!

What to Expect

This batch of steers is young and fat and will make excellent beef. Your price is based on the carcass or “hanging” weight of the animal after the entrails, hide, and hooves/head are removed. The carcass is then aged to improve flavor and tenderness, and will shrink a bit during this time due to moisture loss. Then, when surplus fat and edges are cut away and various muscles are deboned, the yield is reduced to an approximate 66% of the hanging weight, depending on your cutting preferences. So if your side hung at 250 pounds, you can expect to get approximately 66% of that back as “cuts,” or a final take-home yield  of 165 pounds.

We’ll walk you through the cutting process if you are not familiar with how it works, and we can make recommendations specific to our animals that will ensure your satisfaction!

Here’s a very rough breakdown of what you will receive with typical cutting:

  • Steaks (Strip, Filet, Ribeye, Sirloin, Fajita): 15% of cuts yield
  • Roasts (Chuck, Arm, Shank, Round, Rump): 30% of cuts yield (but highly customizable)
  • Burger, Round Steak, Stew Meat: 40% of cuts yield (highly customizable)
  • Other cuts (Ribs, Brisket): 10% of cuts yield
  • Liver, Organs, Bones: 5% of cuts yield

**These numbers are estimates only and will vary based on the anatomy of your animal and on your cutting requests. 

How Much Freezer Space Will It Take?

We find that planning for 1 cubic foot per 25 pounds of meat works well to be able to navigate your freezer inventory reasonably easily. According to this estimate, you will need at least 7 cubic feet to store a typical half beef, or 1 mid-size home chest freezer. But in case the animals run a little larger, it never hurts to plan for extra freezer space!

How to Get Started

Ready to sign up for your half of beef for the winter? Hop over to our online reservation site: https://squareup.com/store/shady-grove-ranch/

After you place your deposit, we’ll get in touch to complete your cutting orders. Thanks for supporting our work!

Define Your Terms

You may know by now that we are one of those geeky homeschool families, where every discussion with the kids is a “learning opportunity.” It doesn’t help that Matt and I were shamefully nerdy before we had kids. Our poor children can’t get a straight answer out of us when it comes to their questions about the world around them! 🙂

We use a fabulous curriculum called Classical Conversations, and during the middle school and high school years that we look forward to, many sages of classical home education advise you to use the maxim, “Define your terms.”

They’re right. You can’t have a meaningful conversation with anyone unless you’re using your terms in the same way.

So when you read headlines like, “Grass-fed beef is no healthier than conventional,” before you can understand the meaning of their conclusions, you have to understand just a bit about the industry.

Where Do Grass-fed Cows Come From?

No matter how badly you may want to farm, everyone knows cows don’t appear out of thin air—you have to buy seed stock from someone who’s already doing it. In our quest to continue expanding our beef herd, we’ve “shopped” around for cattle. Some of the herds we considered were as far away as Wisconsin, some were way down in central Texas, some were in Missouri or Alabama or Arkansas or Oklahoma, and some were scattered around East Texas, and of course, the closer to us we could buy, the better.

I can tell you first hand—cow-shopping is not like car-shopping or house-shopping. The cows keep making more cows just like them, so whatever characteristics they start out with, the babies will have also. With a car or house, if something doesn’t work right, you can just fix or replace the quirky parts. But you can’t change genetics, so if you buy a cow that’s not a good fit for your climate or operation, it’s just going to go downhill from that point.

Why are good genetics important?

Well, when it comes to cows, grain-feeding is a type of crutch. If a cow is “nice and fat,” in the dead of winter or in the heat of summer, if she’s been supplemented with grain, it’s very likely she will always need to be supplemented with grain in order to stay fat and healthy through the tough times of year. The benefits of really-grass-fed beef are too extensive to deal with in this post, so let’s just assume we’re wanting truly all-grass-fed beef that’s grass-fed all year long.

That’s where defining one’s terms comes into play.

On more than one occasion, even right here in East Texas, we’ve visited operations that, on the phone, assured us that they were all-grass, nice fat cows, very healthy, very clean.

What you’re about to read is exactly why you need to go visit the farm you buy from, at least once, and ask LOTS of questions.

We went to visit one farm, not too far from us, that had been recommended by the friend of a colleague. The owner drove us out to the field in his truck, and we were immediately suspicious of his claims to “grass-fed.” There were lots of trough structures around, and hardly any healthy pasture, in spite of the wet year and the not-too-hot temperatures up to that time. It was a large field, and when we finally found the yearlings, they came over to the truck, curious and searching.

Cattle are not particularly curious animals. Not like chickens or cats. They don’t come up to vehicles unless they are accustomed to doing so. Unless something has lured them. Unless they’re expecting a treat. That was our first clue. The cows were WAY too excited to see us.

We asked a few more questions. The truth finally came out. “Well, we do feed them cubes sometimes.”

How often?

“Well, just when we need to move them.”

Ok, so how often?

“Uh, just about every day.”

Oh. Every day. Every day? Our definition of grass-fed was clearly different than this man’s.

We drove a little farther in search of his breeding herd.

What’s that big tub over there?

“Oh, that’s just fly control we put out this time of year.”

Do all the cows get it?

“Well, no, just the yearlings.”

What’s in it?

“Oh, just a little bit of Ivermectin.” (an insecticide that is terrible for soil health)

Not that we were even remotely interested at this point, but perhaps just to try to get the guy to realize how ridiculous his own claims were… We asked about the “fly lick:” No protein? (aka soybeans and/or corn)

Wrong. A simple check of the label lists “grain by-products.” Cows don’t eat poison unless it tastes good. Apparently this guy’s definition for “all natural grass-fed” beef did not match ours or most customers’ definitions!

Needless to say… we didn’t buy any cows from that operation.

Buyers, beware!

Being in the industry, we know what we’re looking for, so the scariest thing about this whole incident was that the man had heard about the higher prices he could get for “grass-fed beef,” and clearly was contemplating marketing his beef accordingly.

If you think this is just an isolated incident, here’s another story. Again, in a quest to find some good grass-fed genetics, Matt drove all the way to Kansas—that’s upwards of 8 hours one-way, with a 30-foot cattle trailer—only to find out that the seller had misrepresented the breeding heifers he had for sale. A two-day trip for nothing. Just an empty cattle trailer and a continued search for good animals. The industry is riddled with downright deceit!

It’s far worse in the supermarket, where buyers are very far removed from sources, maybe even a half-a-world away, and no one is asking the hard questions—there’s no one to ask!

Well, the label says, “Grass-fed.” They couldn’t call it that if it wasn’t true, right?

Pap-Pap (Matt’s dad) is an avid fan of murder mystery novels, and once shared this quote with me from Dorothy Sayers’ novel, “Murder Must Advertise:” 

“Truth in advertising,” announced Lord Peter sententiously , “is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow. Which incidentally brings me to the delicate and important distinction between the words ‘with’ and ‘from.’ Suppose you are advertising lemonade, or , not to be invidious, we will say perry. If you say ‘Our perry is made from fresh-plucked pears only,’ then it’s got to be made from pears only, or the statement is actionable; if you just say it is made ‘from pears,’ without the ‘only,’ the betting is that it is probably made chiefly of pears; but if you say, ‘made with pears,’ you generally mean that you use a peck of pears to a ton of turnips, and the law cannot touch you— such are the niceties of our English tongue.””

Define Grass-fed

The last nail in the coffin of truth-in-advertising of grass-fed beef is this: A couple of years ago the overseers of this particular industry (the USDA) quietly deregulated the term “grass-fed” (which was poorly defined even at that time), stating that they’d decided it was really a marketing claim, and that companies should be able to define it for themselves, and customers could just visit individual brand websites to find out what the internal meaning of “grassfed” is for a particular company.

Since most consumers want to do a big research project in the middle of their grocery shopping expedition… Not!

The best way to be sure is to define your terms, ask lots of questions, then buy from a farm you can trust and visit. And when you do go, make sure the cows don’t follow the ATV like the pied piper, looking for “candy!”

So… want some really grass-fed beef right here in East Texas? Here are some easy meal ideas for this summer!

 
 

3 Things You Didn’t Know About Grass-fed Beef

1. The term “grass-fed” beef is no longer regulated as of January 2016.

This is a pretty complicated issue, but honestly, we don’t feel it’s entirely a bad thing. Why? Well, we were never terribly into government regulation of private industries. But when the standard was defined, there were still many loopholes and undefined parameters like antibiotic and hormone use, slaughter methods, and even feedlot use. You might have been buying beef that was fed grass a little grass throughout the finishing stage, but maybe the cows all had estrogen implants in their ears! The regulated term instilled a false consumer confidence because it didn’t cover all the bases.

Now, without official definition of the term “grass-fed” at the store, things have the potential to be worse because now the individual beef producers get to define what “grass-fed” means themselves, and all the government agency does is conduct auditing service. This basically means that the companies can’t cheat on their own self-established standards…

So what should you do?

We have always felt that rather than relying on government agencies to secure the moral outpouring of an industry, it is best to know your farmer and see your farm so you can know for sure whether things are what you think they are. Since when was it a bad thing to learn a little about the food you put in your body? You’re smart. Then you can decide for yourself whether the food you work hard to pay for meets YOUR standards. So ask the person who actually raised the animal what it was fed and what drugs it was given. Shake the hand that feeds you!

 

P1010471

 

2. Many private “Grass-fed” standards allow not-so-grassy supplements.

That’s right. Not all “grass-fed” cows eat just grass. This is a complicated issue because of course there is always the possibility of extenuating circumstances, especially when it comes to livestock. We ourselves have experienced times of flooding, drought, and even wildfires! A good farmer will do what he needs to in order to take care of his animals. If the cows are starving, by golly, feed ‘em some grain, if there’s nothing else. But we at Shady Grove Ranch feel that we would need to disclose that to our customers, should that ever happen (and it hasn’t). We’re into the integrity of this–we want you to get what you think you’re getting. There’s that “shake the hand” idea again…

But if what you think you’re getting is a bunch of cows daintily nibbling a St. Augustine lawn trimmed to 2 ½ inches, well… your mental image of “grass-fed beef” may need a little tweaking. Technically speaking, grass is just one type of natural forage food for cows. There may also be herbs, legumes, brassicas, etc. Our cows even eat trees and brambles when they feel like it! But we feel that things like soy hulls, canola meal, and beet pulp is stepping just a little too far over the line. And yet many of these things are allowed by most big-name grass-fed standards, private or otherwise.

Why do they allow that?

I’m sure there’s no single answer. I would hope that most of the time it’s a stop-gap solution to our nation’s depleted soils or unfortunate weather anomalies. But the truth is that consumers are waking up to the need for better quality meats, and more and more often, they are choosing not to buy conventional meat.  

So, naturally, the big food corporations are jumping on the grass-fed bandwagon, too. Perhaps these “approved supplements” are a way for them to produce beef quickly and cheaply without taking the time and effort to improve pastures. Or perhaps along the same line, newly established “grass-fed” herds are comprised of cows not well-adapted to grass-finishing, and additional supplementation is needed to get profitable yields. But should soy hulls and canola meal be on the menu, especially considering that almost all of the soy and canola grown in the US is genetically modified? You decide if GMO beet pulp fits your expectations for the top-dollar beef labeled “grass-fed.”

We feel that this is an integrity issue, most easily solved by encouraging you, the consumer, to be in touch with us, the farmer. I can tell you that we have most certainly never fed soy hulls and canola meal to our cows. If for some crazy reason we ever had to do it, we’d let you know! But chances are, we’d put the cows in the freezer before we bought that stuff for them! There’s more than one way to … feed a cow? 🙂

 

P1020720

 

3. Grass-fed does not equal chemical-free.

You might not think there could be all that many chemicals in use in cattle production, but unfortunately, like most other industries, there are always clever new ways of avoiding natural production methods… And if you hadn’t already guessed, the “grass-fed” label doesn’t specifically prohibit any of those.

If you spot a package of “grass-fed” beef at your local supermarket, yes, the cows may have been eating grass (and as we’ve already pointed out, perhaps a few other not-so-grassy things). But there’s no guarantee that they haven’t also been receiving regular doses of chemical dewormers, vaccinations, antibiotics, and maybe even growth-stimulating hormones! Most of the issues requiring these drugs could be solved by simply rotating cows across pasture and managing the land well, using sustainable principles. But rotational production practices take more time and more man-hours. But isn’t it worth it, considering this is the precious fuel we’re putting into our bodies?

Let’s look past the labels.

If you’ve ever bought our beef, you probably noticed that it doesn’t have a single claim on the label. Why? Well, claims are expensive and time-consuming to develop, and as I’ve pointed out, none of the standardized claims is really all-inclusive as far as how we really manage our cows.

Yes, they’re grass-fed, yes, they’re hormone-free, no, they’re not fed soy or canola or anything else that looks like grain or is genetically-modified. They really are on growing, thriving pasture, and if the season causes the growing and thriving of the natural, grassy-looking vegetation to slow down, we feed them stored grass and forage–hay.

The beef tastes good, not because the cows are allowed to gorge themselves on corn, but because we make sure they have plenty of palatable pasture so they can graze to their rumen’s content and still have some grass left over so they don’t have to wander or compete to satisfy their hunger. When harvest time arrives, we choose animals for slaughter based on their appearance, not based on the calendar. If they’re not fat enough, we wait longer.

The cows don’t get diseases because we “breed the best and eat the rest,” meaning we choose the hardiest cows to re-breed, so our herd get healthier every year. And we never force them to live in their own manure. Even in winter, they are moved often to new, clean ground so they don’t have to eat or sleep in their excrement. We don’t prop up false health using drugs for the sake of a pedigree or for profit. Our big picture is self-sustained beef that promotes the eater’s health.

How do you put all that on a label? How do you teach busy but mindful customers what to look for in a beef source?

We hope this little article has helped, and we hope you’ll pass it on to someone you love. We love what we do and we want you to be part of it in your knowledge and in your enjoyment, and even in your experience, which is why we offer free farm tours throughout the year. Our next one will be some time in September, so we hope you’ll join us. Until then, buy really-real grass-fed beef from a farm you can trust!

 

P1010497

Who is Top Cow at Shady Grove Ranch? Part 1

Who is top cow at Shady Grove Ranch?

This is the first of a series of articles on our favorite breeding cows at Shady Grove Ranch. We have invested a lot of time and energy into our grass-fed beef herd and would love to share with you about some of our favorite personalities in the herd and why we like them so much.
The first is without doubt our favorite cow. We called her Gordita because she’s the fattest 100% grass-fed cow Matt has ever encountered. Here is her story.

Gordita

We bought Gordita at a discount because she is an unknown breed of unknown age, purchased from a colleague who was caring for the herd of a recently deceased friend of his. The colleague needed to get rid of some of the cows and was selling them for a very fair price despite their good condition (nice and fat on the lush green pastures of central Texas) and excellent naturally grass-fed rearing standards. We had actually worked with this colleague as part of our own farm internship experience and knew his standards for cattle-rearing were similar to ours (minerals, rotation, no chemicals, no grains, etc).

20130218 gordita 1

This is a recent shot of Gordita on winter pasture at Shady Grove Ranch. She is about 8 months pregnant.

Since we were just starting out, discounts were certainly welcome. We planned to grow the batch and gradually butcher the finished ones.  Since this funny-looking, part Brahma, big fat lumpy old momma cow was already extremely “finished,” she first on the list for the “hamburger factory.” But Matt has a keen eye and suspected that she was pregnant. He decided to wait and see what would happen.

A few weeks after we moved, Gordita gave birth to the very first calf ever born at Shady Grove Ranch– a pretty, spry little heifer that we named Tiny. Tiny is our loveliest heifer in the herd, and we eagerly await meeting her first calf, due later this spring.

Here is a photo of Tiny shortly after her birth. She was the first cow ever born at Shady Grove Ranch, and what a lovely cow she is!

Here is a photo of Tiny shortly after her birth. She was the first cow ever born at Shady Grove Ranch, and what a lovely heifer she is!

Will Tiny give us an outstanding new herd sire? Or a lovely future momma cow that has genetics perfectly adapted to our grass-based operation in East Texas? We’ll see. Farming is all about waiting to see…

Speaking of waiting, in our 3 years at Shady Grove Ranch, we have only a short glimpse at how well our cows reproduce. The reason is that cows only produce one calf per year, and that only when they are in excellent health. If one of our first cows were really good, she would have had 2 calves by now and would be carrying a third, typically breeding back within 2-3 of months after calving. That is true of just about all our momma cows, but Gordita is extraordinary.

Recall that Tiny, her first calf (to us), landed about a month after we moved onto Shady Grove Ranch. Her next calf, Mini (to carry on the traditional naming scheme), was born 324 days later (a cow’s gestation is 283 days). This is astounding because that means Gordita bred back in the astonishingly short length of 41 days after calving, despite the fact that she had just changed farms a month or two before. This indicates outstanding reproductive health and adaptability!

Just over ten months after Mini was born, Gordita went missing. She had broken through one of our fences and was acting a bit strange. Matt moved her back into the paddock with the rest of the herd. The next morning during Matt’s routine cow checks, he noticed that Gordita had some birthing membranes emerging from her rear-end. Perhaps she was about to calve. She was eating hay with the others, so he decided to check on her again in an hour. Experienced cows typically have their calves without assistance within an hour of when they start labor.

Matt returned to check Gordita. No sign of a calf. He decided to take her to the vet. He had planned to take animals to the butcher that day, so he loaded Gordita onto the trailer with the rest of the cows, and off they went. He dropped Gordita off first to allow time for the vet to examine her. When Matt returned, the vet came up and said, “Ain’t nobody home!” Gordita had already calved. She must have had the calf in the paddock to which she had escaped.

When Matt got home he and Zack searched the paddock where Matt had found Gordita the previous day. What he found very much surprised him: twins, male and female.

Having twins is quite rare for cows, and neither of them survived. We don’t know why—perhaps they were stillborn. It appeared that they never stood up after they were born. It was a disappointing day to be sure.

Now we were faced with a decision. From an economic standpoint, a cow MUST produce a calf every year in order to remain profitable. Cows eat way too much to be kept as pets. It is a hard truth, but it is like so many other truths in farming and life. Gordita was now on the cull list. It seemed she was getting too old to bear calves—we really didn’t know how old she was. We were a bit shaken by this decision because she is such a great cow and had given us two beautiful heifers in two years before this.

Matt called a friend and mentor who has been in the grass-fed cattle business for 30 years. His advice was a reminder that one of the best grass-fed herds in the world was produced out of five top-quality cows. If you have a fantastic cow, he said, you might want to give her a little grace from time to time.

Gordita is still with us, very pregnant, due to calve again in early March. Maybe if she gives us another heifer, we will name her Grace.

Gordita is simply lovely. She is smart, mellow, fairly friendly for a beef cow, and very motherly. Here is she is about 8 months pregnant--do you think it will be a bull or a heifer?

Gordita is simply lovely. She is smart, mellow, fairly friendly for a beef cow, and very motherly. Here is she is about 8 months pregnant–do you think it will be a bull or a heifer?

 
Thanks for reading! The next article will feature our Black Angus momma, and we need your help to name her once you hear her story!