Responsibly Raised - What does that entail? Simply put, we are and will always be transparent in our efforts to do what is best for the cattle. At E3 Meat Co. believe in “happy cows.” Often you will hear Jenn LaRoche say “I have happy cows, happy cows don’t beller”. It is proven that happier and healthier cattle provide healthier and better tasting beef.
We have developed a strict vaccination program with our veterinarian. This is done so with the same principles in mind as you would use with your doctor when immunizing your children. Vaccinations are important to help prevent certain diseases. We as ranchers do not like to see our animals suffer, therefore if we can vaccinate and prevent this, we will. Minerals are provided and fed to the cattle. Mineral affects cattle just as vitamins affect humans. Our goal is to keep the cattle as healthy as we can so that we don’t have to use antibiotics. On our ranches it is common to see cattle in production at 13 years of age, compared to national average of only 8 years of age. This is the true definition of “happy cows”.
Part of being a responsible rancher is to make sure that we are doing what is best for the earth. With this we have adapted a holistic management approach to grazing. We rotate our cattle through the fields. This allows the cattle to eat more nutritious grasses without ripping the nutrients out of the earth or destroying the land.
Even with all that we are trying to do to make sure we raise our animal responsibly, some cattle will get sick nonetheless. A good example of this would be pinkeye. Pinkeye is a disease that effects cattle’s eyes, this can lead to total blindness or partial blindness. Most cattle will get pink eye at 4 to 5 months of age. If this is treated, the eye(s) will clear up and the cattle’s vision will be restored. If you do not treat the infection they will be fed out and have to suffer with blindness until there final days. We do not consider this responsible or humane, so instead we doctor the animal until they are better.
Sometimes that also means that animals don’t make it into the E3 Meat Company beef program & are sold outside our program into the commodity market. Every decision we make, we make in the best interest of cattle raised under the E3 Meat Company Certified Program.