• Animal Tracks • Last winters bull, next years beef

Moving the cows through their pasture rotation is one way of making sure that they have the best value of food available daily. It is also a way to prevent pest populations from building up as you would get in a stockyard situation where the animals basically live on concrete. Pasture rotation also is a marvelous way to manage pasture. Herd animals are most often migratory or have a very broad range, and that in an unmanaged situation they move constantly through the grassland, essentially from pasture to pasture. Therefore, rotational pasture management is mimicking the natural habits of the stock and in so doing optimizing the overall value of a smaller area. I have observed over the relatively brief time of my using pasture management (15 years) that the carrying capacity of the pastures has increased steadily. So how can 15 years be brief? When you consider the millennia that it took for the co-evolution of grassland and grazing herds, 15 years is nothing. This realization makes it even more impressive to me to see how quickly that rotational pasture management results in greater diversity and greater productivity. I have read, quite a while ago, 'Grassland Productivity' written by Andre' Voison. It recounts the results of very in depth study of cows on pasture. The observers even counted how many mouthfuls of grass the cows took and quantified, collated and interpreted the information. The study found that on pastures, some of which had been known to be in continuous use for 250 years, rotational management that rationed the access of the cows for a period of time that was determined by the condition of the pasture, the overall health of both cows and pasture was superior. No room for feedlot management in that! Having had the benefit of  tasting the cows we have slaughtered for meat over the 15 years of my managing a herd I have learned many things. Probably first, is that each cow is different. Second is that cows that are loaded onto a trailer and transported to a slaughter house, even as I do now by appointment and in person, are always tougher because of the hormonal reactions to stress, than the cows that I killed myself here on farm. There is a marked difference. Third, is in the handling of the carcass. Meat today is not let to hang or age. Aged beef, a carcass that has hung for two weeks or more is almost impossible to find. The aging process allows for the breaking down of some of the muscle which renders it more tender. There is a bit more trimming of the meat when it is aged. This reduces the overall yield of a carcass and in today's, 'to the last dimes worth' world that we live in, quantity has again supplanted quality.   I would hazard a bet that most people have not, in spite of their opinions eaten a piece of aged prime beef. When you put it all together, grass fed, stress free, mature and well aged beef you have food that is every bit as superior in quality to the run of the mill beef today, as a home grown heirloom veggie is by comparison to the storable, shippable, average commercial vegetable.

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