HFW BEEF

Home of Premium Dry Aged Grass Fed Beef

Who's Beef Would You Rather Eat

Feed Lot Cattle
HFW WAY OF RAISING BEEF THEIR WAY OF RAISING BEEF

WE ARE THE EXCLUSIVE DEALER OF HFW DRY AGED PREMIUM GOURMET BEEF

Welcome to HFW BEEF™. We only handle meats that are raised Naturally from start to finish. Additionally, NO antibiotics, growth hormones, or feeds with animal by products, can be used in the animals that we offer. That is the reason we handle Premium Gourmet HFW Beef™. These animals are 100% grass fed and grass finished. Many of the animals have been DNA tested for the Tenderness and Marbling Genes. HooFinWings© Ranch endeavors to use the animals with the most tenderness and marbling genes in their breeding program for their Naturally raised beef animals.

Please read a little about our Naturally raised HFW Beef™.

HFW™ gourmet Texas beef has NO growth hormones or antibiotics added. HFW Beef™ cattle are grass-fed from start to finish. Our beef packages are Dry-Aged which concentrates the good beefy flavor instead of wet-aged like most grocery store beef. We sell our animal packages by 1/4, 1/2, & whole steer packages and it is priced per pound by hanging weight (hot dressed weight). See our available animal page or call or e-mail for information on availability, current price per pound, and deposit amounts.

Animals are sold on a first come first serve basis.

If you like, we can put your name and information in our meat sales interest data base and e-mail you when we post new animal packages that are available for purchase.

HFW Beef™ is Natural Grass-Fed Texas beef. Flavor and tenderness are the standards in judging your beef eating experience and that is what you get with HFW™ gourmet beef. Many people are concerned about the growth hormones injected into animals to get them to gain weight fast and antibiotics injected or in their feed to keep them healthy while they are in the feed lot to finish them before they go to the packing house. We have elected NOT to go that route. We offer only naturally raised beef from open free range pastures that are finished on lush green winter grasses; hay can also be used during dry times. These animals take two years before they are ready for harvest and not the shorter time used for feed lot cows.

Parents of HFW animals have been DNA tested for the Tenderness and Marbling Genes so their beef cattle will provide you with tender juicy premium meats.

HFW beef packages are from animals that are raised and finished out by the same ranch not bought at one ranch, shipped across the country and finished at another ranch or feed lot. You have the assurance that HFW beef is raised from start to finish at the same ranch and not fed or injected with growth hormones or antibiotics. With HFW Beef™, you don't have to worry about where your beef came from or if your hamburger is a mixture of a bunch of cows bought at an auction and processed as a group. Your hamburger will NOT be a mixture of three or four different animals but come from one animal. All your meat comes from a single animal that you purchase even if you only buy 1/4 interest. You wouldn't believe some of the cows that I have seen at the auctions. They are so old they are about to fall over dead. These animals are bought by cattle buyers send to slaughter to make hamburger out of the whole animal. The rancher wants to get something for the animal so he takes them to the auction. The meat buyers don't care about the condition of the cow because it is going to be burger and there is a market for that. Hello, fast food joints. I bet you don't think of that when you are shopping for hamburger in the grocery store or stopping by your friendly Mickey D's.

DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR BEEF IS COMMING FROM

You do when you purchase Premium Gourmet HFW Beef™ package animals. You know that they HAVE NOT been fed copious amounts of corn laced with antibiotics to keep them healthy while in confined feed lots or given growth hormones to speed up weight gains. Our animals roam open pastures for two years before they reach harvest size and are finished (fattened up) on lush green pastures during the winter. Our beef comes from animals in a closed herd system; meaning the animals are born, raised, and harvested from the same ranch. They are not bought and then brought to the ranch to fatten up. We know what our animals eat from birth until harvest.

The Murray Grey is our breed of choice. They are medium framed cows that will grow to a mature weight faster than a larger framed cow such as those used in feed lot operations. Murray Grey's finish well on grass and have a good meat to bone ratio. Meaning more meat weight and less bone weight as compared to larger framed cattle such as those found in the feed lot operations. Our beef cattle are all naturally raised and are finished on grass as opposed to grain. Reports show Grass-fed beef to be higher in Omega-3 fatty acid and in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) than grain-fed beef (link:Benefits of Grass-Fed Beef ). Omega-3's and CLA's have been reported to aid in the human immune system in fighting off cancers and other diseases. These benefits are greatly diminished and the ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 get out of balance when an animal is finished on grain instead of grass. Did you know that Organic beef can be fed grain and still be called Organic as long as grain is organic? Natural grass fed/finished beef can not have grain to finish them out and still be called Natural grass fed beef. Our beef cattle are never given any growth hormones, implants, antibiotics, or feeds with animal by-products in them just like Organic beef but they are not finished out on grain. They are all raised on grass and finished on grass. (See Eat Wild) you should read this.

Did you know that because it says ORGANIC BEEF, it doesn't mean that the animal has been finished on grass? It can be advertised as Organic and be finished out on Organic grains, such as corn as long as the corn was raised Organically. If this is done, you defeat the purpose of paying extra for organic food when you are trying to achieve correct Omega fatty acid ratios. If you finish out the animal on grains the last 60 days, these ratios are out of balance according to the above report. This is why we have chosen to not only raise our animals on grass but to finish them on grass as well. Did you also know that the USDA, who is responsible for controlling the labeling laws on food, yielded to the large beef operation's lobbying because grass fed beef was becoming popular. They now allow a label to read "grass fed" if the commercial feed lots have a gate that opens to a pasture at their operation. Now I ask you, if the animal can eat all it wants at the feed bin, why would it go out to a field and have to work to get its meal. Would you? Well, it won't either! Be sure your grass fed meat is 100% grass fed and grass finished. Look for locally grown beef and support your local farmers/ranchers. You are more likely to get what you think you are getting as opposed to getting duped by some label on the package that state things in a way that seem to say what you are looking for but in reality are probably the complete opposite. That way the large conglomerates will have difficulty putting the local producers out of business leaving you no where to go but to them.

The grain of choice that fed lots use is corn which is high in omega 6 fatty acids. Heck, even some Organic Beef is finished out on grains. You know, it seems to me, we get far too much Omega 6 in our diets these days with all the corn syrup, corn oil, corn fed chickens, corn fed beef, corn here, corn there, corn everywhere. Ole McDonald had some corn, E-I-E-I-O. Ha! Ha! I couldn't resist.

Our cattle are raised on grass and finished on grass; NO grain of any type other than what they may get while grazing.

Many of the parents of the HFW BEEF animals have been DNA tested for the Tenderness and Marbling Genes and are posted on the animals that it is known on. DNA testing means that the offspring should have the same traits as the parents. Selecting an animal with the most gene markers for tenderness means that when the meat is aging in the cold storage, the gene that is responsible for tenderizing the meat works its magic and gives you tender meat. If you have heard of meat that is guaranteed tender that you pay dearly for, this is the DNA markers that are used. Marbling, the amount of intra muscular fat, was thought to dictate the tenderness of the meat by many. The industry uses marbling measurements for quality grade of an animal, ( choice, prime, etc). Hence the perception by a majority of the public that marbling equates to tenderness. Think back. Haven't you had a steak that was well marbled yet it still seemed tough? Tenderness is determined by the animal having the tenderness gene and the amount of time the carcass hangs, (ages); allowing the genes to tenderize the meat and concentrate those beef flavors. If mass marketed meat is harvested, butchered, packaged, and shipped out to the grocery stores the same day not allowing the time for the gene to tenderize the meat, you still get tough steaks, even if the animal had the gene. This is what is known as "wet aged beef"; letting it age in its own juices on its way to the grocery stores. The main reason they do this is they don't loose water weight from the meat they sell to you for $x.xx per pound. Water at 8 pounds per gallon gets expensive when you are paying beef prices and getting water. It also doesn't tie up cooler space while it is aging so they can process more animals. Hence, the number of times you get to eat a tender steak with good beefy flavor has declined and is a hit or miss proposition isn't it?

Marbling is when there is intra muscular fat; fat inside the muscle not just on the outside of the muscle. Marbling actually gives you that good feel in the mouth when eating the meat and adds to the flavor when cooking. We also try to use animals that have this allusive marbling gene. These animals have the gene to produce marbling in the meat Naturally from grass instead of stuffing them with grains as with the feed lots. However animals with very many markers of this gene are not very prevalent. The fat from grass fed animals will have a yellowish tinge as opposed to stark white like grain fed beef. The reason for this is that grass fed beef has more carotene in it; hence the yellowish color.

Many grocery stores have beef from feed lot animals similar to the ones in the above picture except on a much larger scale. This beef has usually had growth hormones injected into them by the rancher to get weight on the animal fast before he sells at the sale barn which is where the buyer for the feed lots gets the animals. Then the animals are shipped from the auctions to the feed lots and are fed copious amounts of grain, usually corn, laced with antibiotics to keep them healthy and put weight on them fast just before harvesting them. Here is a little information about the growth hormones. They are a time release capsule that is injected into the calf at a young age by the ear area. Can you imagine what these growth hormones that help the calf gain weight fast does to us if that is transferred to us in the food chain? "They" say it doesn't affect us and it is not in the meat by the time we eat it; that is is gone. Me, I don't know, but I don't want to rely on and base my health on what "They" say, who ever "They" are. Oh and "they" wonder why the populous is overweight and antibiotic resistant bugs are rampant. I'M NOT CLAIMING ANYTHING HERE, but you do the math. I personally don't want to eat that type of beef; even when I wasn't raising beef. Cows are ruminants. Their stomachs are designed to digest grass not large amounts of grain. Heavy grain diets change the acidity in the cow's stomach allowing e-coli to become more acid tolerant. This makes for a greater chance of any of those e-coli making it into our diets surviving, thereby making us sick. That is why we finish our beef Naturally on grass not grain and we DO NOT inject them with growth hormones to get them to gain weight fast or feed them copious amounts of genetically altered corn or animal by products. Our animals are raised on grass and finished on grass. It may take a little longer but it's worth it, to get HFW Premium Gourmet Texas Beef that is Naturally better beef. We don't just raise our beef to sell, we also eat it.

We offer animals that have been treated humanely and raised in a free range environment. Our goal is to offer animals that come from parents with the most DNA markers for the Tenderness and Marbling genes that is good and wholesome for you.

Give HFW premium dry aged beef a try, I'm sure you will like it.

We sell animals in 1/4, 1/2, & whole beef package sizes. All are priced on a per pound basis on hot hanging weight, (bone included). After harvesting, the packers will DRY AGE the meat (let it hang in the cooler) letting the DNA enzymes do their work tenderizing your beef naturally and concentrating that good beefy flavor as some of the water evaporates. After this they are cut to your specification (on 1/2 steer packages), wrapped, and hard frozen by the USDA processor. You can pick up your beef from the processor, in Muenster, TX approximately 2 weeks after the animal is taken in to be harvested.

Visit beef sales page for availability and prices of our 2014 Beef Packages.

E-mail us to book your package BEFORE THEY ARE GONE.

Remember, you are purchasing an interest in a live animal.

We harvest once per year, usually beginning in March through April depending on animal weight.

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