Welcome to Meadow Oaks!
Welcome to our website!
We are the Walkers... Greg, Lynn, Lauren and Ian. Lauren is a senior in college, but still pitches in when home on break. Ian is a Junior in high school and is actively involved in the ownership and management of the cattle. Lynn is my Hero and knows quite a bit about cattle, but doesn't want anyone to know it. I am an Ag teacher and FFA advisor and the cattle help me retain my sanity after putting up with kids all day. We run our 60 Registered Angus cows on 500 acres of pasture and sell grass fed and naturally raised freezer beef.
A word to those seeking grassfed beef. A few years ago it occurred to me that the way America is producing its food is crazy and unhealthy, for the environment and especially the American people. The emphasis on cheap food to feed the masses has resulted in increased cancer, heart disease and diabetes. I decided that I was going to be part of the solution and begin raising grassfed beef for our customers. Then Michael Pollan's books came along and the movie Food Inc. and I thought... "aah, I am not alone."
In order to do this effectively, a change in genetics for our cattle was required. So we went to Ohlde Cattle company and through AI and purchased bulls, began to produce the right kind for a grassfed beef program. We had never used herbicides and fertilizers on our pastures and had always shied away from hormone implants and antibiotics, but now the pieces were in place to produce high quality grassfed beef for Indiana and Illinois. We can supply you with not only grassfed beef by the quarter, half or whole, but breeding stock to meet your own needs for the moderate grass powered cow.
Our cows are run in a no frills manner, they are never fed grain, only grass and hay and cornstalks for part of the winter. We extend the grazing season as much as possible, taking the cows from pasture around Thanksgiving time and putting them on cornstalks until sometime in February. Then they are brought home and fed square bales in the barn until time to go back to pasture in April. We calve in late April and into May, so the calves are born when it is warm and the grass is green! The calves never receive creep feed, are weighed and tagged at birth and weighed again at weaning.
Replacements are selected from only good uddered, trouble free cows, which is easy to do,as we do not keep the other kind. We like to pick bulls from what we consider to be our most trouble free, docile cows. Only 1/3 or less of the bull calves are left intact. When you pick one of our bulls, you are picking from what we consider to be the best and what we would use for ourselves. The bulls are developed very slowly. Stuffing developing bulls with a high calorie diet is counter productive, as it decreases fertility and causes the bulls to melt when dumped out with cows on pasture to begin breeding. Fat hides a lot of problems and creates just as many! We have customers that are still running the same bulls they bought from us as yearlings, years ago, with no feet and leg problems and still looking great. As a matter of fact, they have purchased an additional bull or two each year. Most of our male calves are marketed as grassfed or natural freezer beef and we believe that we produce a superior product.
Enjoy the website, we are new at this web thing, need better pictures and that will change as time goes by, feel free to contact us.