The food fed to fatten up cows can be quite creative. Besides the base food of a grain slurry, typically of corn and corn byproducts (husks, cobs), there may be soy and soy hulls, spent brewery grain, spent distiller’s grain, and other cereals. CAFO nutritionists can get pretty creative, though, sometimes including cotton byproducts, old candy (including wrappers), beet and citrus pulp, and peanut shells in their cows’ diet. These creative feeds might bring a greater nutritional value than just corn feeding.
A grass fed cow will eat anything: graminoids (hundreds of different species of sedges), shrubs, clovers, and random leaves if they can get to them. Basically, they’ll eat what ever is in reach, green, and leafy. Because of this, grass fed beef is more nutritional if the cows have access to good stuff to eat.
If grass fed cows do not have good food at their feet, they will be stringy, tough, and unpalatable. To make up for that, it is not too hard to finish with a fattening up process that makes them good and tasty with the product of both worlds. I like the distiller’s spent grain method because it makes use of a distillery by-product. Maybe the cows get a little zing on their last days on earth.
I read an article that cattle acclimated to an Alpine climate have much higher levels of CLA... due to the grass they eat. I also don’t have a problem with cattle that are 10% or less finished with grain products. I think Kerry gold butter is 90% grass fed.
I read an article that cattle acclimated to an Alpine climate have much higher levels of CLA... due to the grass they eat. I also don’t have a problem with cattle that are 10% or less finished with grain products. I think Kerry gold butter is 90% grass fed.