Raise Grass-Fed Beef

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If you follow our methods, you should achieve the same good results that we and our neighbors get. By two and a half years, slaughter weights for our small English breeds like Angus and Shorthorns are about 1,100 pounds, while the big exotics such as Charolais and Simmenthals can go as high as 1,400 to 1,500, and Herefords are about halfway between. Your extra year of pasturing can be expected to produce-on the average -at least 200 pounds more beef than would be found on an equivalent feed-lot raised steer . . . and maybe as much as 600 pounds more!

AN OLD-FASHIONED HANGING

After the animal is slaughtered, the carcass should—in order to win the race between the natural enzymes that tenderize beef and the bacteria that may rot it-be quickly chilled and hung in a location with a steady temperature of around 34 to 38°F. If the storage site is much colder, the whole tenderizing process will stop . . . while moisture evaporates from the meat. If it's much hotter, though, the rot-causing bacteria will get to work.

For most people, the easiest place to age beef is in the local locker plant, and many such outfits will cooperate . . . if you know enough to tell them what you want. Here are the facts you need to remember:

A freshly hung carcass feels like a football filled with cold tallow: The surface is taut and the meat is solid. After 10 to 14 days, it starts to feel as though the tallow were just starting to warm up and get a little soft. That's the point at which some small-scale butchers process beef, while a packing plant would have done so days before.

The best beef restaurants, however, wait a little longer . . . and so should you. Give the meat 18 days (or even up to 21 for the big fellows) until the change is complete. The carcass's surface will still be taut and the meat solid after that span of time, but it will feel like a football filled with heavy oil. ( You won't be able to poke a finger into it, but it'll seem as if you could.) That's the time to cut and wrap your meat.

If you follow the methods described in this article-nutritious summer pasture, good winter feeding with vitamin A supplements, steady weight gains, and old-fashioned hanging times you'll find grass-fed beef can be even better than the much publicized grain-fed variety. The meat will be red, firm, and tender . . . with real beef flavor and enough fat to make it succulent. The results, we think, are well worth waiting for.

BUT SOME GRASS CAN KILL COWS

One minute your calf is happily munching away in a spring-green, succulent pasture. Suddenly, the animal starts to run and stagger . .. bellows loudly . . . and collapses. Dashing to its side, you may find the beast temporarily blind. The catastrophe appears to be lead poisoning, but where in the verdant acreage could the calf have gotten any lead?

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