Checking Cows

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December 12, 2023

When you patronize Polyface, it’s not just a meal decision; it indicates that you embrace a whole new meaning to some of the most common phrases in farming. For example, cattle operations utter the phrase “checking cows” nearly every day.

As commonly understood, this means roaming around vast acreages looking for cows, trying to find them. In a feedlot situation, of course, it means wading through a fecal pall of grain-fed cattle, jiggly fat, and up to their briskets in poop. Oh, the stench.

But “checking cows” takes on a whole new meaning at Polyface. First, they’re all mobbed up in a small paddock—new every day—where we can find them and see them in a minute or so. No roaming around the countryside trying to find the ones hiding behind the bushes. They’re all right there in the paddock like herding animals are supposed to be.

Second, we look at the grass. Because we move them every day to a new salad bar, we’re keen to see the state of the current salad bar. The conventional cattle guys wouldn’t know if the grass is too short, too long, weaker, or stronger if it stood up and slapped them in the face. But because we’re strategically and meticulously pruning the forage, we’re monitoring the growth down to the finest grass whorl.

Third, we look at the poop. Sheet cake means the forage is too rich. Cookies mean it’s too fibrous. Pumpkin pie is juuuust right—round, mounded up on the edges, slightly sunken in the middle, with a little dollop where she squeezed off the last little bit. Yum. Adjusting the pasture rotation based on manure is just one of many re-calibrations we make to ensure nutritional balance and vigorous health.

Fourth, we look at the water trough. While most herds in the country drink out of pooped-in ponds, streams, and springs, at Polyface we use portable troughs with piped water. This ensures that the water is both clean and proximate. Our cows don’t have to walk a mile to water; it’s always right there in the paddock. What a life; luxurious indeed. We check to make sure the water is at the level it’s supposed to be and that it’s clean.

Fifth, we check their contentedness. If you take time to listen and observe, with all those creatures standing there looking at you, they will let you know if they are happy. Their rumen (where they hold the grass they eat) is on one side and should be filled out. They should be chewing their cud placidly, not pacing and bawling, acting disgruntled.

Sixth, we check their mineral. Over the many decades we’ve been farming, we have yet to find anyone who feeds enough minerals to their cows. In the wild, herds migrate many miles to a salt lick or other mineral-rich deposit. But in a domestic production model, the herds can’t walk to these natural deposits; we have to bring the deposits to them. Here at Polyfae, that includes seaweed (kelp), Sea 90 Sea Salt, and an organic supplement from Fertrell called Nutri-balancer, full of minerals and vitamins. Sometimes the cows eat it like candy and other times they don’t touch it for days. Since cows don’t watch TV they aren’t swayed by ads or celebrity endorsements; they just lick it when they need it and ignore it when they don’t. We put a lot of faith in the cows’ innate sense of need, something humans seem to have lost.

Finally, we check the spark. That’s what keeps them controlled. The electric fence is our brake, accelerator, and steering wheel on that four-legged pruning sauerkraut vat. We can steer them across the landscape with the same precision as a zero-turn mower on a golf course, for the first time in human history. Very cool. Not very many cows receive that level of management; Polyface cows are royalty.

So when you eat that Polyface hamburger or enjoy that succulent roast, pat yourself on the back. You’ve embraced a whole different notion toward bovine management. It’s a system that grows soil, protects and enhances hydrology, and purifies the air like the bison did for millennia. With the most modern, high-tech infrastructure leveraging the most ancient herbivore logistics, At Polyface “checking cows” rises to a whole new meaning. Your patronage proves that you desire such stewardship too, so go ahead, take a bite, and smile into sacredness.

Thank you.

Joel Salatin

All Related

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year--that's a lot of stuff going on kind of lumped together. Which brings me to my thought this month: it's all related. Perhaps the signature difference between Polyface and current mainline food thinking is integration versus segregation. I could use numerous words to describe this basic concept, like parts versus wholes, but I think these two are as good as any. Conventional industrial food systems break things apart. We see it on farms that grow only one or two things, without regard for the greater inter-relatedness of ecology, all the way up to packaged and processed food. Modern processed foods don't use whole ingredients; they use pieces of things. They strip out the germ of the wheat, for example. They refine things to the point that the food bears no resemblance to its natural state. Then they put all these pieces together and call it food. But these pieces came from widely divergent places, and the beautiful unprocessed original no longer exists. When Dad and I were brainstorming what to call this farm venture that would eventually become Polyface, Dad's assumption was that we'd call it Salatin Inc.--you know, like Ford Motor Company or Chrysler (named for Walter P. Chrysler, the founder). I was adamant that it NOT be our family name for two reasons. First, I suggested there may be a day when a Salatin isn't at the helm. Secondly, I wanted the name to recognize integrated thinking. I came up with the name "Interface Inc." to recognize the three great environments: water, land, and forest. For 20 years, during what I call our experimental homesteading days, we'd been planting trees, fencing out riparian zones, fencing out the forest to protect it from cows, and developing a landscape plan with these various zones in mind. The State Corporation Commission rejected the name because, unbeknownst to us, Virginia already had an "Interface Inc." It was a labor arbitration company to work out disagreements between labor and management. I was milking the cow when Dad told me the bad news, and I spontaneously blurted: "If we can't be Interface, let's be Polyface--the farm of many faces." Dad laughed, but we both liked the idea, and it stuck and was approved. The point here is that from the outset, all our thinking was about how to leverage the various assets of the diversified ecosystem and then harness the distinctives of the various animals. As a result, we looked at symbiotic natural patterns and have done our best to duplicate them. The Eggmobile follows the cows so the chickens can scratch through cow pies. We use pigs to aerate compost. Our small flock of sheep is like a glorified weed eater, cleaning up fence lines and around farm buildings to reduce mowing. The animals move through the pastures, paddock to paddock; they don't stay in the same place. Illustrative of "conventional-think", Virginia Tech veterinary professors who judged my son Daniel's 4-H talk titled "Symbiosis and Synergy in the Racken (Rabbit-Chicken) House" at the state contest nearly 30 years ago couldn't restrain their skepticism. "Aren't you concerned about diseases with two species that close to each other?" I was never so proud. He was about 15 and, without batting an eye, looked those professors in the eye and replied: "We've learned that most pathogens don't cross-speciate." Folks, I had not prepped him for that question. When he responded like that, those three professors slapped their legs and laughed at the audacious notion. They had no further comments and immediately tried to recruit him to enroll at Virginia Tech and major in Veterinary Science. Instead, he stayed with me on the farm and scaled up these simple integrated relationships to the thousands of animals we have now--with virtually no vet bills. Meanwhile, conventional experts wring their hands over bird flu, screw worm, African swine fever, blackleg, and a host of maladies that attack places where an integrated approach toward biology is severely lacking. Pediatrician Dr. Sharon Goldfield, director of population health for the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, wrote a fascinating op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week titled "Baby Food and Youth Obesity." She slammed "packaged baby and toddler foods" because they fail even rudimentary nutrition standards. Their surveys indicated that "80 percent of children are eating packaged toddler foods, many of which are ultra-processed, from an early age, with 43 percent of them eating these foods at least five days a week." Kids are eating out of boxes and slurping from concoctions created by a segregated mentality from field to stomach. This segregated thinking even permeates parental decision making, divorcing overall health from food and assuming whatever happens, pharmaceuticals can fix it. At Polyface, everything we do assumes that everything we do affects something else we do. It's that simple. Both land health and people health occur when we realize everything relates to everything. You can't just eat well and not exercise. You can't dismiss the value of sunlight on your skin; especially early morning sunlight. Hydration. Sleep. Stress. Forgiveness. Gratitude. It's all part of us. As we celebrate all these holiday times and imagine the relatedness of Thanksgiving with the Christmas story with the eagerness of a new year, imagine all the things going on in your life and how they work together. Or how if you pull them apart, things fray. Be assured that here at Polyface we're trying to integrate ecology, people, and economy in an overall symbiotic whole to deliver you the best food at a reasonable price. And we thank you for helping us build an integrated whole that respects earthworms all the way to our dinner plate and microbiome. We're not feeding you earthworms, but be assured they play an ongoing role in every bite you enjoy from Polyface. Thank you. Joel