OUR FARM PRACTICES

Our farm practices are very simple. We maintain a healthy sward of mixed grass. These fields are flood irrigated and are bordered on one side by an irrigation canal. The canal banks grow a variety of weeds.

The cattle enter a field of about 6-7 inches of growth. They come and go to this field until they have it down to a height of about 3-4 inches.

At this point, the cattle are moved to another section of field and the sheep are rotated to the old cattle field.

The sheep love the canal weeds and polish these off first. They are allowed to evenly mow the whole area down to 2-2.5 inches. This rotation breaks the parasite cycle of both cattle and sheep. In addition, it eliminates the need for herbicide use on the canal banks. Good for everybody!

We chose both our beef and our lamb breeds very carefully. Both the Murray-Grey beef and the Romney lamb are famous for a gentle disposition. **This allows us to work with them quietly and slowly. Stress is reduced or nonexistent. We believe this produces a better meat product. We can all translate this in our own lives, with stress, tension or surprise, our muscles tighten. Sometimes, we don't even recognize it until our neck gets a crick or we have our back out or we get a headache. Animals will react to stress in the same way, except the cricked-up neck ends up being a tough or tasteless piece of meat on our plates.

These animals give us so much. It is not an imposition to treat them with respect and gentleness in return. These two low-key breeds allow us to do that. Tawanda Farms is a member of both the American Romney Breeders Association, www.americanromney.org and the Murray-Grey Breeders Association, www.murraygreybeefcattle.com. Our beef is Certified Murray-Grey.