What is Gatherhouse Clean Finished beef?

Our beef is raised holistically without hormones, antibiotics, and no MRNA vaccines. We bring together the flavor, texture, and marbling of grain-fed beef without the compromise of soy or toxic, conventionally grown grains. We have partnered with an amazing feed company to custom make a finishing feed to our high standards. The remarkable part of this company is the transparency they can offer because they not only mill their grains, but grow them as well.

We also do not use chemical fly-sprays. We spray our cows with essential oil spray and use natural fly predators in our fields to reduce our fly populations. We also rotationally graze our cows to help support our soil health and to help reduce the need for chemical de-wormers.

Our mineral system is a soy-free organic natural mineral blend developed by a holistic, homeopathic veterinarian.

We are small and will only offer a limited amount of meat each year, this year we will only offer 5 cows. Because we are small we get to grow our animals the way we want to feed our family and we consider it a blessing to get to share the extra with others.

So let’s answer some other important questions:

Whats wrong with conventionally raised Grain-fed cattle?

When I am purchasing meat from the grocery store why do I usually buy grass-fed/finished beef? For me, its because I want to avoid genetically modified feeds, soy, and the other junk conventionally raised cattle are fed.

Here are some of the concerning ingredients found in conventional feeding systems?

Poultry Litter - Yes, this is what it sounds like! It really is the chicken feces and spilled, medicated feed that is scraped off of the poultry room floors and fed to the cattle.

Distillers Grains - When I first saw this ingredient it evoked an image of the leftover mash from brewing beer, but no this is not what it sounds like. This is typically the chemically treated left-overs from the ethanol industry, yes the very stuff used in fuel production.

Soy - 95% of all soy grown in the U.S. is genetically modified. This modifications to this soy allows it to be sprayed directly with herbicides and some soy is even modified to stop insects from eating it. The other big concern from soy is that it contains phytoestrogens. These can have effects on our thyroid and hormones. We can look around our country and see chilling effects on our youth, whether it is social contagion or the effects of high doses of soy and other hormone disrupters, I am committed to helping my children avoid as many stumbling blocks to their health and wellbeing as possible.

Conventional Corn - Corn has been grown for thousands of years and has been the nutritional foundation for many cultures, so what has gone wrong with it now? According to the Non-GMO project, 93% of all corn grown in the U.S. is genetically modified. These modifications include Herbicide-tolerant (HT) corn is immune to weedkillers such as glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Farmers who grow HT corn can spray Roundup directly on their crops without harming the corn. HT crops have led to a 15-fold increase in herbicide use and contributed to the rise of herbicide-resistant weeds. It is modified for insect resistance is known as "Bt corn," after the toxin Bacillus thuringiensis. Bt corn produces insecticide in every cell in the corn plant, poisoning insect pests that eat the corn. Because the insecticide is inside the cells, it can’t be washed away.  To top it off, more than 87% of corn grown in North America is genetically modified “stacked” trait varieties that carry both HT and Bt traits.

On top of concerns for genetic modification, many corn fields are fertilized with something known as Bio-solids. So what is Bio-solids? It is the leftover sludge from large municipal waste water treatment plants. According to The Guardian, excrement from this sludge derives is mixed with any number of 80,000 manmade chemicals that are discharged from industry’s pipes or otherwise pumped into the sewer system. This waste can contain pharmaceuticals, hormones, pathogens, bacteria, viruses, protozoa and parasitic worms, as well as heavy metals like lead, cadmium, arsenic or mercury. It often includes PCBs, PFAS, dioxins, BPAs and dozens of other harmful substances ranging from flame retardants to hospital waste.

With all of this no wonder Grass-fed is being well marketed as the healthier option!

So how is your Grain Finish different?

We have been blessed to partner with a feed company that grows their own Non-GMO project certified crops. Because they grow their own grains, they can answer questions for us that other feed mills that source from general commodities can not.

As we developed our finishing feed, we were able to do it without soy or distillers grains, and it is made from non-gmo plants that are not sprayed with herbicides, pesticides, or fertilized with any bio-solids. The corn, found in our finish, is raised as it should be, allowing us to get the flavor and finish we desire without the gmo’s or toxic ingredients. This is a mix we feel confident in feeding our family and it also allows us to produce a product that a even the most serious foodie can love.

Isn’t Grass Fed always Better?

In the past, I have bought grass-fed for our family in hopes of avoiding some of the concerns listed above. But once we jumped into raising cattle I realized there were a lot of questions I should have been asking about my grass-fed meat?

Growth Hormones - One day, I was looking at for an effective non-chemical, essential oil fly spray and I decided to check out a very well known livestock supply website. As I looked around at what they had to offer, I was shocked to find out that there is a growth hormone pellet specially formulated just for grass-fed beef. The company proudly boasted that this pelleted, when inserted behind the ear, would allow grass-fed cattle to gain an extra 2-4 lbs a day and conveniently it can be left in the cow all the way to butcher. They did warn though, that you need to castrate bulls before using because their testicles would disappear and a heifer with the pellet could not be used for breeding because her reproductive organs would become deformed. I don’t know about you, but this gives me some very serious concerns.

Minerals - All cows need additional minerals to stay healthy. So another question that should be asked of our grass-fed beef supplier is do they use a soy or GMO based mineral system.

Vaccines - What kind of vaccines are used? The new concern on the market is MRNA Vaccines. These are not new to the livestock world, they were approved for swine in 2012 and are quickly being developed for other species. The scary part is that they are allowed to be used even in organic programs and do not have to be labeled. There are a few states stepping up to get ahead of the technology and require them to be labeled, but as of right now Texas is not one of them.

Pesticides - What about chemical fly sprays? Reducing fly populations are a serious concern with livestock. There are a lot of very serious chemical options out there to control fly and many options to dispense them, from sprays, to drips, to ones that can be fed internally to the cow. Unfortunately, these are also the cheapest and often easiest ways to control. Thankfully though, there are some great farms who are willing to invest the time and money to do things right, like rotating pastures, using beneficial insects, fly catching tunnels, and natural fly sprays.

There are a lot of great grass-fed operations, just make sure you are able to ask lots of questions to determine their practices because not all grass-fed meat is created equal. Someone, who goes to all the efforts to raise their animals well, will be proud to answer all your questions.