If you have a place to keep it , with some grass. If she has good cover, butcher her. If she is too lean, leave her on grass or hay , give her some grain. She will put on the pounds, when she looks tasty, butcher her.. You might need two animals, as one doesn't do well alone, see how easy it is to become a farmer. old243

We raise colored beef by that I mean beef breeds and not dairy steers. We like to intensively rotate our pastures and have the cows in a paddock for 2-3 days and then move this gives us with a legume grass mix forage that is about equal to ear corn in energy if not higher. We do grain them a bit every day so they are easier to work with. The last year the wet conditions caused our legumes in our pasture to basically be removed due to root disease so and our winter hay was low in quality so we are gain feeding a bit more now. We have 3 calves on the ground right now and we have increased grain to keep the cows lactating better.

Our best tasting beef has been heavy legume grass forage of good quality with grain as about 20% of the dry matter per day. We won't have that this year. With forage as a major feed the marbling is there but different, but taste is good as is texture and dressing percentage is actually higher for our own use. If you want to raise for the conventional market you need to grain feed heavy to get more marbling, fat and have the animal younger with a higher percentage of the meat in the higher value cuts.
The type of forage one feeds can also impact the flavor of the meat. Have your cows graze some wild onions and then drink that milk. Some fermented feeds can cause flavor issues as well.

Bryce

Blind = not as much muscle movement= tender!! Put them on grain for a couple months and enjoy

If nobody told me any different I would not notice. I'm no connoisseur of beef, but I believe it has a lot to do with cooking it and the cut of meat. RUN, I would like to hear your story though??????

Every steak I’ve made tastes the same. You guys got too much time on your hands.

All grass fed here. I love it. Argentine beef is grass fed too and incredible.

Pete

I will attempt to tell my story. We had a partially blind Red Bull that liked to get out. I was trying to keep him in his pen so I bang a bucket with cracked corn, alfalfa meal, and a touch of molasses against a wooden post. He would hear me bang the bucket and charge full bore. I would quickly get back on the safe side of the fence and watch him eat his feed. I kinda got attached to him. I miss him a little bit. It's true that blind beef is the best tasting stuff I've eaten.

Good feedback. Thank you. This is a SoDak beef that runs on a ranch with about 800 cows. I'm going to take her to the locker next Thursday. She gets wild when they attempt to drive her, so we'll shoot her, bleed her, put her in the back of the pickup and haul her to town. Hopefully it won't be a 90 degree day as it's about 50 miles from town.

I would throw her in a lot for 3 months with a corn feeder in front of her.

Serious questions - can you get good marbling from straight grass? If you finish on alfalfa is it still considered grass fed?

I would say alfalfa is grass fed.

Better believe it’s Berta beef

but isn't corn a warm season grass?

Id grain her for at least 3 months first.. but thats me

We raised two holsteins last year here in our lot and butchered them. I will spend the extra time and money next year to keep mine on corn. I do not have the genetics to get the marbling I like in my beef with straight grass fed beef. Straight grass fed here means primarily fescue pasture. We do not have Alberta native prairie or even flint hills native grass mixes. We have rank fescue that keeps cows alive but thats about it. South Dakota grass fed beef would likely be better than here because you have more brome, bluegrass, and likely native pastures. Grass fed means quite a few things when in relation to geography and forage types.

This heifer is blind and can't be moved without her going nuts. She can't be driven into a lot. I live in town so me feeding her is outta the question. We'll just pretend she's a buffalo on the open prairie and just run with it.

I agree that fescue is nasty. Our cows like clover and burdock and plantain.

We always timed our purchase to get beef that was grain finished. (I am no beef rancher, so we are taking the farmer's word for it). He told us to order in Feb/Mar as his cattle had been off grass and on to grain for several months at that point. We did find the flavor to I quite good always using this method.

It is best for people to have a 1(omega 6) to 1(omega 3) or 2-1 omega 6 to omega 3 ratio in their diet but most people in this country have a 20-1 ratio or better.

In that situation...its the best thing!

Amazes me the way folks look at beef and how most believe it's GTA be finished this or that way to be tasty an healthy. It's like walking into the grocery store and watching ppl read labels on their supposedly organic food and arguing that it's not organic enough to eat. I think folks have forgotten not that many yrs ago ppl were worried about starving more than OMG what have I put in my perfect body.. food is fuel.