Grass fed is way cheaper, however the more cows you have the less labor per steak. This is normal for the conventional industry but organic/grass fed is usually much more small scale. I feel certain that at a large scale grass fed beef is the least labor intensive and cheapest calorie in the human diet. What makes cows efficient is not their ability to produce meat. They have two incredible advantages, one is that they can convert extremely low quality desert and tropical forages  few other animals could live off of into a calf, all while not dieing and two a growing or milking cow can convert lush high nutrition forages into more meat per day per animal than any animal and milk more milk than any animal.

Americans favor the cow because our culture is continuously moving ease and convenience and there is just less labor in dealing with cattle than there is in pigs, sheep and chickens or even milking goats.

North America is in an odd position when it comes to beef. Probably the biggest part of why it is so hard for us to compete on the world market is that the majority of our continent is not the ideal place for raising herds of beef cattle. Breeding cattle to produce calves is not very efficient land use. Especially like in North America we have long harsh winters that often necessitate winter feeding which is the most cost intensive part of beef production. They cannot produce like a pig or a chicken or even a sheep. However they can produce on land that the other three cannot. So where land is cheap because of low fertility and low precipitation or where forage is extremely plentiful and course due to high rainfall and heat cattle will dominate.

So China, Argentina and Brazil are more natural beef havens.

The beef industry in America has actually long been propped up by the cheapness of grains. Now that grain production has become so expensive the people who grow the cheapest grass will have the best beef economy.  The best hope for North American beef is the increased use of winter pastures and the shunning of hay making equipment.

I also predicted the terrible price increase of meat and animals. Beef is higher then ever, I heard about cow calf pairs selling for 3200 at auction. Worthless cull cows sell for around 1000.

I was blessed this year with 3 heifers and a bull so far, which brings me up to 10 females, all my herd is worth over 15'000. We survived the overall coldest winter in the history of Michigan!

Aajonus didn't think there was much use in corn except I recall he said something about raw sweet corn having an enzyme that is helpful in digesting raw meat. Raw sweet corn strait off the stalk is like candy so... Stock think the whole plant tastes like candy, in fact it's so nutritious for herbivores that cows, goats, sheep and horses can all potentially kill themselves if the overindulge after eating less delicious fare. Corn is one of the most suitable plants for grass fed dairy in the hot dry summer months and into the early fall because it keeps on growing when other grass lignifies in the heat.

Yeah I don't castrate anymore, did a little bit but not anymore. There was a website selling semen from a particular bull who had nursed for 11 months, with a picture of him nursing almost as big as his mother, perhaps bigger. Said he had ridiculous sperm counts.

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/

Humans have long sought sources of fat. Australians knew when each animal had the most fat in each season, traveled hundreds of miles for pine nut harvests and killed many animals during peak fat season for the fat and discarded the flesh. Domesticated animals have been bred to be fat, chickens, ducks and geese have been bred to be so fat they can no longer fly. Pigs used to be bred so fat they couldn't run or walk more than a few hundred feet. Cows are bred for high marbling.

My farmer friend mentioned that he had "read somewhere" that we evolved to eat meat because we can use tools to crush bones and skulls to exract marrow and brains, which are all the remains that predators and scavengers leave behind.

depends, cats will take out legs and hips to slow the animal down before they go for the neck, just going for the neck is suicidal with some animals. Komodo dragons take a bite and follow an animal around for as long as a month for it to die or get sick from infection. their mouths are so filthy that any bite leads to infection.

That's the thing though too, animal rights activists are so concerned about the animal not feeling pain but they will endorse animals raised in factories, as long as there aren't individual cages, gestation crates, certain specific practices they deem inhumane. They never get to the bare fact that no animals should be kept in barns the year round.

Okay, rare wild animals deserve rights. But welfare is good enough for domestic animals and welfare for endangered animals basically means they should not be killed.

I think people are insane. Stunning doesn't always work properly. I don't buy that animals blasted in the head don't feel pain. My friend blasted two pigs point blank in the temple. One went out like a light, the other one screamed and thrashed and spouted blood out of it's mouth like a fire breathing dragon. I much prefer Halal/Kosher style, the animal doesn't hardly feel anything, little if any struggle if it's done properly. I almost feel like the preference to stunning/shooting is coming from people trying to justify shooting animals or humans, guns in general.

Yeah that's the big problem though with selling Kosher is that you then have to sell all the other parts to somebody else to make any money.

I'm sorry but I am not eating any animal that feeds on other animals' shit. Call me a prude but there are certain limits I won't cross in life such as coprophilia, bestiality and paedophilia.

Yeah I don't think there is any such animal. Perhaps horses and camels? I know that goats and cows get very interested in dried bird shit at times. Good source of phosphorous and protein. Poultry can live off of cow shit and this makes for the best damn birds and eggs you will ever eat. Ultra colorful eggs. Ultra vibrant colored flesh and fat.

Does being smaller really make you more suited to the cold? I would think it would be the other way around, since being large means you have less relative surface area and a larger, more efficient, more powerful and warmer reactor. I think being of smaller stature is more an adaptation for living in very harsh circumstances and times of food scarcity. Also, developing children might get less food during food scarcity and thus develop smaller.

I'm almost a giant and more cold impervious than anyone I know other than my father who is also near giant size. I just made it through February without lighting a fire once in my house. My only source of heat is my body, half ass winter clothes, my sleeping bag and a couple cats.

well to be fair, there have been many societies with varying levels of sustainability, unfortuately unsustainable societies tend to be bristling with economic and military advantages and their unsustainability drives them to conquer their neighbors. or sometimes sustainability is abandoned for "progress" or "higher quality of  life". such atempts offer an insideously palpable yet fleeting advance. the worlds best examples of include almost endless forests of fruit bearing trees in south america and what is still the worlds greatest treasure trove of topsoil in the american great plains, created through milleniums of hunters driving vast herds of bison that were in effect historically unequaled machines who mulched the earth and built the soil. it is not proven  fact that humanity wiped out the megafauna, it may have been climatic conditions although those in turn could have been man made. it is curious however that the megafauna were not wiped out of africa and asia.

Actually I recall that aajonus recomended  mouldy raspberries for something or other. There are many more fruits that need to blet to be tasty but medlars are the prime example.