What Is Grass Finished Beef?
The term “grass finished” might be confusing. Don’t all cows eat grass? And what do you mean by finished?
The short answer is that grass finished beef, to us, means that the cow, steer or heifer was never fed grain and was still fattened to an acceptable level to create marbling in the beef and a juicy, tender and flavorful meat for your meal.
For most beef, a steer is raised by its mother on pastures and then sent to a feedlot where it is confined and fed a grain rich diet. This causes rapid weight gain, but causes health problems for the cattle and less nutritious meat. Feedlots create animal welfare and environmental concerns as well, but we will address that another time.
Our cattle are kept on pastures their entire life, never penned up and never fed grain!
Now let’s get into the weeds, because our cattle sure do. Grassfed means the animal has been outside grazing only grass, legumes and forbs it’s entire life. What are grasses, legumes and forbs? Grasses can be perennials or annuals, warm season or cool season, natives or imports, volunteers or planted, even cereal grains and corn plants are grasses if the cattle graze them before they go to seed producing the grains. Legumes are a group of plants that are nutritious for the cattle and have important soil building qualities. Clovers, alfalfa and lespedezas are the main legumes our cattle are grazing but there are many other types. Forbs are broadleaf plants, such as plantain, chicory and ragweed. Some of these plants folks would call weeds or wildflowers. Some we plant, most are volunteers we encourage with our grazing management. The variety of forbs provides vitamins and nutrients for our cattle as well as phytonutrients, which is good for their health and contributes to the nutritional quality of the meat. Our healthy pastures are very diverse with many different species of grasses, legumes and forbs. Hay is just grasses and pasture plants dried and cured for feeding later. Properly produced hay can be a nutritional supplement during winter when pastures are low on grass.
And “finished” as a description of cattle or beef refers to the appropriate fatness of the animal before it goes to the butcher. The finish allows the hamburger to be juicy, the ribeye to be marbled and the pot roast to be delicious. Beef that was not properly finished will be too lean, tough and dry. A steer can be finished on grain or grass. How it is finished is very important, but only if the steer was finished at all. An animal could also be poorly finished on grain or grass. Along with proper nutrition, patience is required to get the steer to a proper finish. Our steers may be 24 months old at slaughter, compared to feedlot beef being 16-18 months of age.
Another element, which we will talk more about on its own later, is cattle genetics. Selecting animals that have the ability to get fat (finish) on grass alone is crucial.
Putting all this together, having the right type of cattle (genetics) on excellent pastures, until the animal has put on enough fat will produce excellent grassfed, grass finished beef, tender, juicy, flavorful beef. Our grazing management, coupled with our breeding selection, allows us to grass finish cattle in Virginia. We move the animals to new pastures frequently, often daily. This lets the animals eat the most nutritious parts of the plants in the fields, always having enough for the cattle to eat all they want, and allowing long rest periods for the plants to recover between grazing, increasing pasture quality and quantity. This is important for the animal's entire life, always healthy and gaining weight, never declining on overgrazed pastures.
An animal can be purely grassfed, but not properly finished. An animal can be finished but not on 100% grass (including legumes and forbs). For the most nutritious and delicious beef, make sure that what you are buying is grassfed and grass finished. Then enjoy!
