Beef Cattle Production literally answers the question, ‘where does your meat come from?’

There are four different types of cattle production strategies: backgrounding (also known as stocker or drylotting), cow-calf, feedlot, and seedstock productions. *We encourage you to continue to do your own research on this topic and determine your own values in these areas, as our strategy is not necessarily the preferred way for everyone’s preferences!

What kind of cattle production strategy does Acreage Farms utilize?

We run a pasture grazing cow-calf production, meaning that all of our cattle have access to hundreds of acres of pasture, and we raise our cattle from birth to death on our farm.

When a female calf is born it is named a ‘heifer’.  When she grows and gets just over 1 year old, she is then bred by one of our bulls and then will have her first calf in 9 months. 

***Before a cow has a calf it is named a heifer.  Once it has had a calf, it is then named a cow.

These brood (or mother) cows will then continue to have a baby every year following until they are up to 8-10 years old.

In a pasture grazing cow-calf production farm, the calves stay with the mothers on the pastures with the rest of the herd as they grow throughout the months.

So how do you choose what cattle to butcher?

We check for new calves daily in our pastures throughout the late winter/spring/and early summer seasons.  When a calf is born, we walk up to the calf and ‘catch it’ (they are usually laying down, calm, and not very mobile yet and we just use our hands to catch it, not a device or lasso or anything).  We then tag each calf by giving it an ear tag with an individual number on it (just like getting your ear pierced).  If one of our brood cows has a male (known as a ‘bull’) calf, then we castrate that calf when we tag it by banding it.  This doesn’t hurt the calf but will restrict the blood flow to the testicles.  The testicles then will naturally fall off within a week or so.  When a bull calf is castrated it is then named a ‘steer’.  These steers also stay with their mothers on the pasture and with the rest of the herd.

When a steer gets to be about 18 months old (approximately 1000-1300 lbs) they can then be butchered for meat.

On our farm, we currently only butcher the steers. The heifer calves will be raised on the farm to become brood cows, to further grow our herd throughout the years to come.

How are your cattle raised/fed throughout their lives?

None of our cattle are sent to a feedlot to be ‘fattened up’ or ‘finished off’.  Throughout the winter months our cattle are given optional haybales/corn silage (meaning it is available for them in the barn but they are not contained in the barn nor forced to eat it) but all are still on pasture throughout the winter.

Benefits of our cattle production strategy:

1. The cattle are all just living their lives freely.  They are not confined at all in a building or a lot.  This reduces their exposure to manure build up, as well as any illnesses or infectious pathogens that can occur from living in confined areas, thus reducing health problems, any need for antibiotics/medicines or any need for human intervention.

2. Research shows that stress on cattle has a significant impact on the quality of the meat.  When cattle are raised or handled in a stressful way or in a stressful environment, the lactic acid produced in the animals decreases, and therefore affects the color, and the texture of the meat.  An animal that endures a lot of stress will produce tougher cuts of meat.

   One of the most common feedback we get on our beef is that it is some of the most tender ever tried.  We truly believe that this is largely due to our cattle being raised in an ethical, low stress, nature-driven environment, with little human intervention necessary.

   This also determined the butchers we use for the slaughtering and processing of our beef.  It was important to us that we found butchers that respected the well-being for the animal through utilizing low-stress handling techniques (no use of cattle prods, restraints, etc).

Disadvantages of our cattle production strategy:

1. When running a cattle-calf production, there is a 50/50 chance that a cow will birth a bull calf.  However, it is impossible for us to know how many bull calves we will have born each year; therefore, some years we may have a higher quanity or steers ready for butcher and some years we may have less.

   How do we get around this? The more heifer calves that are born then raised then bred each year alongside the brood cows/the cows that are already calving, the more calves we will have the following year, thus likely increasing the number of bull calves we have each following year as well.

2. Because our steers are always on pasture, they are much leaner than cattle that are contained to a feedlot and fattened for slaughter.  Many of our customers have described our products saying ‘Acreage Farms beef creates barely any grease yet is still extremely moist and flavorful. It has marbling without any gristle.” However, if you do like steaks or beef with a lot of fat content then our beef may not be for you.

   Also, because we do not feedlot or fatten our cows for slaughter, some of our cuts of steaks may be smaller than a steak that you may see in a grocery store.  If this throws you off, know that we do have the butcher cut our steaks 1 1/4-2 inches thick and do price them adequately!