Meat

Farm Raised Beef

We often get questions about our homegrown beef, so here’s a brief explanation of how our meat is bred and raised. If you have any more questions, feel free to contact us for more information.

On a dairy farm, technology is always advancing. And like with every other business, it is important to be as efficient as possible. One of the ways we can help our dairy farm be sustainable is through genetics.

A tool available to dairy farmers is sexed semen. This means that with at 90+% certainty, we can ensure that our best animals will have female offspring to be added to the herd. We select Holstein bulls with the best pedigrees from around the world to mate with our best cows.

Since we only require a certain number of replacement heifers to maintain our milking herd size, the rest of our cows can be mated with beef breed bulls.

Some of those resulting progeny are raised on-farm to be sold through the farm store. The majority are bred to Angus, but we also use Speckle Park and Wagyu bulls.

Most people are well aware of the delicious meat produced by the Angus breed. The qualities of an Angus compliment the marbling of a Holstein very well, and produce excellent meat.

Speckle Park is a breed of cattle developed in Saskatchewan. They are a cross between Aberdeen Angus and Shorthorn. They do well on grass and their meat is juicy, flavourful and tender and they have very quiet temperaments.

Crossing Wagyu with Holsteins is an interesting experiment. Wagyu are known for their extreme marbling that makes for rich, buttery smooth meat. They take longer to grow, but their meat is quite different from any other cross. Holsteins deposit marbling in a manner similar to Wagyu — but the Wagyu genetics put the quality into overdrive.

Our beef-cross calves are raised alongside our heifers. This means they are hand-fed whole milk for three months which makes them very docile. Their diet is the same as the Holstein heifers they are raised with, which consists of baleage (oat & peas, sudan grass or alfalfa and other grasses), corn silage – which is the entire corn plant chopped up – and a bit of canola, plus pasture in the spring thru fall.

They are harvested at local abattoirs and butchers, aged and cut to our specifications. They are available by the cut, or can be purchased in 1/4s or 1/2s to fill your freezer.

We have been very pleased with the excellent customer response to our homegrown meat. If you’d like to try some, head to our freezer section, or contact us to book in bulk.

Common Questions

Here are a few of the questions we get asked the most. Do you have a question that we haven't answered?

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The short answer is no. While corn is biologically a grass, most do not consider it part of a 100% grass fed diet. Our animals are pastured when weather allows and supplemented with forage as discussed above. It is a balance of feeds, overseen by a nutritionist to produce healthy animals and high quality meat. It is important to note that there are NO standards for grass-fed meat in Canada. The terminology of "grass-fed", "grass-finished", or "100% grass fed" can be used as a label without any actual requirements or regulation.

We do not use added hormones, and NO meat in Canada contains antibiotics. It is very rare that any of our beef animals ever require medication, but if they need antibiotics due to an illness, they are treated as required under the supervision of a veterinarian. Every use of medications is recorded and has a meat withdrawal date, after which the animal is safe to enter the food chain. Proper use of antibiotics and other medications is an important part of animal husbandry. This applies to the dairy herd as well.

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Our meat chicks arrive as day-olds and spend their first few weeks in specially designed brooders. There, the temperature is controlled and their feed and water intakes are monitored.

Once they are large enough, they move to their outdoor run where they have access to dirt and grass and spend the majority of the day outside. In the evenings they are shut in a coop to prevent any predation. They have constant access to fresh water and feed and are raised to the desired size before being harvested at a local abattoir. Our whole chickens are available frozen year round.