What did your beef have for dinner?

Lynda Jacobs of Hickory Valley, TN cares about cows. “The welfare of my cows is 100 percent important to me”
Jacobs sells her organic, primarily grass fed Angus beef, at the Bolivar farmers market on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Her favorite part about selling at the farmers market is “meeting people and having the opportunity to explain why I raise the cows the way I do”.
Jacobs explains she believes like the popular ad campaign “happy cows are healthy cows.” She ensures her calves are “happy” by keeping them with their mothers until they are around 400 pounds.
“The cows will just call for their mothers if they can’t see them so I always put them in an adjacent pasture where they can just look across the fence to see their mothers.” Jacobs said.
The calfs are not only close to their mothers they are close to Jacobs, “I keep them in a pasture right by the barn and I supplement their grass fed diet with grain hand-fed twice a day”.
The way Jacobs raises her beef is not just important for her cows. The alternative, and the way most beef, 97 percent of all beef produced in the U.S., makes it way to supermarket shelves is through feedlots. In feedlots, cows are placed in small areas where they are fed growth hormones, antibiotics (sick or not), and steroids to expedite growth. To view more, please log in or subscribe to the digital edition.