Better for
Your Health
Grassfed beef is high in vitamins, antioxidants, and Omega 3 fatty acids (Daley et al., 2010). The fats you consume come from ruminant animals that are eating what ruminants evolved to eat - primarily the leaves of grass and forbs fresh or dried and still standing in the pasture. This conversion of carbohydrates from native grasses to proteins and fats means lower levels of saturated fats (Turner et al., 2014). Our cattle are out on pasture every single day until the day they are harvested. They are never confined for feeding during the finishing stage nor are they finished with grain. The fact that these animals were still able to move about and select the plants they want to eat while using their muscles surely leads to healthy meat as well.
Learn what good meat means to us from our friends at the Good Meat Breakdown
less impact on the
Environment
When you buy directly from a local rancher you are inherently saving energy. Not having to rely on distribution channels that span across the US, you are contributing to a more efficient food supply chain, one that values the idea of a “foodshed”, otherwise known as a local region in which people and their food are grown together and where one has a positive impact on the other.
Through our regenerative ranching practices, the cattle are strategically moved from pasture to pasture according to forage availability - limiting their impact on the land and preventing overgrazing. You can think of grazing as exfoliating of the Earth’s skin, you don’t want to do it too often, but occasionally we need the older skin cells removed to allow for healthy new cells to take their place just like plants need older leaves removed so they don’t shade the new growth.
Along those same lines of skincare, the massage of the hooves on the soil can be helpful for increasing water infiltration when it rains and incorporating the “skin treatment” a.k.a. dead plant litter into the soil. In fact, our methods of adaptive grazing management lead to better soil and a healthier environment, not only for future generations- but for the wildlife that depends on this natural habitat. We’re proud of our biodiversity! See some of the species we share the land with at our iNaturalist project below and check out our blogs for more about our land management practices and philosophy.
More humane
Animal Care
Sol Ranch cattle live a life that is considerably more humane than commercially finished cattle, where they are traditionally finished in overcrowded feedlots. Our cattle are able to roam freely on our vast rangelands, soaking up the sun and breathing the clean New Mexico air, choosing the right nutritious plants according to their individual needs. Like we said before, they are out on native range up until the day they are harvested.
We aim to provide less daily stress on our animals, allowing them to live and eat as their lives were intended. When it comes time to work with our animals or move them to fresh grass, we practice low-stress handling with the goal of keeping animals calm and relaxed while allowing them to be comfortable in each area of the ranch. In turn, the animals are generally healthier and stronger without growth hormones and unnecessary antibiotics.
We prefer to work with a herd that we have adapted over time to our arid drought-prone climate with rocky steep cañones, uncontrolled predators, and wide swings in temperature. Our mama cows are fertile, healthy, and fat on grass alone and have very few problems or illnesses. All we do is provide good food for them and help them enjoy it.
Now we are not saying that it is currently possible to finish all cattle on grass and leave the feedlot system behind. We are not anti-grain finishing or beet pulp finishing or any of the other finishing feeds that can be fed to cattle to fatten them. The reality is that our nation’s food production left pastoralism behind in the 1950’s and became industrialized, switching to a model of harvesting mono-cropped animal feeds grown in separate fields from the animals and conveniently feeding the confined animals those feeds in feedlot systems. The animals were separated from the land in the key final stages of their lives. That’s where we felt like we needed to change things.
The fact is, without proper food supply chains in place in rural regions of the nation, it’s difficult to sell local meat whether finished on grass or on grain. There is a general lack of small meat processing plants that are able to offer USDA inspection of animals to local ranchers and farmers. This makes harvesting livestock difficult and not always feasible for the average rancher. Until we see the demand from consumers for a more local, less exploitative food production system, this funneling of animals through large feedlots and packing plants will continue to feed the 4 major meat packing companies that dominate the industry and control the pricing thus forcing the family rancher slowly out of business and stripping humans of their access to healthy local foods.
Want to change this? You can help us change animal and rancher welfare for the better with your food dollar by supporting local farmers and ranchers who feed their animals local feeds and treat their land, their animals, and their family with care and respect.
And finally, IT JUST
Tastes GOOD!
Cattle finished on grass out in the pasture have a wonderful flavor that reflects the species of plants that they eat, not only at the time of finishing but what they eat throughout their life. Our cattle forage on a diverse array of species according to their preference which varies by the time of day, the season, the pasture, and their internal cycles. Plant compounds from this diet of forbs and grasses are stored in the fat cells and add deeper flavors depending on seasonality. That’s where the yellow color comes from in the fat on your steak.
This is the flavor of the beautiful grasslands of Northeast New Mexico. Cattle are designed to eat mostly the leafy part of a plant and have the power to turn native vegetation into food for humans with the help of their large rumen, otherwise known as a fermentation chamber. They can do this in regions that receive less precipitation and can graze in rocky regions that are not suitable for farming, thus increasing the food-producing capacity of our arid region.
This flavor profile just can’t be found in cattle that eat a simplified, highly processed diet during the finishing phase. Yes, it’s true that most cattle spend the first year or so out on pasture consuming grass, but oftentimes they go into a feedlot system where they consume a diet which contains above-average portions of seeds-derived feeds including monocropped GMO corn, soy, grain, silage, etc., all feeds that ruminants are not adapted to eating in this manner. This is beef as it should taste and what our food is made of matters. We are what we eat.
Have you heard that notion that grassfed beef is just not as tender as grain finished beef? We have too. In fact, in our journey to learning more about the meat we produce, we have found that improper cooking is often a problem with grassfed beef. As we moved away from eating grass finished animals prior to the 50’s, some of the knowledge of traditional cooking has been forgotten. Animals who are free to roam around a pasture are naturally leaner and have more developed muscles which contain slightly less fat and therefore need to be cooked at lower temperatures depending highly on the muscle group the cut came from on the animal and whether that group was used a lot or a little.
To learn more about how to cook each cut of meat and other tricks for cooking grassfed beef, visit the Good Meat Project or contact us with your specific questions.
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