Backyard Beef

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The secret of raising delectable beef on grass—avoiding the expense and tallowy taste of commercially fed beef—is to maintain lush pasture through the growing season. For raising backyard beef, a simplified version of the grass-fed method can suffice. If your soil is fairly rich and rainfall exceeds 35 inches per year, you need about an acre per calf or at least two acres for a cow and calf. (Two is better for one, also, if your goal is to avoid supplemental hay or grain.) In a drier climate, you'd need to at least double these acreage requirements. Many homesteads have an acre or more that's wasted as lawn. According to research at Stockholm University in Sweden, the air pollution from cutting grass with a gasoline-powered lawn mower for an hour is the same as driving a car for 93 tees. Americans use 800 million gallons of gas per year to mow their lawns. Why not produce delicious, healthful meat and spend less time mowing?

FENCING

Backyard beef begins with a solid fence around the pasture. Building a durable cattle fence costs about 35 cents per foot minimum, expensive for fencing large fields but not so much for a couple of acres. Built well, it will last 30 years. I strongly advise a woven-wire cattle fence 47 inches high, with the top and bottom strands made of 9-gauge wire and the others at least 11 gauge. Thinner wire isn't strong enough and won't last long enough. You also can use five strands of barbed wire or a five-strand New Zealand fence with two strands electrified. But a good woven-wire fence will repay the work put into it many times over, specially if you have close neighbors. It keeps ot large dogs and small children.

If you don't know how to build a fence, talk to someone who does. A fragile electric fence is no good to maintain property lines. Invariably (like while you are away), your animals will either stumble the electric wire or it will short out and your calves will escape. I once had 20 calves break out and race through our village, my own version of the Running of the Bulls.

You shouldn't have to mow a paddock more than trice a year, and sometimes not at all.

PADDOCKS AND PASTURE

In rotational grazing the pasture is divided into paddocks and the livestock moved from paddock to paddock. By the time the animals have grazed through the last one, the first is ready to be grazed again. Electric fencing that is easily movable is usually used to divide a pasture,

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