Let me start out by saying that I know very little about raising beef cows. I'm sure (100% sure) that many of you know more about it than I do.
This morning I was watching YouTube while stitching and saw this video by Dr. Berg, who I think is a chiropractor and not an MD (so no one has to point this out to me).
This is also a good time to share that there are many people I know, many people I watch on YouTube, many people who are my friends . . who I trust but sometimes don't agree with 100%. I have learned a lot from Dr. Berg and I love his videos. I understand he can be a bit controversial. This video isn't about who's right; who's wrong - it's about thinking a little deeper about our food (about all things really) than I've apparently been thinking about.
In the linked video, Dr. Berg talks about dent corn not being edible. I think he means most of us would not sit down at the table for an ear of fresh corn and choose dent corn BUT it is edible. It's what I use for our cornmeal, grind to make a very fine "flour" for corn tortillas and for making hominy. It is very edible but not very tasty if eaten as we think of eating sweet corn.
Because I have to have a degree of confidence in someone (which I rarely have THAT much confidence) before I share their opinions, I try to always do my own research before I share info. That's exactly what I did this morning.
There is so much contradictory info online. I literally spent two hours researching, not because I felt it was that important that I write this blog post but because I wanted to know the truth.
If you choose to learn more about this, do your own research. This, from Texas A &M, is the article I found easiest to believe, even though it may have a bit different info from Dr. Berg's video.
I continued to search for answers and came across this site discussing feeding cows spent grain from brewing. It is from 2017. I found two statements interesting.
- Where he talks about where some breweries will give away the spent grain to save having to pay for disposal.
- Giving one group of cows the spent grain and comparing it to a group not given the spent grain . . on the surface, they "didn't see on the surface any major differences in terms of quality or grade".
I know that dairy cows are fed a variety of things for the best nutrition. They eat not only the corn kernels but the stalks and green parts too. (all chopped up of course.) They are also fed cotton seeds left over from the cotton ginning process, and whey left over from cheese production. I can see where beef cattle may be fed things other than grass, especially in the winter, when grass dies back or is covered in ice and snow. My grandpa always fed his steers corn along with the grass from the pasture.
ReplyDeleteI'm not complaining so much about what the cows are fed but that it seems to me that if meat is labeled "grass fed" then it I would think it's fed grass and nothing else. We get our beef from a farmer who is a friend. He grows hay, cuts it, bales it and stores it and their cows definitely eat that. I'm sure they eat other feeds too - not only grass and I'm fine with that. It isn't sold as "grass fed". I also question the quality of the spent grains that have used for brewing. My personal opinion is that anything we can grow ourselves or buy from someone we trust is MUCH better than what's available in stores/some restaurants these days.
DeleteYesterday coming home from the vet, we both wanted a hamburger. I mentioned a nearby fast food place that has better burgers than some of the others. Vince said "Do you have any idea where the ground beef came from or what's in it?" No. Then he didn't want burgers from there. For the longest time, it was me saying that and he gave me this look like . . I can't believe you're falling for all that. I'm so glad he's on board with me on that now. Just wish we would have started healthier/safer eating 50 years ago!
I grew up eating dent corn in Middle Tennessee. My daddy was a coon hunter, and the farmers always gave him truckloads of corn as payment. After my parents moved to their new home with land, that is what they grew (an heirloom variety) and also pencil cob corn was for eating on the cob. I never ate sweet corn until I was an adult, and I much prefer the dent corn over the sweet corn. After I married, we had our own garden and grew both of those varieties until the deer population got so bad that they ate everything we grew. Now we visit the Mennonites to get all of our vegetables for canning and freezing. Can't find dent corn around these parts these days so I have to buy sweet corn. Did find one farmer growing a hybrid variety and my husband said that was a big no no.
ReplyDeleteMy grandparents grew what they called "Field Corn" and it was dent corn. The humans are it and that's what they fed to their animals in the winter. My grandma had a huge (like bathtub size) cast iron pot and she had a but wooden mallet looking thing and she would use that to crack the corn in the cast iron pot for the chickens. I think they fed the corn to the pigs and cows too in the winter but I can't say that for sure.
DeleteIt's so nice to have Mennonite and Amish farmers nearby, isn't it?