Burns Angus Farm
All Natural Beef
We know healthy cattle will provide superior meat. Proper nutrition is top priority at our farm. Absolutely NO by-products, NO grain, NO hormones, NO antibiotics, NO chemical additives, and NO steroids are used on our farm. NO chemicals, NO colorants, and NO irradiation is ever used by the butcher.
Cattle are ruminants with a multi-compartment stomach designed for digesting high-fiber diets. They stay healthy and thrive on a pasture diet.
Feeding high-starch grains to ruminant animals was virtually non-existent prior to World War II. Feedlots were the product of government policy to deal with surplus grain following the war. The need for antibiotics and growth hormones came from forcing the animals to eat an unnatural diet in a confined, unsanitary environment. By removing the excess starch from the diet and giving cattle some space, the need for these additives disappears.
Why Grass-Fed?
Our cattle can live their entire lives in their natural pasture setting, enjoying the feed they were meant to eat. The results are stress-free cows that stay healthy and perform very well on a grain-free diet of pasture grasses and winter haylage.
Besides being tender and tasty, grass-fed beef is naturally much lower in fat, and thereby lower in calories than grain fed beef. While grass-fed beef is low in saturated fat, it actually contains two to six times more omega-3 essential fatty acids, which play a vital role in your overall health and well-being. Grass-fed beef is also higher in cancer-fighting CLA's, Vitamin E, and Beta Carotene. It's great for your health!
The fats our ancestors consumed were from wild game; fats that are healthy and provide essential nutrients in our diet. Domestic livestock produced entirely on pasture contain those same healthy fats.
Grass is tough and is not easy to digest. Ruminants (four stomach cud chewers) can make use of it. Micro-organisms live inside the rumen, the first stomach chamber, to break down the tough cellulose structures of grass so the calories and nutrients can be extracted in the next three stomach chambers.
These micro-organisms can only function with a slight acid pH of 6.4, the level found in a grass diet. Grain intake increases the stomach acidity rendering the cow's grass intake useless for nutrition.
Cattle cannot cope with toxins and high acidity of a grain-rich diet. In feedlot animals on extremely high grain diets, the resulting stress over the long term is so high that their livers shut down, causing death sometime after 24 months. If we want our cattle to live naturally on grass, grain simply has no place in the equation.
Pasture fed beef is good for cattle, good for our environment, and good for the consumer.
source: Grass-Fed Cattle by Julius Ruechel Storey Publishing 2006
BURNS ANGUS FARM, John & Audrene Burns
101 Orchard Road, New Wilmington, PA 16142 phone: 724-946-3125
E-mail: BurnsAngus@yahoo.com
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