Grass Fed Beef

Each December, we purchase from four to eight Black Angus (or Black Angus cross breeds) calves from our nationally recognized and registered breeder.  These Spring born calves are 6 months old and weigh about 500 pounds.  They are birthed on a farm near ours and receive the best quality care and feed until we receive them in December.  When they arrive at The Rose Early Farm, we keep them in our barn for a week or two until they get used to us and their surroundings.  During the Winter and Spring, they are fed a light grain mixture and plenty of last Summer's top quality alfalfa hay along with salt and mineral nutrients.   They have free range over our two winter pastures and are provided fresh straw bedding in our calve barn.

As Spring unfolds, we add a crushed, inert diatomaceous powder (Wikipedia description) to their daily grain ration as a natural digestive dewormer.  We introduce our calves gradually to the now rapidly growing pasture grasses as we shift their focus to primarily grass based feed.  We rotate our calves between five different pastures, managing grazing pressure, quality of pasture grass and shade requirements.  Our intent is to both manage our pasture feed and provide a comfortable environment for our cattle.  

During the Summer, we usually get three good alfalfa hay cuttings.  Our alfalfa field is maintained without commercial grade herbicides or pesticides.  The hay we bundle in the Summer, goes into storage in the cattle barn to use as feed the following winter.  While our calves eat primarily grass in the Summer, they still get a fair ration of grains, salt and mineral nutrients along with an occasional bale of hay.  

Every four weeks in the Summer, we broadcast tiny wasp larvae around our barns and heavy use areas (Biological Fly Control Program).  These wasps lay their eggs in developing fly pupae, eating the eggs before they can grow to adults.  These harmless to human wasps keep the fly population to a minimum.  We also thoroughly clean our cattle barns each Spring spreading the manure on select pastures.

As Fall approaches, we confirm our beef orders with our customers, provide them instructions on how to call our butcher to place their customized order for their 1/4 or 1/2 beef to be packaged.  Some customers have all their beef packaged into 1 lb packages of ground beef.  Others prefer their steaks sliced to 3/4 inch and their roasts at 1.5 lbs.  Our butcher is very easy to work with and happily helps first time buyers with their orders.  We keep a first come first served waiting list and often have openings.  Return customers must let us know by August 1 to confirm reorder, else their beef order will be filled from our waiting list.

Our calves grow from 500 lbs to on average 1200 lbs in one year.  During the butchering cycle, a 1200 lb calf will yield about 600 lbs of processed beef - 150 lbs per 1/4.  Total cost per quarter is around $600.00.

We transport our cattle to the butcher mid-October.  Three weeks later, we pick up many beef orders and take it back to our farm for customer pickup, always on a Saturday morning from 10am to noon.  We encourage our customers to pick up their own beef directly at the butcher as well.  We also accommodate special requests when necessary.

We don't advertise our beef as organic, but we do take care to raise our beef in as natural a way as possible.  We do not 'beef them up' with hormones or any other non-natural ingredients.  We don't 'load them up' with grain to increase their fatty content and weight.  We do treat them very well while they're in our care.  And by rotating pastures, we try to be good stewards of the land.  We produce very flavorful, lean beef.   Ask for a tour anytime by contacting us!

If you have any questions regarding our cattle business, please email us at info@roseearlyfarm.com.