The Cow Story: Birth to Beef
Jules Goddet | March 23, 2023
Warren Wilson College (WWC) has not always been a college. In the 1890s, WWC was called the Asheville Farm School, its main purpose being farming. Now, it is called WWC and is still known for its farm that grows crops and has sheep, chickens, pigs and cows. Some of which can be consumed by WWC students.
Gladfelter gives the opportunity every day to eat meat. Gladfelter has a few meals where they prepare the farm’s cows, but not many people know the journey from the birth of WWC’s farm animals to the consumption of them.
According to Gus Lehrman, a member of the Cattle Crew, the farm has 51 cows, around 25 females and 25 males. Lehrman is the manager of the Cattle Crew, and is in charge of all of its workers.
The farm crew requires hard work from its members. Then, the majority of them chose this crew because they found something in it that they are passionate about in order to work efficiently. These hobbies can be loving being outside with animals or simply being interested in business.
“Farming is a cool profession,” Lehrman said. “I like to be outside spending time with the animals.”
Lily Fidler, a sophomore at WWC and the meat manager of the Farm Crew, chose to join this crew because of her love for business and cooking.
“I'm a sustainable agriculture major,” Fidler said. “And I am just interested in farming and cooking with meat, and I enjoy interacting with customers and sales.”
Thanks to these common passions, members of the farm crew are strongly linked together.
“It's a really great crew,” Fidler said. “It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of hard work but it's a really good group of people. And everyone's excited and passionate about the work that we're doing. It's a very tight-knit crew atmosphere, which I feel like not a lot of crews on campus have that as much.”
This atmosphere provides Farm Crew great conditions to perform their tasks with success. Members of the Cattle Crew have. diverse, but all are oriented towards the same objective: making sure that the cows are healthy and in shape.
“Our main role is to move the cows and make sure they and the grass are healthy,” Lehrman said. “We also manage the land.”
With grass, being the main food source for cows it is one of the most important pieces in the cow’s ecosystem
“The way we manage the cattle herd is like rotational grazing,” Lehrman said. “So, we'll set up little electric fence lines, and then move them every day to a new part of the pasture. And then once they get through one pasture, we move to a different one,” he said.
The reason why the Cattle Crew moves the cows often is because it helps the grass to regrow and is better nutrition for the cows. There is also a different way to feed the cows: cut hay.
“We cut the grass, and then take it all together and put it in those big bales and then feed that out in a cart,” Lehrman said.
In order to develop their pasture, the Cattle Crew uses the process of breeding. The females are usually not used for meat, but to breed. On the contrary, males are firstly used for breeding, but after that are generally used for meat.
“We breed our cows every year,” Lehrman said. “If you look at the pasture right now, there's a lot of baby cows. We calve in the wintertime. And then, we have two herds of cows. One is the beef herd for meat, and the other one is the reproduction herd. The whole purpose of the cow herd is just to be bred every year, so they're not often used for meat. The offspring from the cows go into the beef herd and then they get used for meat.
After their birth, several steps are used to prepare the baby cow to enter the beef herd.
“They're born in the winter, and spend their time with their mom getting milk from her,” Lehrman said. “Then, they develop a little and start eating grass. The next big thing that we do is we wean them. Weaning means that you don't let them have their mom's milk anymore. We put these little nose flaps in their nose, so they can't suckle on their mom and we leave that in for about a week. Following this, we take that out, and we move them into the beef herd. Throughout this whole time, we're moving them from field to field. Then, when a cow looks great, we send it to slaughter.”
To know if the cows are ready to be sent to the slaughterhouse, called Wells, Jenkins and Wells in Forest City. The farmers look at, “the body condition score,” on the cows after a certain period of time: the fat that they have and their age. In general, the cow just has to look in shape.