This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 9:39am and is filed under Local, ranch life, Parenting, Meat, Agriculture, Ranching, Food Production. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I am a small beef producer. Last year, Wild Type Ranch sold about 11,000 pounds of beef at Farmer’s Markets and through local delivery. Not only do I know the life history of each animal we harvested, I also tasted the beef from each one. Often, I know the entire pedigree. All this information helps us design our breeding program and select genetics that make our pasture-raised beef more tender and tasty than anything Donald Trump puts his over-priced name on.
I also know the names of the animals we harvest.
It freaks people out; “how can you eat something with a name?” they’ll ask in horror. “Don’t tell me it’s name, just sell it to me!” is another common comment.
We name ALL the cattle born on our ranch, not just those we believe will go on to reproductive glory as cows or bulls. Not to do so would be hypocritical. The founding principle of our ranch is “respect for all life”. The cattle destined for beef are no less worthy (in the most universal sense) than those destined for breeding. Their “best use” is just different.
Our registered cattle mostly have names related to music (such as Pink Floyd, Sinatra, Layla). I give the kids free rein on the unregistered calves. Last year, we had all the planets-starting with Jupiter who was the biggest, Mars was red, etc. I had to draw the line at Uranus, though. Even I don’t want to eat beef from Uranus.
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For additional discussion, visit Rebecca, over at Honest Meat who is bravely delving into our disconnect from our meat and how it affects our food choices.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:14am
Wow — I anticipated I would have a very different reaction to this post. BUT if we are going to eat beef, shouldn’t we know its name? In a loving, tender way? Seems counter-intuitive, but somehow it makes sense.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:49pm
We don’t name our animals (except for the breeding stock) but I show pictures of the animals to our customers. Sometimes they say, “Aah, they are so cute (the baby pigs especially). Now how am I going to eat it?” I always respond, “We like for you to meet your meat. We want you to understand that this meat came from a living animal that lead a great life. Their lives are so good, really, they only have one bad day in their life!”
January 13th, 2009 at 6:06am
We raise a small number of dairy beef while operating a dairy operation. We always name our heifer calves, who become our future cows. We seldom name the bull calves. Most of them are sold as weaned calves, but we keep a few for our own use and a few to sell as freezer beef. I agree with previous posts that it is wonderful to know exactly how the animal was raised. I also tell folks that the purpose of this animal was to provide delicious, nutritious food for our entire family, and we are so THANKFUL for it.
November 29th, 2009 at 2:32pm
Great article. Nice to know there are those out there that are thougtfully and humanely raising animals. Makes you think.
December 9th, 2009 at 10:31pm
Randy: Thanks for finding us. We DO give a lot of thought to how we raise our animals and all that we do on the ranch. Words like yours are worth a lot.