Glacier Grown

It is that time again…..we are ready to start taking orders for our San Diego/Southern California fall delivery.  We are planning our trip mid November, and will start harvesting animals the first week of October, so PLEASE PLEASE, don’t delay in ordering or we may not be able to accommodate you – we have sold out the past three trips.  Also, I know that some of you are from the Orange County/Costa Mesa area.  We are delivering to Costa Mesa this fall – PLEASE, if any of you have friends up there, pass our information along and have them contact me.

Customers involved in our small June delivery already know the following information, but we felt it was important to share it with everyone. When we initially decided to make our delivery last June, we had very few of our own animals in the field remaining for this harvest and we were going to supplement with animals from like-minded growers to make a small delivery.  As we set out to find those like-minded growers and check out their facilities, we weren’t finding animals that met our Glacier Grown standards.  For example, many bison ranchers who consider themselves all grass fed/ grass finished do supplement grain to their animals (3 lbs of grain per animal per day), but they don’t consider them to be grain fed since the majority of their diet is grass.  This practice is commonly used to control the size of the animals before slaughter – grain makes larger and more consistently-sized animals.  We do not and will not incorporate this practice.  In addition, one grower we went to see is in a dry area, so he pens his herd in a “feed lot” for a couple months, while the spring grass is growing.  I understand that in his situation he has to do that, but that is not a situation that we can feel good about - 40 animals in a small lot gets nasty real quick.  

Although it took a while, we did find one rancher on the eastern front of the Rockies who follows our same practices and his animals range in an area with the same native grasses and water that we have.  They have about 50 animals total in their herd, free ranging over 1000 acres; no pesticides, no herbicides, no hormones, no anti-biotics, no chemical de-wormers. 

We want you all to understand that we hold very high standards in raising our animals, and we would never sell animals that didn’t meet our same standards of growing.  We are currently taking measures to increase the size of our own herd, and still looking for other growers who we can trust.  You can always be confident that at Glacier Grown, we sell only grass fed, grass finished, free range animals raised without the use of pesticides, herbicides, hormones, or chemicals. 

In order to make a great profit and mass produce animals to meet the demand, more and more bison are being raised in feed lots and being fed grain.  Remember, a grain fed bison is not any healthier than a grain fed beef cow.  As the bison industry grows, and it is growing quickly, it becomes even more important to know your grower.