We believe all we have has been entrusted to us by God and truly belongs to Him and not us. Therefore, we view our animals and our land from a perspective of stewardship. These resources are not ours to use or abuse as we see fit, but have been entrusted to us by their Creator for a time. With all this in mind, we aim to follow Regenerative Agricultural Practices. We believe that when we take care of our land and our animals, they take care of us.
Grass Fed Beef & Grass Finished Beef
There’s a broad spectrum of what the term “grass-fed beef” means in the marketing world. All cows eat grass—from the ground or as hay—at some point in their lives. They’re ruminants, which means that they function best when consuming and digesting a plant-based diet. The grass-fed label is not so all-encompassing that it could be applied to all cows, but it allows for some flexibility in interpretation.
In a conventional cattle system, calves in the yearling stage are removed from pastures and shipped to a feedlot, where their diet shifts to a corn-dominated ration in an attempt to pack on weight and fat cover in an accelerated time frame in the “finishing” stage. This is how the majority of the beef in the U.S. gets on grocery store shelves.
“Grass-Finished” provides the other end of the cattle diet spectrum, and that’s where you’ll find Osage Creek Farms. Grass-Finished is a distinctive qualifier which means the animal has only consumed grass in its lifetime. We like the simplicity of that definition. Our animals don’t know that grain exists. They’ve never smelled it, let alone tasted it. We’re proud of the fact that our cattle are 100% grass-fed and grass-finished.
Rotational Grazing
We utilize a rotational grazing system that allows our animals to eat fresh grass all year and allows the pasture to rest. In the traditional continuous grazing model, cows have unlimited and uninterrupted access to large fields for long stretches of time. Our farm covers 1,700 acres, but that land has been partitioned into lots of smaller areas called “paddocks.”
Each day, we give our animals access to new grass in a new paddock, and the ground that they are leaving will have time to recover. The forage plants will have a chance to deepen and expand their root systems, and the diversity of the type of plants present means that necessary nutrients can be added back to the soil.
Waterway & Soil Protection
We utilize a rotational grazing system that allows our animals to eat fresh grass all year and allows the pasture to rest. In the traditional continuous grazing model, cows have unlimited and uninterrupted access to large fields for long stretches of time. Our farm covers 1,700 acres, but that land has been partitioned into lots of smaller areas called “paddocks.”
Each day, we give our animals access to new grass in a new paddock, and the ground that they are leaving will have time to recover. The forage plants will have a chance to deepen and expand their root systems, and the diversity of the type of plants present means that necessary nutrients can be added back to the soil.