Barbed Wire Cattle Company's Livestock Are Always:

• Raised on Natural or Organic Pastures
• Raised to natural maturity for the best flavor
• Dry Aged, Nature’s way
• Managed with reduced stress
• Humane production practices

Barbed Wire Cattle Company's Livestock Are Never:

• Fed Hormones or growth steroids
• Fed Chicken manure or animal products
• Exposed to electrode stimulation
• Exposed to harmful pesticides
• Confined to feed lots and unhealthy environments

Barbed Wire Cattle Company's steers graze freely on Natural or Organic Pastures in the rockies, the south and throughout the midwest.  

How you order your beef finished depends on how they are fed.  The cattle either continue consuming only grass for its entire life or 150 days prior to harvest, we begin adding natural grain and corn to the daily feed program.  Each animal’s diet is specifically formulated based on your personal choice.  Our cattle are kept in separate fields to ensure they are finished as ordered.

Our cattle are individually and carefully inspected to ensure it has reached its full potential for optimal carcass size, beef quality, marbling grade and fat content.  Those that don’t pass the inspection are held back and continued finish fed until they meet all The Barbed Wire Cattle Company standards.  After field inspection, the steers are shipped for harvest and once they have been dressed and quartered, a final grading inspection is completed to ensure the beef meets The Barbed Wire Cattle Company's Signature Standards.  If an animal does not make the grade it is then sold to a meat packing plant.  These inspections referenced above exceed all USDA requirements and inspections.  
  

Our beef is dry aged, “the old fashioned way” for a full 21 days to enhance its flavor and tenderness.  We never use electrode stimulation or forced water retention (wet aging) in our aging process.  Our aging process is 100% Natural, allowing nature to work its miracle.  Most beef sold in America today is not aged for the ideal time, as it represents significant added costs.

A bull cannot be genetically superior in all aspects.  Standard industry genetic demand is for animal strength, growth rate and durability on the range, milk production and carving ease.  Since we pamper our cattle, we base our bull selection on preferred genetics that improve meat quality.  Every bull in our herd comes from a family with a strong history of generating offspring that consistently produce meat with above average marbling, increased steak size, meat tenderness and lower fat content. 

Our cattle have "Freedom from hunger, thirst, and malnutrition, Freedom from physical and thermal discomfort, Freedom from pain, injury, and disease (including parasitical infections), Freedom to express normal behavior, Freedom from fear and distress.

Barbed Wire Cattle Company is committed to the environment.  We believe in upholding and building on the principles established by the USDA and the National Organic Standards Board. We are committed to the health and well being of our animals as well as the environment.

All of our pastures are Natural or Organic.  This guarantees that they have never been exposed to harmful fertilizers or pesticides. This is beneficial to not only livestock but also the wildlife and waterways that are often harmed by fertilizers and pesticides used on pastures.

Our cattle are on a rotational grazing schedule that naturally allows our pastures to restore the needed nutrients and protects our water sheds. This helps to maintain a prolific wildlife habitat. It’s not uncommon to see large groups of wildlife amongst our cattle on the flourishing native grasses. The numerous ponds on the ranches provide host to catfish and bluegil, beavers and various bird species.
The farms and ranches participate in a variety of habitat restoration projects.

90% of all rivers and streams in the U.S. test positive for agricultural pesticides. The average stream contains 20 pesticides.  U.S. Geological Survey

Food production in the U.S. is responsible for 22% of the country’s toxic water pollution and 38% of the common water pollution.  Browner - Leon, 1999

The heavy reliance on meat in the U.S. diet requires vast animal farms — a single farm can have as many as 80,000 hogs.  The amount of animal waste in the U.S. is 130 times greater than the amount of human waste.  “Sustainable Agriculture” USDA- National Agriculture Library 

A larger steer is not always better.  According to Yale Universities, Rudd for Food Policy and Obesity, “85% of the food chain is controlled by a small number of very large agribusiness and food companies.” Organic and pasture based ranching is typically controlled and operated by the small, family operated farm or ranch. Only now are we beginning to see an emergence of large scale organic farms due impart to the growing demand for organics.

Small scale operations provide a higher level of control where nature is never rushed. Barbed Wire Cattle Company is proud of our size! We are able to maintain complete control of the entire process from birth to harvest.

75% of all potatoes grown and marketed in the U.S. are from 4 closely related varieties. 96% of all peas derive from two strains. By the end of the 20th century, 91% of all varieties of corn, 81% of tomatoes, and 80-90% of most vegetable and fruit varieties were lost from common production.  50 years ago, over 30,000 varieties of rice were grown in India. Today, 75% of Indian rice comes from just 10 varieties.  Lang & Heasman, Food Wars, 2004

25 years ago, teenagers drank almost twice as much milk as soda pop. Today they drink twice as much soda pop as milk.  U.S. Department of Agriculture Dietary-Intake Surveys

"Much of the taste and aroma of American fast food is now manufactured at a series of large chemical plants off the New Jersey Turnpike."  Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, 2001