Nancree wrote:
> To Michael Odom et al:
> About grass-fed beef you said:
>
> "D and I had friends over for dinner last night. I grilled T-bone
> steaks. We got a quarter of a grass-fed steer last week from our egg
> lady. It's wonderful. Everybody should get some grass-fed beef."
>
> I'm not making any pronouncements here, but I had always heard, from experts,
> that Grain-fed is much better than Grass-fed beef. The experts I refer to are
> major ranchers in Imperial County, California. We visited them, and their ranch
> is huge, don't know how many square miles, but we drove many miles to get
> there. It is big enough to have it's own grass landing-strip and hangar for
> their plane. They serve whole beef roasts the way you and I would serve
> hamburgers. They refuse to eat grass-fed beef because of the flavor. This is
> their business. They have hundreds and hundreds of cattle.
> They are "real" ranchers, to put it mildly. I would like to hear from you on
> this , Michael. When you say "grass-fed" , what is the alternative to that?
> Again, I'm not being argumentative, just really want to know.
> Nancree
>
>


My father-in-law has a small herd of beef cattle (as opposed to dairy
cattle) on a hilltop pasture in Alabama. They follow him around like
puppies when he is up there -- even the bull.

I don't think he feeds them anything but hay and mineral blocks, and
maybe a little molasses. They have plenty of fresh grass to eat. The
steaks he gives us are the best I've ever eaten. They are marbled as
well as any grain-fed beef, with a big rind of fat around the outside
and little flecks of fat throughout the muscle. He has a small herd on
100 acres of land as a hobby. He makes money at it because he has very
little invested in each animal. I don't think pasture feeding really
good beef scales very well to large operations. OTOH, grain is a lot
more nutritionally dense and allows the rancher to maintain a lot more
animals in a small space. (have you ever driven past a feed lot?)

Grain-fed beef is different than pasture-fed beef, but I don't think you
can really say one is better than the other. I do prefer eating beef
that was raised in what I think is a more humane enviroment, but I'm not
really that picky about it.

I believe a lot of beef is raise on pasture, then when the animals get
to the right size are sent to a feed lot for "finishing" (fatten them
up) That's not a bad way to do it if your pasture is not fertile enough
to get the cattle fat.

I used to know this stuff (had a roommate in college that was an ag
major) but that was a long time ago and I'm losing the details...

Best regards,
Bob