WebLove: Meet 1 family behind McDonald's beef

I knew I wanted this, my 100th post on Make Mine Beef, to be special. And while it's not an inventive recipe or invaluable beef buying tip, I think it's pretty great. In fact, you might just say I'm lovin' it.

Fun Fact Friday: The life cycle

Did you know beef cattle are raised and cared for in 3 different phases, each targeting a specific stage of their life cycle?

Calves are born on cow-calf operations. On these ranches, cattlemen are in the business to breed and raise cattle. As the calves grow, the rancher will decide which animals will become market animals and which ones will be kept as replacements (go back into the herd to be bred). Once weaned, many calves intended for market will be sold or moved to a stocker operation.

Stocker and backgrounding operations are where calves are grown out and prepared for the feedlot. Here, weanlings graze on grass and may start eating some grain to supplement their diets. Once, they reach 12- to 18- months of age, they are sold or moved to a feedlot.

Feedlots are where market cattle enter their final growing stage. In the feedlot, cattle are grouped with penmates of similar size. They eat a carefully-calculated ration and put on the fat or finish required to produce desirable meat.

In each of these phases, cattle are raised by men and women who believe giving animals the care, handling and nutrition they deserve is an obligation, not an option. They take their job — contributing product to the world’s safest and most abundant food supply — very seriously.

Ramblings from an absentee blogger

You may have noticed the blog’s been pretty quiet this week. My reason is two-fold: when travelling for work, no kitchen = no cooking; and I’m too cheap to spend $16/day for hotel Internet. (Seriously — why is it that the more expensive, conference-worthy hotels charge exorbitant prices for Internet when the Holiday Inn Expresses of the world — my personal favorite chain — give it away? I digress…)

But, I’m back now, albeit only for a couple of days, and I thought I’d tell you a little about my trip and what I have planned for Make Mine Beef when I return from the next leg of travel, which is Sunday through Tuesday.

Sunday through Wednesday, I was in New Orleans for the Agricultural Media Summit. It was great seeing so many of my communicator friends from across the country, and the sessions were very informative. Of course, New Orleans is a tough town for someone who shares a name with the city’s biggest nemesis, but overall I left unscathed and full of beignets.

While there, I got a lot of questions about this horrible drought, wildfires and cow culling. It’s always great to talk about what’s going on in your part of the world — I just wish I’d had more good news to share!

I live in a small town in Far North Texas, near the Texas-Oklahoma border. We’ve only seen a little more than one-half inch of rain since Nov. 1, have had more than 50 days in a row over 100 degrees or more (many of those days at about 110, and today it got to 116 in the shade of my yard) and have had more than our fair share of wildfires.

Cattle have been brought in to the local auction markets in record numbers, to the point some ranchers were turned away a couple of weeks ago. I moved to this area a little less than 1 year ago when I married the Mr., and just driving around the county it’s easy to see how many fewer cattle graze here than this time last year.

Like many others, I pray for rain daily and do try to remember that every day it doesn’t rain is one day closer to the day it does.

While I may have been an absentee blogger while I was away, the project definitely wasn’t forgotten. I did a little brainstorming on a sauce I’ve been wanting to create, I found a steak recipe in EveryDay with Rachael Ray that I can’t wait to put my own spin on and I even came back to a card from my mom that included a recipe she’d cut out and marked “I bet this would be great with BEEF!”

Needless to say, I think August will be a big month for the blog…and I might just get 1 more post in before the month’s end, between loads of laundry.

Fun Fact Friday: Now that's efficiency!

Today’s Fun Fact Friday is a tribute to one of my favorite groups of people, ranchers!

Did you know? America’s beef producers are producing more pounds of beef with fewer resources than at any time in history. If 1950s beef production practices were used to produce the amount of beef raised today, 165 million more acres of land would be needed. That’s about the size of my home state, Texas!

Happy Friday, everyone! I’ll leave you with a photo I took back in the winter. I love a good baldy cow, and this one’s photo now hangs in our house.