Re: Grass Fed Info

[Guest guest]

I understand Carol's frustration. Her intentions were not only

completely misunderstood, but she also proved the future of RAW Milk

for the masses is bleak if the farmer's are unwilling to listen to

their customer's concerns and recommendations. Carol's information was

sound. Dr. Mercola does insist that 100% grass-fed diet is how you

should feed your cows (someone mentioned they would listen to Dr.

Mercola if he told them how to feed their cows.):

http://www.mercola.com/2003/feb/15/grassfed_diabetics.htm

There are many other articles in which Dr. Mercola discusses raw milk

and how we, as consumer's, (though we mightn't know the hardships of

raising livestock ourselves), should be proactive in pressing our milk

sources for 100% GRASS-FED raw dairy:

http://www.mercola.com/forms/cheese.htm

This was Carol's intention. It was not selfishly for her own health

either. She was giving the farmers who care, the heads up on the

health advantages of RAW milk and Organic Grass-fed farming as well as

the potential for high demand in the near future. Some people shot

back for fear more people be made aware...if everyone starts demanding

100% Grass-Fed, it will take some of the profit out of your hard

earned farming bucks to stay competitive. Not necessarily. There are

already people willing to pay big bucks for 100% grass fed meats. Not

to mention RAW milk from McAfee's 24/7 organic pastured cows. If I

wasn't spending all of MY hard earned money supporting organic farming

(I only buy organic, free-range, and shade-grown/fair trade food.) I

would be able to be more choosey about how my milk and meat are farmed.

The problem with food today is that it IS for-profit. Anything

for-profit has a natural tendancy to be a quantity over quality

operation. How can anybody sell food if it doesn't really belong to

them in the first place? People should have been able to pick their

apples off of any tree in the world without having to pay. Everyone

should have a car AND a cow. I think of food as means of survival

rather than a need for coupons, carts and cash.

Alas, we do place a value on convenience. As such, if I could get

everything I needed straight from a farm, I would have no problem

spending more money on the healthiest of foods rather than wasting it

on expensive TV's with surround sound and digital high definition

Plasma screens that only display and promote much of what is

destroying our world today. If I knew that some of that money was

going toward healthier soil, air, water, and food...hell yea I'd be

willing to pay more for my food.

I don't condone the name-calling, singling out of groups of people,

and picking apart of the e-mails that Carol resorted to, but who am I

to condone anything...I've sinned. I just am glad that Carol said what

had to be said. Even at the risk of having lost her valuable opinion

on this matter from *OUR* RAW Dairy Forums!

GRASS-FED meats ARE tougher and Gamey because they are raised

appropriately not finished off with grains. As consumer's get more

savvy, they won't buy the " grass-fed and grain finished " *quality*

statement. That could just be another way of saying raised in the

pasture, fattened in the feedlot. The highest quality in my opinion is

the healthiest and that mean's highest in CLA/OMEGA 3's AKA 100%

GRASS-FED!

Just My buck fit-tee.

Tony

Who is not a Farmer himself, But has much respect for the deep-organic

family farmer who strives to bring the very best food to his/her table

and respects the soil more than the royal.

[Guest guest]

Tony, you actually misread the post re: Dr. Mercola, the writer said

she would listen to his feeding recommendations when she saw his

degree in ruminent nutrition. Personally, I consider him a good

starting point for learning about nutrition, but he just goes too

far. After reading an his comments on the benefits of nutrients in

grape skins and his reccomendation of just eating the skin and

tossing the insides because he didn't approve of the natural sugars

my respect started to slip. And now that he is promoting luxury

crusies with seminars with him I have even less. He's a wonderful

advocate for raw milk products, but he's in no way an authority on

feeding livestock.

I think everyone who has a cow wants to be grain free, we are all

aware of the benefits- www.eatwild.com is an excellent source for

info. All the family cow people I know are very aware of all the

newest grass fed research and findings. We aren't the ones who need

to be educated by our potential consumers on grassfeeding, it's the

consumers who have to realize that with dairy cows most of us can't

be completely grass free without negatively impacting our cows. And

they need to realize that we are all working on lowing our grain

inputs and selecting genetics that will do better on grass. Our

whole point with Carol was that with the genetics availible today

with our cows we cannot go completely without grain without

seriously comprimising our cows health and production. I feed the

bare minimum to my cow to maintain her weight and milk. Its a hard

balance and I am constantly adjusting how much she gets. I think

that compared to milk from commerical dairys feed anything from

grain to cardboard to chicken manure milk from cows like mine who

are feed hay, pasture, and the grain her body requires is far

better. 100% grassfed is a good goal, but it won't happen overnight

in the USA.

Producing grassfed beef is a whole different arena with concern to

feeding, a beef animal is not a dairy animal and have very different

energy needs. We just had our first steer butchered in August and if

you are getting tough and gamey grassfed meats you need a new

supplier. Ours was tender and mild. Our steer was a purebred

Guernsey (not a favorite for commerical beef production) who was

raised purely on pasture, local hay, and mother's milk for all of

his 12 months and 1 week of life. The butcher was fascinated with

him, as he had worked with grassfed before but had never had a

carcass like ours. It aged differently and he was really impressed.

The steers live weight was 1100 lbs, hanging was 527, and we brought

home around 400 lbs of meat.

Another thing to consider, alongside with K.C.'s point about

contamination, it that in many parts of the USA we are grazing

animals on land and soil that was never naturally a grassland. I

live in Ohio, were the land was pretty much all forests. We don't

have all the proper nutrients and minerals in our soils to grow

grass that will supply a cow with all her needs. Places like New

Zealand were supposed to have grasslands and therefore the grass is

of a better quality then in places where the soil supported forests.

[Guest guest]

If you find a farm where you think you want to buy a product- be it

meat or milk or goose eggs- I would just ask. What do they feed, how

much, when, why, etc. I think most farmers would be happy to answer

any questions and even give show you the works. We want to customer

to be aware and comfortable with what we are doing and how we do it.

I think the cows in the commercial, big, confined dairy farms (and

even moreso the beef feedlots) feed way to much grain, on top of

much worse things like garbage, blood, bubblegum, and old

phonebooks.

Smaller confinement farms (from what I've seen and heard from

talking to the farmers) go the corn silage, hay, and grain ration

route.

The grazing farms that I've been to do mostly pasture/ hay and just

offer grain at milking time. Some don't even feed at the actual

milking but have a feed bunk where the cows will eat a few minutes,

get a drink, and then head back out to the field after milking.

And the even smaller farms, with just a cow or two, generally feed

only a few pounds of grains at milking time as body condition and

milk production maintainence. It's also an excellent bribe to get

the cow to do something she really doesn't want too (like go into

her stanchion when she knows the vet is waiting for her to do some

awful thing like a pregnancy palp).

Weldon

A Bit of Earth Farm

Litchfield, Ohio

> Hi ,

> Thanks for repying! I am not unreasonable if I could

understand why things are done the way they are done. Would you say

that MOST farmers are just like you? If they are, then me, and MANY

other people are way mistaken. I would pesonally love to buy milk

from you...you sound like a responsible farmer and reasonably do

your best! I would think a " little " grain a times would not be a big

deal...I feel that there are 24 hours in a day....and how long do

you milk? Obviously, if you mostly only feed grains at milking and

for little treats...that is a VERY small proportion of grain to

grass. I can't see that being detrimental at all. But I don't know,

I'd like to know the " real story " .Many opinions out there...how do

consumers find THE TRUTH?

[Guest guest]

>

>> I have a dream that all small communities will begin to be more

self sufficient and provide food for their local peoples. I can

see greenhouses in schools, feeding the children local, organically

grown veggies, and teaching them where their food comes from, and how

to respect that, and provide for themselves.

>

> I can see large community greenhouses that feed the entire

community and sell the excess to another market. Everybody

locally " does their part " and everyone shares and barters with each

other. Livestock grazing on the surrounding pastures , providing

superior protein sources for the residents. Is this possible someday?

I bet we wouldn't need as many " doctors " !!

>

Wake up from your dream! This is not going to happen! People in

today's 'hand it to me' and 'throw away' society are not willing to

put in the long, hard, extreme cold/hot hours that it takes to do

this. It is a grand idea, but not practical. Folks have tried these

communities and failed because it is a fairy tale dream. You will

see when you have your own land and livestock. It is a 24/7

lifestyle and most have to hold on to the in-town jobs as well.

We wouldn't trade it for the world.

[Guest guest]

Do any of you know if the smaller dairy farmers who feed corn silage

are typically using fertilizer and pesticides on the corn they grow?

We are looking at a farm property near a bunch of smaller

confinement dairies, and it is surrounded with fields that look like

they were corn in summer months. We are worried about the pesticides

blowing onto the property as they are upwind.

Thanks,

Sara

Washington State

[Guest guest]

It would depend on the individual farmer and the type of corn.

Around here you don't see corn being sprayed but some seeds are sold

RoundUp Ready which means they have it in the seeds. Asking the

farmers would be the best way to find out.

>

> Do any of you know if the smaller dairy farmers who feed corn

silage

> are typically using fertilizer and pesticides on the corn they

grow?

[Guest guest]

>I have a dream that all small communities will begin to be more

self sufficient and provide food for their local peoples.

>Wake up from your dream! This is not going to happen!

I just have to chime in here and say Bravo to the dream! There are

many, many people and organizations working toward self-sufficiency

and/or sustainable living (references available). Raw dairy is an

important part of this as food is central to a strong local economy.

It may not be the lifestyle most people would choose, but when the

oil runs out this civilization will need to be retooled anyway. With

new innovations like permaculture and deep organics, the workload of

local food production can be lessened.

I spent a few days on an island in Canada last year with about 20

fellow students at a place that used only solar power (yes, we had

computers) and supported itself with a heritage garden and fresh-

caught seafood. It was a real eye-opener about the quality of life

that is possible. We all pitched in and the work of providing for

ourselves went quickly. We can do SO much better in our daily lives -

maybe not through new technologies or faster economic growth, but a

different perspective on what we dream of. Thanks, Steve!

Sara

Washington State

[Guest guest]

At 5:06 AM +0000 12/14/04, s_l_moore_2001 wrote:

> >I have a dream that all small communities will begin to be more

>self sufficient and provide food for their local peoples.

>

>>Wake up from your dream! This is not going to happen!

>

>I just have to chime in here and say Bravo to the dream!

>[...] We can do SO much better in our daily lives -

> maybe not through new technologies or faster economic growth, but a

>different perspective on what we dream of. Thanks, Steve!

>

>Sara

>Washington State

I agree with Sara. True, neither raw dairy nor localized,

small-scale, sustainable food production will ever be the majority

preference, unless or until forced to it by ecological or economic

necessity (and we got a taste of what that might look like this past

year, when the price of oil spiked and a lot of food prices,

including milk, went up with it): most contemporary Americans are,

indeed, addicted to convenience. But so what? That's no reason not to

dream. And I know this for a fact: no revolution, indeed no positive

change in the way human beings live, ever started WITHOUT a dream.

Dreams are nothing more or less than inspiration -- sometimes

catalyst -- for changes in the reality. And the reality is definitely

in need of a change...

Tom,

still dreaming on in steadily sub/urbanizing Westminster, land

--

" Conservation means harmony between men and land. When land does

well for its owner, and the owner does well by his land, when

both end up better by reason of their partnership, we have

conservation. When one or the other grows poorer, we do not. "

-- Aldo Leopold, " The Farmer as Conservationist "

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H. Harbold P.O. Box 1537

tharbold@... Westminster, MD 21158

tom_in_md@... http://www.geocities.com/Tom_in_MD

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