IGotMyWings":21ztc1g0 said:
Now, does anyone know if it's possible to grain feed (staying with natural supplements, etc.) then go all grass and replenish the Omega-3, et al, and if so how long might that take? If you finish for 30 days on corn to "get the grass out" might a person be able to do 45-60 days to put it back in?
My understanding on 30 days short corn finishing (which is what we do) is that it gets the grass
taste out, not the grass benefits, which developed over the course of the animals life. It also helps whiten the fat. Longer grain finishing eventually depletes the extra CLA, omega-3's, vitamin E, beta-carotene, etc. I'm not sure, but I don't think you could put all those nutrients back in such a short amount of time. I tried to find the article where I got this info, but I couldn't. I think I have it somewhere in my giant binder of cattle info...
The steer we just slaughtered was 13 mos. old and weighed 926 lbs. live. He'll probably be aged 10-14 days and will be very, very tender. I don't know how long it takes to get a grass fed animal to 1,200 lbs. I guess it depends on how much grass you have and the quality. For us it would take a good while since most of our gains come only in the spring when the grass goes bonkers. The older the animal the less tenderness, especially for grass fed, and then longer aging is needed to get it back. But if there isn't a lot of fat cover on the carcass, which is often the case with grass fed animals, long aging isn't even possible. Also, the older animal will have a more pronounced grass taste and yellower fat than the younger one, which may take more than 30 days grain finishing to counteract.
my 2 cents...
For a while I kept thinking I was doing something wrong by not getting my grass fed yearlings up to 1,200 lbs. and fat and sassy like the ones I saw at the fair, but then I realized I was comparing apples to oranges and that we really weren't doing so bad after all. Good luck with whatever you try.