Myths about Super Chicken

Lately, I’ve been seeing some stories about how unnaturally large and overgrown chickens are. People see how much bigger chickens are today compared to 50 years ago, and they question what farmers and poultry companies are doing to get them that way. So, I thought I would write a post addressing some of the myths about Super Chicken.

MYTH: Chickens are given steroids and/or hormones to make them so big.

First, it has been against Federal Regulations to give chickens steroids or hormones since the 1950’s. You may remember that from my previous post about food labels. In addition to being unlawful, steroid hormones don’t work well through feed or water, so farmers would have to inject the birds to get the effects of the hormones. Most chicken farmers have 50,000 birds or more. It would take a long time to give that many shots.

Poultry scientists have studied bird nutrition for many years and learned the optimal diet for raising chickens quickly and efficiently. The diets are balanced with the exact about of carbs, protein, fats, vitamins and minerals the chickens need at their specific phase of growth. The birds have access to feed at all times, and all this attention paid to their dietary needs helps them grow fast.

MYTH: Chickens are loaded up on antibiotics to make them grow.

Most large poultry farmers raise their birds with minimal to no antibiotics in the feed and water. They have learned to control disease with sanitation and proactive feed ingredients like probiotics and essential oils. If a farmer needs give their birds antibiotics when they are sick or to help keep them from getting sick, they work with a veterinarian to determine the best medicine for their flock. Farmers predominantly use types of antibiotics that are not used in human medicine to treat sickness.

It is important to remember that, regardless of whether or not antibiotics were used in raising your chicken, there are no antibiotics in your chicken meat. All animals must go through a withdrawal time after they are given antibiotics, allowing their bodies time to metabolize the medicine and clear it from their system.

MYTH: Chickens are genetically engineered to be big and have large breasts. 

Chickens are not genetically modified or GMOs. Traditionally, farmers kept the biggest and the best hens (momma chickens) and mated them with the biggest and the best roosters (daddy chickens) and produced bigger and better chicks. Today in the poultry industry, those best-on-best mating decisions are made by scientists with pages of data about the birds. They can select new generations of chickens and emphasize any number of traits from growth and breast size to health and bone strength. Couple that with the fact that a farmer can produce a new generation of chicken in a much shorter time than a cow or a pig, and changes in the chicken industry have happened very quickly.

MYTH: Chickens are raised in cages to make them grow.

The inside of a chicken house.

Birds raised for chicken meat are kept in large open houses and allowed to roam freely. To protect the birds’ health, the houses are closed and protected from the outside environment, but the birds have lots of room to wander wherever they wish. They are kept warm in the winter and cool in the summer. There is food and water available all throughout the house. When you visit a chicken house, the birds are quiet and happy.

Do you have more questions about chicken myths?

There is more great info on the website, Chicken Check In. Or you can follow chicken farmers on social media.

I don’t have many chicken posts, but you can check out my post from the Moms at the Poultry Counter on white striping in chicken, or see my hormone or antibiotic posts. I also have one recipe post with chicken, Grannie Annie’s Pozole.

As always, please feel free to ask questions in the comments below. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find someone who does.

The Milk-fed Veal Industry

As a meat scientist I get lots of questions about all kinds of different meat, and most of the time, I feel pretty confident answering them. If I don’t know the answer, I definitely know someone who does.

…unless I was asked about veal… Veal was one topic I didn’t feel very knowledgeable about. I grew up in a rural area in the middle of the country where few people served veal at home and few restaurants offered veal on their menus. There aren’t any veal farmers to go ask or veal processing plants to go tour. Honestly, I just avoided questions about veal because I didn’t know the answers.

Travel with me, you have to take a
#meatcounterselfie

Until… I was invited by the American Veal Association to attend a tour of the American milk-fed veal industry. They brought me to farms in Indiana and Pennsylvania, feed processing plants, and veal processing plants. It was a whirlwind of 3 days of veal tours that I enjoyed with a dairy farm blogger and friend of mine, Krista Stauffer (the Farmers Wifee), a food and ag blogger and new friend, Heather Tallman (A Basil Momma), and my buddy, Donna Moenning from Look East, an ag and food marketing group.


I learned so much that there’s no way to fit it all into one blog post, so I’m going to write a series on the veal industry. Today’s post will be an overview of what veal is and some big-picture things that I learned. Then I’ll write a post going more in depth about the way the calves are cared for and what they are fed. In true Mom at the Meat Counter fashion, I’ll have a post devoted to veal slaughter and processing. Lastly, I’ll have a post about eating and cooking veal because … It. Is. Amazing!

What is veal?

Veal is meat from young calves. While beef is typically harvested at 14 to 16 months of age, veal in the US comes from calves that are younger than 6 months.

Veal is largely a byproduct of the dairy industry. Cows must have a calf to produce milk, and female calves (heifers) are kept in the herd to become the next generation of dairy cows. Most male calves are sent to the beef industry where they are grown on milk replacer, grass and grain to become beef at about 14-16 months. A smaller percentage of the male calves are used for veal production.

There are three types of veal.

1. Bob veal comes from very young calves, typically about a week old. It only makes up about 10% of the veal produced in the US. We didn’t see any bob veal on our tour. These calves go directly from the farm where they are born to harvest.

2. Milk-fed or special fed veal comes from calves that are about 5 months of age. These calves are raised on veal farms and fed a milk replacer, kinda like baby formula. They are also fed grain when they get old enough to eat it. Milk-fed veal represents about 85% of the US veal industry.

Some of the cuts available from Catelli
Brothers Veal. We visited their plant.

3. Grain-fed veal is a very small part of the industry in the US. These calves are a little older and are fed grain in addition to milk replacer. We didn’t see any grain-fed veal on our tour either.

Veal is light reddish-pink in color and has a very mild flavor so it is a favorite of chefs because it accepts flavor and seasoning very well. It is extremely tender and lean. Many of the cuts are served bone-in. Veal is very popular in French and Italian cuisine.


Americans eat less than ½ a pound of veal per person each year (compared to about 57 pounds of beef eaten per person), whereas Canadians eat over 2 pounds of veal and French-Canadians eat about 6 pounds. Each week the US harvests about 4,000 milk-fed veal calves, compared to about 600,000 animals for beef.

Two young veal calves at an Amish farm we visited.

I’m going to go into a lot more detail in upcoming posts, but I wanted to share a few of the surprising things that I learned on my tour.

• About 75% of the veal raised in the US is cared for by Amish and Mennonite families. 

• Milk-fed veal is located near the cheese producing areas of the country. The milk-replacer is made from cheese byproducts (whey) and added fats.

• Veal farmers are trained in Veal Quality Assurance programs to ensure that the calves are well cared for. Veal was the first industry to adopt a Quality Assurance program.

• Veal calves receive milk replacer for about the same amount of time that beef calves drink milk.

A farmer in Indiana is feeding the milk replacer to his calves.
They are eager for their breakfast. 

• Calves are allowed to eat grain once they are old enough. In all the farms I visited, the calves had free choice grain.

• Calves are closely monitored for anemia and other health concerns.

• Veal calves are not castrated or dehorned.

• Until they are about 8 weeks old, veal calves are raised in conditions a lot like all dairy calves. In the barns I saw, the small calves were in individual pens because they will suckle on each other and cause health problems. But, they can see and touch their neighbors.

• Once they reach 8 weeks or so, calves are housed in group environments. They may be moved to group barns with 3 or 4 calves in a pen, or simply combined in a pen with their neighbor. Group-raised veal was a policy goal of the American Veal Association and over 90% of their farms operate this way today. All of the farms represented by the AVA will use group housing by the end of this year.

• Calves are never tethered or restrained. The barns were quiet and the calves all seemed very happy. 

• Milk-fed veal calves are harvested at about 5 months and weigh about 500 pounds. 

This tour was such an eye opening experience. The veal I ate while on the tour was absolutely delicious. I am planning to buy some veal to serve to my family and will definitely order veal if I see it in a restaurant. I know that the animals are raised in good conditions and well cared for. I’m confident that the harvest and processing met my standards of humane animal treatment and food safety.

I hope to help answer some questions and concerns that people may have about veal with this series of posts. If you have a question or a comment, please leave it below.

Please know that I am tolerant of differing opinions, but I will not tolerate abusive or threatening language. All the comments are monitored by me before they post.



Here are a few more links to info about veal

American Veal Association

Catelli Brothers

Marcho Farms

Midwest Veal

Strauss Brands Veal

Veal Made Easy

Veal Quality Assurance

Tales from the Livestock Barn ~ Washington County Fair

Although I live in neighboring Madison County, I was thrilled when I was asked to write something about the Livestock Barn for the Washington County Fair. Full disclosure: In exchange for this post, the Washington County Fair is supporting the promotion of local agriculture by making a donation to my Moms on the Farm program – but my words and enthusiasm for the fair are all mine.

When you bring your family to the fair, it may be a little intimidating to enter the livestock barn. There are sure to be a few sights and sounds (and smells) that your family may not be used to. Since my 4H kid is only 7, we are new to the world of being a livestock show family. So, I reached out to some other, more seasoned livestock show moms from Northwest Arkansas and around the country to get their input on the things they think you should know about the Livestock Barn.

Poop.

My little 4Her with her
first calf, Water Lilly.

The kids showing the animals are in charge of cleaning up the poop, but it’s a full time job. The first year my daughter took her calf to the fair, she was especially excited about getting to clean it up! She was about 3 or 4 and that excitement hasn’t really faded… yet. Here are a few tips:

• Don’t wear your favorite pair of white shoes.
• Poop can be a little slippery, so be careful. 
• Wash your hands or use hand-sanitizer after you leave.

A sheep isn't truly clean until
everyone in the family is soaked

Family time.

When I was growing up, we didn’t go on vacation to Disneyland or the beach. We went to livestock shows. The animals are the kids’ projects, but it’s really a FAMILY endeavor. Hundreds of hours are spent together (mom, dad, brothers and sisters), working for a common goal of presenting an animal at the fair.

Success in the Livestock Barn is a family accomplishment. When our family won at the show, it wasn’t my ribbon or my trophy, it was OURS.

Small kids – BIG animals 

My daughter loves to show off her
show calf and have her friends pet it,
 but not all animals are so gentle
and tolerant of little people.

Livestock can be a little scary! The kids showing animals have spent hours and hours working with them getting them ready for the show. They know each other quite well and the animals are used to being handled by their owners. But, even gentle animals can bite, and even when an animal is comfortable with some kids, he or she may not be ok with all kids. Always ask for the owner’s permission before petting any animal in the livestock barn.

Good to know: There is a great petting zoo at the Washington County Fair where your kids can pet ‘til their heart’s content. 

Jenny sent this picture of two of
her boys with the their dairy cattle
at the county fair in Illinois.

Teachable moments.

The kids who are showing animals want to show off their hard work to everyone at the fair, not just the judges. If the kids are around, be sure to ask them about their animal. Ask the animal’s name, what it eats, where it came from, how old it is… You will be amazed what you will learn from these kids.

My friend and fellow 4H mom, Jenny Schweigert said it best, “Last week's county fair was very successful, but my favorite moment wasn't the ribbons or trophies. It was when our middle son kneeled down with a little girl he didn't know and started explaining the difference between dairy cattle and beef cattle.”

Lots of smiles. Maybe a few tears.

Vallie and her calf last year

For the kids showing animals at the fair, it’s like the District Championship game for kids who play sports - It’s a Really Big Deal. They’ve been working all summer in the heat and the mud getting their animals ready, and some will go home with lots of ribbons and trophies, but some won’t. Sometimes the animals act up and sometimes the judge doesn’t see it the way we do. It’s hard and frustrating (for kids and parents) when it doesn’t go the way you wanted it to.

But at the end of the fair, it’s not the prizes that matter. It’s the sense of accomplishment. It’s the family time. It’s the lifelong friendships. It’s the lessons learned. It’s teaching new people about how their food is produced. 

When you visit the livestock barn, you are not just seeing the animals. You are seeing the next generation of agriculture. You are witnessing the development of the people that will feed the world for years to come.

Let’s go to the fair!

The fair is letting me give away some ride tickets to a lucky local reader! Share a comment on this post about your favorite memory of a county fair to be entered to win $50 worth of ride tickets

(Info about entry prices can be found here). If you haven’t gone to a fair before, tell me what you hope to see or do at the Washington County Fair this year on your first visit. I’ll choose a winner at random from the folks who enter and be in touch to get your tickets to you.

The Washington County Fair has posted a schedule online, and also provides information about being a part of the fair by entering their contests and competitions through their Exhibitor Handbook.

Keep up to date on happenings at the fair by following them on social media at one (or all!) the links below:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/mywashingtoncountyfair

Twitter - https://twitter.com/mywashcofair

Instagram - https://instagram.com/mywashcofair

Be sure to search the #MyWCF15 hashtag on social media to see what other folks are doing at the fair.

What’s in a food label? Grass Fed

I’ve been working on a series of blog posts about the meaning behind the labels you find on meat packages. Previously, I’ve written posts about the meaning behind the Organic and Natural labels and I’ve talked about how those two terms can be confused with each other and with Grass-fed labeling.

The next labeling term I’m going to cover is Grass-fed.

Hawaii Big Island Beef was popular in Hawaii.
It is all grass fed.

 

To use the Grass-fed label on a beef package, the USDA requires that the cattle were…

·         Only allowed to eat grass or hay for their entire lives

·         Never given grain or grain byproducts

·         Allowed access to pasture during the growing season

That basically means that, in the summer time, they were turned out on pasture and ate grass and in the winter time, they were fed hay because the grass wasn’t growing. They are never fed grain (corn, rice, barley, oats etc…).

You may be asking yourself, “So, what does that mean about the beef that is not labeled Grass-fed?”

That’s one of the things that makes this particular label confusing. Some people may think that beef that is not labeled as grass-fed come from cattle that never see a pasture. That’s not really true at all.

In the US, all cattle are grass-fed. 

Grass-fed cattle.

Cattle are ruminants. Their bodies are able to digest grass and convert it into energy that they can use to grow, fatten, make milk, or raise calves. Their digestive systems are much more diverse than ours. We can’t metabolize grass, but cattle can. That’s part of what makes cows so awesome!

Vallie and some of our cows.I think she was
demonstrating gymnastics to them

Calves are born and live with their mother’s for 5 to 7 months. They may be fed some grain to supplement them, but for the most part, they drink their mother’s milk and eat grass. Their mothers will eat mostly grass, too. Once they are old enough to be weaned (teenagers), they are usually sent to a stocker farm to grow for a few more months. How much grain vs. grass they get at this step depends on the time of year and the weather. If there is grass growing, they will get to eat it. If not, they will eat a combination of hay and grain.

For the final few months of their lives, cattle that comprise most of the beef in the US, will be fed a greater percentage of grain in a feedlot. In the cattle industry, we call the high-energy ingredients used in these diets concentrates because the energy is more concentrated; whereas, grass and hay are called roughages. The high-concentrate (grain) diet allows them to gain weight more efficiently and gives the beef the flavor and tenderness we expect in the US. Even then, they have to get fiber (roughages), too. So, they get hay, silage (fermented hay) and other forms of roughage. It would be unhealthy for the calves if they only ate corn. Their diet is closely controlled by nutritionists.

I have a post about the steps cattle go through to become beef.

One of my favorite blogs is written by Anne Burkholder, a mom, feedlot operator, Feedyard Foodie. She writes about daily life in a feedlot in Nebraska and her kids and beef and life in general.

Ryan Goodman, of the Ag Proud blog just wrote a great post about how cattle digest grass and grain.

Personally, I prefer the flavor of beef from cattle that have been grain-finished (fed grain for the last few months before harvest). Some people prefer the flavor of beef from grass-finished cattle (fed exclusively grass and hay). The great thing is that we have the choice.

Sometimes, labeling claims like organic and natural are confused with grass-fed, but those labeling claims have different meanings that I covered in previous posts.  Most of the time, grass-fed labels are accompanied by claims about being raisedwithout hormones or raised without antibiotics, but those labels have different meaning and will be coming up soon in my labeling blog series.

Transformation Tuesday: from a steer to steaks

Last week, this picture came across my Facebook page.

It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, meant to be kinda funny, but it’s true.

Cattle start out as cute little calves and end up as steaks, but I think this picture does a disservice to that calf and all the cattle that are harvested for beef production.

They really become much more than one steak.

I don’t want to minimize the contribution one calf has to the food supply. If that calf grows into a steer that weighs about 1,200 lbs, it has the potential to contribute to more than 850 individual meals.

One 1,200 lb steer may produce as many as:

·         24 ribeye steaks
·         24 Kansas City strip steaks
·         12 filet mignon steaks
·         30 sirloin steaks
·         12 flat-iron steaks
·         12 pot roasts
·         4 brisket roasts
·         10 round roasts
·         12 lbs. of back ribs
·         2 flank steaks and 2 skirt steaks, which could make fajitas enough for 35 people
·         200 lbs. of ground beef, which would make 600 1/3-pound hamburgers

** You must realize that not every animal is cut up the same. Sometimes meat cutters prefer to cut T-bone steaks rather than KC strips and filets. In my scenario, I ground up a lot of steaks and roasts that some butchers might have left whole because the demand for ground beef is high right now.

Beef meals are not only tasty and filling, they are also very nutrient dense. One 3-oz serving of lean beef, provides 48% of your daily needs of protein, 44% of B₁₂, 40% of Selenium, and several other nutrients including Zinc, Niacin, B6, Phosphorus, Choline, Iron and Riboflavin.

Any way you cut it, one steer will produce A LOT more than one steak.

Last May, I wrote a post about the enormity of the US meat industry. Each week, over 500,000 cattle are harvested for beef and demand for beef is high which means that the beef industry is producing over 425 million meals of beef each week. Crazy!

Its a HUGE HUGE HUGE industry!

In my job, I have lots of great opportunities to see the inside of food processing facilities and farms that most people don’t get to see. That’s part of the fun of being a meat nerd. I am always amazed by the sheer size and scope of the industry when I get to see these facilities in action.



Mound of bacon.

 

For example, I was in a pork processing plant last summer and I was standing in the middle of the bacon slicing room. The slicers are these huge machines with circular blades like 4 feet across. They move so fast you can’t see them. They sliced pieces of bacon faster than I could count. I found a really cool  bacon slicing video on youtube.

At the plant I was visiting, I think there were six lines slicing bacon all running at the same time, at least 16 hours a day, 5 days a week. That is an incredible about of bacon. That plant harvested 19,000 pigs per day in 2011. Processors get about 15.4 lbs of cured bacon out of every hog, that’s 292,600 lbs of bacon, PER DAY, in one plant! The daily hog slaughter in the US in 2011 was 438,630 PER DAY, that’s 6.7 million pounds of bacon, PER DAY!!!  
Of course, there are 313 million people in the US and they usually eat three times a day, seven days a week. Not to even mention exports.

(See how I can get lost in the enormity of our food system! I’m just a meat head.)




A few of the 80,000 chicks on the Munyon Farm

We went on a tour of farms with some ladies a few weeks ago called Moms on the Farm Tour. Some local chicken farmers, Jared and Anita Munyon were nice enough to allow our group to tour their farm on a Saturday morning. They have four chicken houses where they raise broilers for a company called Simmons. Each of their chicken houses hold about 20,000 chickens. That’s 80,000 chickens on their farm! They will get about 5 sets of chickens each year, so this one farm produces 400,000 chickens each year. There are about 30,000 farms that raise chickens in the US, and 95% of them are family-owned like the Munyon’s Farm. Americans eat, on average about 83 pounds of chicken each year, so we need lots of them to keep us supplied in chicken nuggets, breasts, and chicken wings, over 37 billion pounds of chicken meat.




One of Vallie's beef cows. She has 13.

The beef industry is even more amazing to me because the cattle come from so many different farms in so many different places in the US. There were over 34 million calves born in 2012 and the US produced over 26 billion pounds of beef, but 90% of the beef farms in the US have fewer than 100 head and the average herd size is 44 head. That means a whole lot of people have input in the beef industry; from folks like my dad with 8 cows to the Deseret Cattle Co. in Florida with 42,000 cows. That’s right; the largest cattle ranch in the US sits between Disney World and Cape Canaveral.




Some students learning to make hotdogs.
A little slower than the commercial plants.

Then there are the hotdog numbers: It’s hard to know exactly how many hotdogs are consumed in this country, but it is estimated that Americans consume 20 billion hotdogs each year, which works out to about 70 hotdogs per person. On Memorial Day alone, US consumers will enjoy over 150 million hotdogs. That’s enough hotdogs to stretch from Washington DC to Los Angeles five times!!! During the summer time, US consumers will eat 7 billion hotdogs, or 818 each second.

 

All of this meat has to be produced by somebody. According to industry stats, the meat and poultry industries employ over 2 million workers paying them over $68 billion in wages. See what I mean about a HUGE industry?!?

When we buy our 2 or 3 pounds of meat at the grocery store or a steak a restaurant, it’s easy to forget that there are 313 million people in the US who are buying their few pounds of meat for this week, too. Our food system is huge! It’s really amazing to me that we can produce and distribute so much food each day.

It’s also sad to know that so much food is wasted each day, but that’s another day’s post.

Pig housing: gestation stalls

What if I told you that twice a day, I tie my four-year-old to a chair and leave her there for an hour?

 

No matter how she pleads or cries or protests, she has to be tied down. Some days I strap her to a chair for 9 hours or more.

 

Before you call Child Protective Services, think about a car seat. It is against the law for me to transport my small child anywhere without strapping her into a car seat. She may not like it, but its best for her.

 

Everyone understands the dangers of not using car seats. No one will argue that they are not needed to keep our children safe. People understand how dangerous car wrecks can be. We haven’t always used them (my parents weren’t strapped in car seats), but people now agree that they are needed to keep kids safe.




Happy kid... tied to a chair



People don’t know much about pig farming. 

 

Most people think of Wilbur or Babe when they think of pigs on farms. Cute little pink pigs that make smart-alecky remarks to the sheep. But, that’s not reality. Real pigs are much different.

 

• Did you know that grown sows (momma pigs) can weigh as much as 500 pounds?
• They are huge animals. They may stand 4 feet tall.
• They can be very dangerous animals. Pig farmers can tell very scary stories about a pig hurting or even killing someone.

There has been a lot of news in social media and on the internet about gestation stalls, or maternity pens, used in the pork industry. Several food companies and restaurants have declared that they will be phased out in the next few years and some states have even passed legislation banning them.

Most people know very little about pork production and why gestation stalls are used. People see pictures and hear terrible stories about farmers ‘abusing’ pigs and think, “Wow, how can we let this happen?” The problem is that we are not hearing the whole story. So, I decided to write a post about them, to help explain.

What are gestation stalls?

Gestation stalls are small pens that farmers put sows (momma pigs) in while they are pregnant. They provide each pig with a specific amount of food and all the water she wants, but there is not a lot of room for her to move around. They can lie down, but not turn around. They are artificially inseminated (bred to the boar) in those pens and stay there until they are about to have their babies. Then they move to a different type of pen.




Photo courtesy of Standing Oaks Enterprises.



A friend of mine who is a pig farmer in Ohio sent me these pictures of pigs in gestation stalls on his farm, Standing Oaks Enterprises. You can check out his blog at Acorns for Thought.

Why do farmers use them?

First, they use them to protect the pigs from each other. Just like people, pigs pick on each other. If you have a group of pigs together in a pen, they will fight to establish a hierarchy, to determine who is the boss. In the case of sows, some will become ‘bully sows’ and will literally fight and pick on inferior sows until they are physically separated or one dies. These pigs stand waist-high and may weigh as much as 400 or even 500 pounds. A 200-lb man is no match for them. Fighting sows are very dangerous.

Second, farmers must control how much feed the pigs eat. Also like people, pregnant sows are very hungry. But, unlike most people, they don’t know to control how much they eat to keep from getting obese. If allowed to eat all they wanted, the pigs would be morbidly obese, they would shorten their lifespan, and it would be wasteful. If the sows were mixed, some sows would hog (no pun intended) all the feed and overeat, while others would starve. So keeping them separate allows the farmer to feed each pig exactly what she needs.

  




Photo courtesy of Standing Oaks Enterprises.


Another pic from Standing Oaks. You can see the pigs feed in bins above their stalls.

Since I've been working on this post, I participated in a radio show with a pig farmer from Missouri, Chris Chinn. She was asked about gestation stalls and had a couple of points I wanted to share. She said that her farm used to use group housing and that the bully sows ate too much and had big babies and trouble in labor. She also said that the weaker sows had small, unthrifty babies. When they switched to gestation stalls, they found that they used less medicine because the sows didn't injure one another fighting.

Right before the sow has her babies, the farmer will move her into a farrowing crate. These are pens that are large enough for the sow to stand up and lie down, but she has to do it slowly. Remember these sows can weigh as much as 500 pounds. Their piglets may only weigh 3 or 4 pounds. They can walk soon after they are born, but not very well. If the momma pig lies down too quickly, she could squish her babies.



This photo is from Flikr, used with permission

This is a picture of a sow with her babies in a farrowing crate. See how little they are.

Research shows that there are advantages and disadvantages of using gestation stalls. One study gave pigs the choice of remaining in a group pen or in a gestation stall and found that the pigs preferred to stay in the stalls most of the time. In a video of a farm in Indiana, the farmer has European-style gestation crates, where the pigs can choose to go in or out of the stalls. He says they stay in their stall over 90% of the time.

In response to all the pressure from food companies, some farmers have removed their gestation stalls and changed their barns to group housing. Others have installed European-style pens that give pigs a choice of where they can be.

Big changes in animal housing need to happen slowly. Don’t think that we can just ban stalls and walk away feeling good about our animal welfare practices. Pigs and people will suffer if we don’t find acceptable alternatives.


The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) put together a task force to address sow housing that included several vets and a representative from HSUS. The task force concluded that any sow housing systems had advantages and disadvantages, and that farmers and animal scientists should work together to retain the advantages of the current systems and improve on them.

I hope that veterinarians, farmers and food companies can work together to determine what is truly best for pigs. I don’t think anyone has an easy answer right now. Even the animal welfare experts say that there are no easy answers when it comes to housing pigs.

I think this quote from Dr. Temple Grandin is very meaningful, “Nature is cruel, but we don’t have to be.” She said it many times. Animals are cruel to each other. Farmers do their best to keep animals happy and healthy. Just like parents with car seats.

Here are a few more resources about gestation stalls and pig housing.

· A good Q and A about gestation stalls and their history.
· A nice video about modern hog farming, including gestation stalls.
· A good video from Humane Watch about pigs and maternity pens.
· The report from the AVMA task force on sow housing.

More about beef farming



 This is me on the bus on our
Moms on the Farm tour.

A few weeks ago, I worked with a group of ladies in agriculture to host the Moms on the Farm tour. About 30 ladies attended a tour of a dairy and a beef farm, and then returned to campus for some cooking demonstrations by the Arkansas Cattlewomen. We plan to repeat the event in the springtime and improve it. There were lots of great questions and the ladies were really interested to learn about where their food comes from. All the questions and interest have become a great resource for my blog posts.




 Mrs. Marsha Hedge talking to the ladies about
her beef farm during Moms on the Farm tour.

We visited a single-mom, beef farmer, Mrs. Marsha Hedge, who has about 40 cows. She used to have over 100 cows, but because of the drought this past summer, she had to sell about 60% of her herd. So, now she is working off the farm part-time and going to school part-time to get her teaching certificate. Most beef farms have circumstances similar to hers. Ninety percent of beef farms in the US have fewer than 100 cows, and the average size of a US beef farm is about 44 cows. Most beef farmers have to work off the farm or have some other type of income to make a living, or their spouses do.

Anyway, Marsha raises the calves from her cows until they are weaned and she sells them to another farmer who will either take them to grow some more on green pasture or to a feedlot to eat grain. This seemed to surprise the ladies on the tour that the beef cattle from the farms around Northwest Arkansas don’t go directly to slaughter. One lady wanted to buy a calf from Marsha to slaughter and another asked if she sold her beef to WalMart. Marsha doesn’t have any calves that are the right age or size for slaughter.

As a host, I should have done a better job explaining that the beef industry is segmented. Cattle sold for beef production may have several owners in their lifetime. I wrote a whole post about the beef industry in February with lots of facts and figures, but I didn’t talk about the different kinds of beef farms in the US.


What are these different types of farms?

1. First, you have beef farms that raise calves to be sold as bulls and heifers (young females) to other farmers. These are called seedstock or purebred farms. Their cows and bulls may cost crazy amounts of money, but they hope to raise animals that will be in demand by other farmers to buy to improve their herds. Most of the time, they only have one or two breeds (like Angus or Simmental), and they specialize in genetic traits that other farmers want. They may have really lean animals or cattle that raise calves with lots of tasty marbling. Other traits are important to farmers, too, like growing fast and having small calves so the cows don’t have trouble in labor. There are books and websites full of numbers reporting these traits of purebred cattle. A knowledgeable farmer can evaluate these figures to buy a bull or a heifer that will improve traits in his or her herd.



This is a picture of my husband,
 Ed, exhibiting one of our
purebred heifers at a fair

If you go to the fair, the farmers that you see exhibiting are usually purebred farmers. They bring their animals to the fairs to show them off to other breeders and to potential buyers.

Most of the 'fluffy cows' you see on the internet are actually very expensive purebred bulls.

2. Second, you have cow-calf farmers. Marsha, the farmer we visited on our tour, is in this category. She bought bulls from a purebred farmer and bred them to her cows. She keeps the best of her heifers (girl calves) to go back to the cow herd, but she castrates her bull calves to become steers, and the steers and most of her heifers go to market to become beef.




 These are some of Marsha's cows.
Her bull is the solid red one on the left.
He is from a purebred breeder.
He actually looks a lot like our bull.

Like most cow-calf producers, Marsha’s cows are cross-bred, or a mix of several different breeds. In the industry, we call them 'commercial' cows. Also like most cow-calf farmers, Marsha uses grass growing in her pastures to feed her cows. She buys them hay and some other nutritional supplements, when the grass isn’t enough for them, but she wants them to eat grass as much as they can. Cattle are great at using grass to grow and make protein.


Marsha weans her calves off their mothers at about 500-600 pounds, which is about 6 to 7 months of age. Then she sells them to one of the next two types of beef operations.

3. The third type of beef farm is a stocker farm. These farmers buy weaned calves and let them grow. Sometimes they eat grass and sometimes they feed them grain, whichever is most economical for them at the time. The Peterson Brothers of I’m Farming and I Grow It fame, have a stocker cattle farm. They buy cattle that weigh 400-500 pounds and feed them until they weigh 800 to 900 pounds.

4. The fourth type of farm is the feeder or the feedlot, like the one owned by Anne and her family over at Feedyard Foodie. Here, cattle are fed grain in addition to hay or other forage and supplements. Feedlots will feed cattle until they are fat enough to harvest. They are usually only there for about 4 to 6 months. In the meat business, when cattle are fat, we say that they are ‘finished,’ meaning that they are ready to go to the processing plant. Finished cattle may weigh anywhere from 1000 to 1400 pounds, some even more.


In the US, people like to eat grain-finished beef. We prefer the taste and tenderness associated with it. I know that not everyone likes it, and there is beef from cattle that have only been fed grass available to buy for those who prefer it that way.





 Cattle in a covered feedlot in Michigan.
Notice that they are eating a
chopped-up mix of grain and hay.

In the western US, feedlots are huge, outdoor facilities, but I visited a cattle covered feeding operation in Michigan on a trip with students a couple of years ago. You can see the cattle are eating a chopped up mixture of grain and forage.


The meat processors send buyers to the feedlots to buy the cattle once they are ready. Then the cattle are sent to the processing plant for harvesting.

Now, lots of farms may be any combination of these segments. For instance, our family has some purebred cattle that we raise bulls and heifers for sale, and we have some commercial cows that just raise calves for market. So we are kind of a mix of the first two. Some farmers may have cows that raise calves and have a stocker section of the farm, too, especially if they have lots of green grass. Farmers have to figure out what works best for them considering the nutrients available and the market for cattle.

So, these calves that we saw at Marsha’s grazing in the fields with their mothers in Northwest Arkansas will probably be sold soon. Then, they may spend a few months grazing and growing on a stocker farm in Oklahoma, and then be sold to a feedlot in the panhandle of Texas. Once they are fat, they may be sold to a processing plant in Kansas and their beef may go to any and all parts of the US. Not only do the calves have several owners throughout their lifetime, they have also probably traveled several hundred miles.

I hope that you understand a little more about the beef industry, and the next time you are buying beef at the store or eating a juicy steak, that you will know that a little more about the path that got the beef to your plate. 

Please feel free to ask any other questions you may have about beef or cattle.