A question we receive quite often is, “What breed of cow do you have?” That is a good question, because when you see our cow herd, there is variation in hair color! Some are dark red, some light red, some have white markings; to use a dog term, they are “mutts” (a mix of breeds). Our cow herd is definitely not “registered cattle” (dominated by one specific breed). We are interested in EPIGENETICS over GENETICS. We are more interested in cattle TYPE rather than cattle BREED.
A Large Fermentation Vat Required
Our cattle are never fed grains. They must grow and maintain their body condition on forages alone. Unfortunately, like you and I, cattle cannot actually “digest” their food. Cattle carry around trillions of cellulose-consuming bacteria in their gut. There is not as much “energy” to grow and put on weight in a pound of grass as there is in a pound of starchy grains. To raise cattle on grass alone, we need cattle that are moderate in size with huge gut capacity. This allows the animals to ingest a large amount of forage, lie down, chew their cud, and let the microbes in their gut convert the undigestible plant cellulose into volatile fatty acids that are the primary source of energy for the cow. Fermented foods are great for us humans, and the only true food source for a cow.
Form Follows Function
Getting back to epigenetics… even though the cow above is primarily from the red angus “breed” (genetics), because of how we manage the herd and the environment they are exposed to, “genes” have been expressed to allow this animal to FUNCTION (survive and reproduce). You end up with a FORM of cow that can survive only on forages and produce offspring that will actually function better than the parent. Many of the cows in our current herd came from one female we brought to our farm in 2011. That matriarch cow could FUNCTION in our environment, under our management. Her FORM is what we want to see in our herd, so we have always kept her female offspring (maternal cow herd).
Other things to consider when looking for grassfed cattle
There are other features that we look for in the ideal “grass type cow” but we will let you search out that information from other sources. Some things that come to mind:
- Fly resistance
- Good disposition
- Good feet
- walk, back foot lands where front foot took off from the ground
- Cows
- wedge shapped big in back
- wide rump
- rump slopes down off back
- Bulls
- wedge shapped big in front
- shoulder width same as rump width or more!
- Wide mouth
- Loose hide
- Depth of chest, closer to ground
- Width of chest
- And of utmost importance, Fertility.
Grassfed Cattle Feature Sources: Steve Campbell, Kit Pharo