Fossil Ridge Farms: FAQs & Answers

• If I order a whole (half or quarter) beef / hog / goat - can I pick it up next week?

  No. As a small scale farm we only produce a limited amount of beef/goat/hog each year. Each animal takes it’s respective time to grow to processing weight. Pigs 6 months, goats 8-10 months and cattle 18 + months. We plan almost a year in advance for most animals to be processed and even further ahead for others. This involves booking slaughter dates often before some of the animals are even born! These processing dates happen a few times per year, usually in the fall. Because of these reasons we cannot just ship out a bulk order on short notice. We take reservation in advance for most animals. This gives everyone plenty of time to be prepared and ask any questions well in advance before processing.

• Do you sell Lamb?

  No. We do not breed or raise sheep and lambs.

• Do you sell milk (raw or otherwise)?

  No we do not sell milk. We raise only meat breeds of animals and do not milk them. The animals we raise only produce enough milk to raise their own offspring. Milk falls under the milk marketing board and in the case of cow milk - supply management as well. Beyond this it is illegal to sell any kind of raw milk.

• Do your grass-fed animals get grain and what does 100% grass-fed mean?

  Our 100% grass-fed animals only eat forage. Forage is the word used to describe the stuff you see growing in a hay field, meadow or pasture. In those fields you find mainly two families of plants - grass and legumes (clover) - as well as some other families of shrubbery, herbs, forbs and wild flowers. In the summer they eat straight off the pasture and in the winter when we have a frozen wonderland they get dried hay (forage that has been cut and dried for long term storage).

• I can buy X product cheaper at the grocery store, can I get a discount?

  Unfortunately no. We focus on producing a healthy and high quality local product. There is just no way we can compete with grocery chains that buy meat in bulk. Often you don’t even know where it’s from - is it Canadian beef or was it imported all the way from Brazil? We can’t compete with global economics. At the end of the day this is also my job, and just like your job pays for your living expenses, mine needs to as well. If we sold products below cost of production that wouldn’t be sustainable. The idea that farmers can’t have and/or don’t deserve a fair living wage like the rest of the community is a very outdated idea and one we hope to change. After all we are loosing farmers faster than we can replace them, and that mentality won’t help it either. Our meat don’t only support us but also other local families - be it from the nutritionist and vets making sure our livestock’s health needs are met to the butchers who cut the meat. Our products help to support many living wages within our community.

• What do you mean by minimal input system for your animals?

  When we talk about a minimal input system, I refer to a way of raising animals that was similar in the development in the Kiko and Kokinui breeds. When I was in college I had the pleasure of having an opportunity to speak with Garrick Batten about development of the breed and the philosophy behind it. Essentially by eliminating our “help” - basically anything that require extra work from us such as hoof trimming or helping kid/calves suckle (because of poor udders) - and mimicking nature (survival of the fittest) we only retain the most fit animals to contribute to the gene pool. We have to pretend we are the wolf when we walk into our herd. We look at those who don’t perform and remove them on from our breeding herd. We have to think that in nature the wolf would have caught and eaten that one because of XYZ reason. And by removing the low performers you are raising the bar for each subsequent generation.

  As Garrick said: “If you give the choice to a farmer; you can have one animal that requires no work or you can have one animal you need to tend to all the time. Which one will they pick? Of course they’ll pick the one that requires less work! The less you have to work for the animal the more that animal begins to work for you”.

• What is Veal and Rose Veal?

  Many people have a misunderstanding about what veal is. Most people wrongly assume veal is the meat of a new-born calf or very young calf. I’m sure it does happen out there in the world where people aren’t as fortunate as we are, however here in Canada this is absolutely not the case. By the time Veal goes to be processed they are roughly 8 months old and around 750lbs. By that standard they are older and heavier than all other livestock raised for meat except for beef!

  The biggest difference between Beef and Veal is mainly the age (and subsequently their weight) at slaughter. Veal are around 8 months old at processing while our beef are typically 20-24 months of age.

  Now the part your were probably most curious about is what is Veal vs Rose Veal? Typical rearing of veal calves requires closely controlling a calf’s environment to monitor and restrict certain food-stuffs that the calf may eat. To get that typical white meat colour requires omitting certain nutrients from a calf’s diet - straw is used instead of hay for example and most veal only get milk (and sometimes grain as well) as feed to ensure the white-like meat colour. On our farm we do no such thing. Our Rose Veal calves get raised by their own mother, outdoors just like the rest of our cattle. The only difference is the date they go for slaughter. A young beef does naturally have a more pink (rather than red) meat than an older beef hence the term “Rose” and the “Veal” refers to the younger age of the animal (and more therefore more tender meat). We would call it Natura beef (what they call it in my home country of Switzerland) but we have rules and regulations in Canada that require beef of certain ages and size to be labeled as Veal.

• Why do you raise Rose Veal?

  As mentioned above there is a lot of unnecessary stigma surrounding the age of veal but in reality they are larger and older than almost all other farm animals at processing except beef (typically chickens are around 6 weeks old when processed - most roosters that age don’t even know how to crow yet). Our answer is pretty simple. We send some of our cattle for Rose Veal because of winter. To us it is no different than sending pigs to processing in the fall for the same reason. We feel strongly that our cattle deserve to have access to the barn for shelter from our cold climate. However, we only have so much room to house our beef during the winter. Our priority is always for our pregnant cows but that doesn’t mean we should let the other cattle have less than ideal housing. As such by sending beef in the fall as Rose Veal we lessen the amount of cattle that need to be brought through the winter (which let’s be honest 6 months of winter can get long) and allow more room and comfort for the remaining beef. At the end of the day they would have been destined as meat wether they were 8 months old or 18 months old (a good chunk of that time being winter) so the date doesn’t matter in the end. I always think that by sending them before the cold at least they don’t have to deal with the cold of a Canadian winter and will only have known a warm pastures.