Why We Finish Our Cattle on Grain
Josh BakerShare
We get asked about this a lot, so I want to lay it out plain.
Our cattle are raised on pasture. That is the foundation and it never changes. They spend their lives on grass, out in the open, the way cattle are supposed to. But toward the end, we finish them on grain. Here is exactly what that means and why we do it.
What Grain Finishing Actually Is
There is a lot of confusion out there, so let me clear it up. Finishing on grain does not mean we haul the cattle off to a feedlot. It does not mean they get packed into a pen and fed nothing but corn. That is not how we do it and it never will be.
Our cattle stay on pasture. We put grain out for them right there in the field, and they have the choice to eat it or not. The grass is still there. The pasture is still there. The grain is just one more thing available to them in the last stretch before harvest.
They are not forced. They are not confined. They choose.
Why We Do It
Grass alone will raise a healthy animal, and plenty of good beef is finished on grass. We are not knocking it. But finishing on grain in those final months does a few things that grass alone does not do as well.
It adds marbling, that fine webbing of fat inside the muscle that carries flavor. It improves tenderness. And it deepens the taste of the beef in a way our customers have come to expect from us.
When you cook one of our steaks, that marbling is what you are tasting. It renders down as it cooks and keeps the meat rich and juicy instead of lean and dry.
Honest Beef, Honest Wording
We could call our beef whatever sounds best on a label. Plenty of folks do. But we would rather just tell you the truth.
Our beef is pasture-raised and grain-finished. Raised on grass, finished on grain the cattle choose to eat, out in the pasture where they have lived their whole lives. No growth hormones, no antibiotics, no animal by-products in our program. Processed at a USDA-inspected facility, dry aged, and vacuum sealed.
That is the whole story. No fine print.
If that sounds like beef you want on your table, we would be glad to have you.