When people talk about ethically raised meat there’s a lot of different theories and buzz words that float around associated with that concept.
For us, it is in two pieces. The nutrition of the animals and the quality of life that they have.
We don’t believe that, even though we’re going to eat the meat produced by an animal that while they’re alive on our ranch that they should be miserable. Our goal is to allow them to live happy lives as they were designed to live. And so with cows, we try to model that after the way that ruminants have moved across the Great Plains for ages. Like the Buffalo would move across the plains, not staying confined in one space living in their own filth, our animals rotate between money, different pastures and have the ability to migrate across our property in the patterns that they want to set for themselves.
On top of that, I spend time with my animals. They know my voice they come when I call. They are animals that we are going to consume however, they are living beings deserving of our respect in our comfort. They will give the ultimate sacrifice so that we can nourish and heal our bodies, but the most nutrient dense food on this planet. And that is a heavy and sobering truth and the days that we take our animals to the processor are hard days and we don’t want to just brush past it and we don’t want to just treat them poorly because we know their end destination.
We are a small enough operation that all of our cows have names and we recognize their personalities. We pick our favorites that we build bonds and relationships with. If you spend any time on the farm with us, you will quickly see that we truly respect care for and love these animals and that they’re receiving the best life possible.
And as I said, above their rotating through pasture, and even when we’re supplementing with hay to feed them when we don’t have grass, they’re still not just standing in a feed thought and their own self we rotate them to fresh land, which is more ecologically responsible and it’s also better for the cows health and their well-being and it also produces a higher quality product.
We also partner with a bovine nutrition specialist, which ensures that aspect of their life is optimal as well, which again guarantees the highest quality beef that we could possibly produce.