Letter to the Editor

A local foods advocate published an article in the local Rockford Register Star about the health and environmental benefits of pastured meats. Sure enough, a rebuttal of sorts was written as a letter to the editor. Here's what it said:

The article about pasture-fed meat (“Pasture-fed meat packed with benefits,” Go, June 17, 2009) contained several misconceptions.

Livestock raised on pastures is not less stressed or healthier. According to researchers in Canada, Australia and Germany, the opposite is true.

Livestock raised in pastures — also called “free-ranged” — is more prone to diseases and parasites and is exposed to weather extremes, including cold, rain and wind. Such animals are also more vulnerable to wild predators, such as coyotes, and must constantly forage for food and places to rest. As a result, mortality rates are higher.

Feedlots and other confinement systems enable producers to closely monitor the health of animals under their care.

As to the statement that meat from pasture-fed livestock contains higher levels of omega-3 fats: Omega-3 fat is found in soybeans and fish meal — feed ingredients not available to pasture-fed animals but commonly fed to animals raised in feedlots.

Pasture-feeding is not more environment-friendly. Animals on range often foul streams and waterways. On the other hand, feedlot cattle recycle food that consumers do not want to eat.

Ever wonder what happens to all that stale bread at the grocery store? It is fed to animals in feedlots.


As you can see, the guy's logic is a little screwy. Anyways, the local foods advocate asked me to write a rebuttal to his rebuttal, as I am a pasture-based farmer. Here's my letter (hoping the paper doesn't let this go on and on):



As manager of a grass-finished beef operation, I find Mr. ___________'s rebuttal to your article on pasture-fed meats interesting. He is correct that feedlots recycle many unwanted food items. Stale bread may not alarm anyone, but The Wall Street Journal reported that feedlot cattle also recycle “cookies, licorice, cheese curls, frosted wheat cereal, Tater Tots, Kit Kat bars, uncooked French fries, pretzels and chocolate bars.”

Feedlot operators monitor the health of their herd by assuming they are all sick. After reading that feed list, I don’t blame them. As a result, all feedlot cattle receive daily doses of antibiotics to “preserve health”. In contrast, pastured animals are naturally healthy and receive daily doses of sunshine, fresh grass, and the freedom to move about. Antibiotics are rarely needed for a pastured animal (and never used on organic cattle).

Cows shouldn’t eat fish and can produce Omega 3’s on their own by eating grass. Cow waste should drop onto a grassy field where it fertilizes the soil. And yes, cows can die--either of natural causes or unnatural living conditions. I invite the public to visit both a feedlot and a pasture-based farm. Inform yourself and support whichever farm-model you find acceptable.



I know I left a lot out, but had to keep it to 200 words. Anyways, I tend to be a bit long-winded. We've got to think of the poor newspaper-reading public, you know.

Farm Logo

Here's our new farm logo. What do you think?

Last night as we checked on the cows, number 11 couldn't resist the urge to check out Marcel. This is the story as it unfolded:

But wouldn't the story be funnier if it were shared in reverse?

Sorry, honey. I couldn't resist.

Whippersnappers

Rountine chores on a livestock farm can be a pain in the you-know-where because of the numerous small obstacles you must pass through in order to get to the work at hand. Whether we must check on the animals, move fences or cut hay, we have to pass through a handful of those necessary but pesky fieldgates.

Now opening and closing fieldgates is easy. Easy as spreadin' butter on a hot summer day. But each gate requires us to stop vehicle, exit vehicle, open gate, re-enter vehicle, drive through gate, stop vehicle, exit vehicle, close gate, re-enter vehicle and be on our merry way. Usually we're on that merry way for about 2 minutes at which point we come upon another fieldgate through which we must pass.

This is where the little whippersnappers have started to come in real handy. Now all I do is drive up to the gate, sit back, relax, and let the kids earn their keep.

Please observe the beauty of our new fieldgate routine:


Armando finds it easier to undo the chain from the other side of the gate. Hey, I don't care. I'm kickin' back in the truck, jammin' to some tunes and checkin' for nose hairs in the rearview mirror.


Look at the little whippersnapper, all hard at work. Sometimes the chain gets hooked up on the barbed wire and stops him up a bit, but the little bugger is determined, man. Ain't no barbed wire gonna get in his way.

At this point I've moved on from nose hairs to my eyelashes....didn't they used to grow thicker than this?


Oh, well look at that. He's gotten it! Time to snap out of my rear-view-mirror beauty session and get to work.


Armando not only opens the gate, he opens it with style. Lookin' good, bozo-brain!


And there it is. The signature thumbs-up. Gate's open and I can drive on through. Easy as slicin' chocolate pie on a hot summer day. I tell ya, kids really come in handy on a farm.

Next time I'm bringing along a nail file. Farms can be hell on the hands.

Of Life and Death

The last time I wrote about learning opportunities I was scoffing at a silly mistake I made that could have broken a part on our tractor. In all honesty I was making a joke to deflect my embarrassment at being a dope. A dope that forgot to unplug the tractor before she drove it.

What I've come to realize, however, is that being a dope and breaking a tractor part or two is the least of my worries when it comes to the farm. The farm is about more than that. It's about more than a simple tractor part, and it's definitely about more than my silly vanity and pride.

The farm is about life and death. Life and death. It's as simple and basic as that.

The lessons I need to learn and the opportunities that have arisen to provide me with those very lessons have been numerous and varied this spring, as are the emotions that come with the living and dying on this farm. These circumstances have come at a time when I have been feeling impatient with the farm's progress, with the organic conversion, and with the cows who hadn't calved and who also hadn't been very cooperative in my new grazing systems. "I've been at this three years," I kept muttering. "It shouldn't still be this difficult."

Yet three years didn't prepare me for this:

This is our bull and a pregnant cow lying dead in our pasture. They were struck by lightning during a thunderstorm.

Two good cows gone. All of a sudden my grazing difficulties don't seem all that important. Instead, my impatience was transformed into dismay and concern. Our bull was so gentle and easy-going. How could we replace him? And this mother cow was one of our lead cows, not to mention that she was due to calve any day now. Death on the farm. It happens, but who expects to find this scene after a routine thunderstorm?

The cows were extremely distressed, so we moved them to another pasture so we could remove the carcasses. In fact, I think it was stress that put one heifer into labor. Our very first calf of the season was born that night. Ironically, the bull's first offspring was born the day he died:

We named her Storm. And she is a beautiful, spunky little Murray Grey.

Life and death at the hands of a lightning bolt.

The shock wore off after a few days as I busied myself with smaller farmer duties--you know, the ones I like to do because I can manage them. The ones that rookies can't screw up. (And if we do, we can write funny little stories about them.)

But then my favorite heifer was in labor, number 11, and she was in trouble. She had progressed to the point where the calf's hooves were coming out and then stalled. We let her work for 2 hours wondering if we should pull the calf or let her alone. A cow will suspend her labor if stressed, so if you bother her too soon you'll cause problems. And yet if you let her go too long, both she and her calf could die.

As a rookie, I have no experience in making these calls. And the literature says you just have to have a "feel" for it. Great. That's helpful.

Finally we decided to pull it. We corralled her into the chute and called Farmer Scott from down the road. He's a dairy farmer and is absolutely not a rookie. He showed us how to hook the chains around the calf's second foot joint and then how to pull it down and away from her backbone. He and Marcel strained, and I mean strained, for about 10 minutes. They got the calf out and he lived, but barely. And number 11 was OK. Ahhh, life. Sweet, sweet life.

Disaster was averted and a lesson was learned.

Or so I thought. Because today we lost one. A nice large heifer calf died because we didn't pull her soon enough. We acted quicker than last time, but the placental bag hadn't broken. Farmer Scott came to help once more and told us that if the bag isn't broken in time, the mother can't get enough traction to push the calf out and the calf suffocates.

I had seen the intact bag and thought it had meant there was time. Precious time, ticking away for that poor little heifer calf. "It's hard to say," said Farmer Scott. "Sometimes an intact bag means you should leave the mother alone a little longer. You just have to get a feel for it."

There it is again. That "feel" thing. The way I see it, the "feel for it" is a farmer's way of saying you need to be experienced enough to know. And as easy as it may be to learn to drive a tractor or make good hay, this calving thing is throwing me for a loop. A very precarious loop. After two difficult births, it's hard to say if I'm really getting a "feel" for calving or not. The first time we waited longer and had a live calf. The second time we acted and it wasn't soon enough.

I am, however, getting a "feel" for the ups and downs of farming. The joys and sorrows. The celebrations, the frustrations...the life and death of it. I'm just not sure I have enough experience to know how to deal with it.

My Bad Week Continues

I went out this morning for my regular chore routine, which involves:

Feeding grain to the Charolais calves

Letting the chickens out to pasture

Checking the horse/goat water tank and filling if necessary (it was)

Walking around and acting important

This amounts to a whole 10 minutes worth of "work", so you can see I've got it pretty tough.

But then I checked the egg refrigerator and noticed that the eggs weren't collected last night. That happens a lot when I work my two evenings at Atwood. It's no big deal--really--it just means that I have to stick my arm under hens that are laying today's eggs in order to collect yesterday's eggs. Understandably, this doesn't make the hens too happy. They squawk at me, fluff their feathers up all big and poofy, and once in awhile a real grumpy one will peck at my hand. Hen pecks don't feel too good, so I've learned to hold their heads in one hand while fetching eggs with the other.

Well, as I walked with my egg basket into the dark corner of the barn where the nests are, I noticed a hen cowering on the floor. Her head was all bloody and she was looking pretty beat up. Oh no. She was injured badly enough that I knew it wasn't just a pecking order injury--she had been attacked by something. And when something gets into our barn it's usually one of three animals: a raccoon, an opossum, or a skunk.

Raccoons kill lots of chickens in one night. We've had raccoon attacks that wiped out 20 birds in one fell swoop. The most frustrating part is that they eat only the chicken's brains and neck. They like the blood, not the meat, and so waste the rest of the carcass.

Opossums will kill only one or two chickens at a time because they will tend to sit and eat the meat. They are also a lot dumber, and don't leave the barn once daytime rolls around. Instead they find a dark corner to hang in, where inevitably they meet their demise at the hands of a few unnamed farmers. Ahem.

Skunks usually go for the eggs first, although they'll take a chicken if it's conveniently in the way. I can usually tell if one's around before I walk into the barn because of their signature perfume, but I have had 2 really close calls with skunks in my barn. I consider myself very lucky, because a skunk can accurately hit a target up to 12' away. Yikes.

Obviously we don't want any predation on our hens, but we'd prefer an opossum or even a skunk over a raccoon anyday. When I found that bloodied hen, however, my heart sank. Her head was bloodied, her body perfectly fine. It must have been a raccoon. Which means there will be other casualties.

I walked slowly around the barn and found 4 more hen carcasses. Four large, healthy, young hens...lost. And another dying.

That's the type of week I've been having. A long, crappy, frustratingly bad week. What next?

Frustration

You know those lovely cows I've been so enamored with? And how I think rotational grazing is the most awesome kick-butt farming system out there?

Well today I can't stand either one. And the only butt that's getting a kicking is mine.

I'm frustrated. F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-E-D.

You see, we've been working hard to set up our leader/follower grazing system. What is a leader/follower grazing system, you ask? A leader/follower system is where we take a section of our pasture and divide it into small paddocks. The yearling calves that are fattening for market are let into that fresh paddock first. They eat as much yummy goodness as they can until they get moved to a nice fresh paddock the following afternoon. They are the leaders.

The followers are the pregnant mothers and the bull. Once we move the leaders into their new paddock, these ladies (and one guy) get put into the paddock just vacated by the leaders. They clean up what the leaders left behind, which includes some yummy goodness, but also the less yummy stuff like weeds, alfalfa stalks that have been stripped of their delicious leaves, etc.

This systems allows all of the cattle to fulfill their nutritional needs, but the leaders get first choice at the sweetest, highest energy plants in the paddock, which translates into nice meaty grassfed steers by the end of the summer.

Sounds great, right? Harrumph.

First off, it took us two days and many trips to Farm and Fleet to get the system set up. We had the water tank, but the float didn't fit it. We got the float to finally work, and then the connection was leaky. We got a new connection but then needed longer hoses. Hoses in place, we found we needed another polytape reel for the extra paddock divisions. Trying not to lose my patience, I bought or found what was needed and moved forward. You see, Marcel isn't so sure about this grazing stuff, and I didn't want to show any weakness in the system.

Which in hindsight makes me laugh. Or cry.

Here we are, getting the water tank in place. Ah, the confidence I was projecting. I look pretty convincing, don't I?



Next we sorted the calves at our place, loading the grassfed steers into the trailer and leaving behind the four Charolais calves that we're going to grain feed. We haven't been too enamored of these Charolais so far, and Sunday was no different. They are so skittish it makes the whole group nervous. Because of them, the separating took a lot longer than planned.

But we got it done, and hauled the Murray Greys over to Mom's pasture. We let the steers into their 'leader' paddock, where they got to rub noses with their mama's across the electric fenceline.



And all was well. For one day, at least.

'Cause on the very second day of grazing, my lovely children were having so much fun running through the tall, lush pasture grasses.......

that they spooked the leader calves right through the electrified backline that separated them from the mama cows.

Oh the joy!, the ecstasy!, the sheer delight that overcame these calves as they were reunited with their mothers once again. It almost brought a tear to my eye.

Almost, but not quite, as this wonderful, joyful reunion undid two solid days of work on the farm. It undid the previous day's work, plus the long day's work of separating the calves from their mamas that happened a few months ago. On a not-so-nice day, if you recall.

By this time I'm feeling discouraged. How are we supposed to re-separate the calves from the mothers in the middle of the pasture? How are we supposed to keep the bull away from those two young, impressionable heifers that he now has access to?

Most importantly, how do we restart our leader/follower system without discouraging Marcel? I need him to buy in to this system because...well, frankly because he's the backbone of this farm. Without his enthusiasm and belief in this system it'll be an uphill battle for yours truly. One that I will likely lose.

Ok. So we need to re-separate the calves, but at least for now they're happily grazing in a nice, fresh paddock, right? Wrong.

When I went to check on the cattle this morning I found two very stubborn, curseword-inducing calves outside of the temporary electric fencelines. They had somehow escaped the paddock.

You've got to be kidding me!

It's not like they were going anywhere, as the perimeter fence would keep them in the field, but the water was in the paddock. And on a sunny, windy day like today, they'd soon be thirsty.

I called Marcel and grumbled in his ear for awhile. He suggested that I take down the whole system, let all of the cows back into the barnyard, and we'd start all over later tonight. "OK. You're right. That's fine. I'll take it all down."

NOT.

I hung up, grabbed the pick-up truck, picked up Armando from preschool, and proceeded to torture him (and those two darn calves) for over an hour. I even broke the first rule of cattle rusting--never herd cattle alone--but I'd be d*mned if I was gonna take all that work down and accept defeat.

I moved the mothers, calves and bull into a fresh paddock full of yummy goodness so they wouldn't pay mind to the fact that I was lowering the electric fence on one side. I pinned the fence down for a 20-foot opening, and then chased those two stubborn calves around the open field until they finally (finally!) saw the opening and crossed over.

I swear they stopped in front of the opening at least 6 times before they decided to cross into the paddock. And speaking of swearing, I think I gave my 4 year old an education, if you know what I mean.

So there you have it. My frustration runneth over, my rotational grazing system runneth amuk, and my yearling heifers runneth with the bull. And I'd better stop saying runneth, or I'll be talking with a lisp for the re-thst of the day. Laugh.

At least I'd be amused. That's a lot better than frustrated.