Glacier Grown

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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. 

We are coming to San Diego for a marketing/spring delivery June 12th-13th.   The Bison run will be small as our efforts are really being concentrated on marketing.  We are expecting to make our biggest fall run ever.  We are gearing up for that NOW.  More on that later!

I really just wanted to get some pictures out of some recent ranch happenings and say hello.  Also, be looking for a newsletter update in the next week or so.  We have been doing some research on the bison industry as a whole and have found information that again encourages us to keep doing what we set out to do originally and stay the course;  providing  all natural, grass fed, grass finished, free range bison,  with no compromises.

Here are some pictures of a recent young mens retreat we had last month at the ranch.  We had some bad weather, but nobody seem to care.  That’s the way it is on the eastern front.  You never really know what the weather will do!

Enjoy the pictures!  See you soon.   http://picasaweb.google.com/glaciergrown

Brad

Gate cutting…

Scott Paul working his magic

On the run…

We have changed the HOW TO ORDER tab on the web site.  It now gives you two options… Whole/Half animal pricing, as well as, Individual Cuts pricing.  This should make it easier, especially for first time visitors, to get to the information they need.  As always, if there is something that you can not find, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Look forward to seeing you all soon!

Brad

Gate cutting went really well this year.  We were able to separate the herd from the yearlings without any accidents.  Well, this doesn’t suprise me though, based on the help I had.  Thank you Josiah, Isaiah, Elisha, Elias, Micah, Victoria, Sawyer, Zane and Erin.  A special thank you to Marcus and Scott, I could not have done this without you.  And of course, to my dearly beloved partner KRIGGSY, THANK YOU!!!!!!

Harvesting starts tomorrow.  Should be a busy four days.  Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Many Blessings,

Brad

Title: Gate Cutting (maybe)
Location: Madwolf Ranch
Description: Separating out the yearling’s from the rest of the herd. The Eastern Front threw us a curve ball today as we were getting some strays home. The sky went dark and we were literally chased off the mountain by a white out snow. Thank God for the paths back to the ranch as we would have never found our way without them. I must admit, it was a bit scary there for a moment.
Date: 2009-10-10

Thank you Nick Maltby of BlaineMountainTechnologies for the new web site.  Please give us a shout if you would like to contact Nick about your blog or web site.   We are sure he can help you out, at a reasonable price I might add!   We hope you enjoy the cleaner look and content.  We have reduced a vast amount of information from the old site into a cleaner much more condensed version.  If there is something you can’t find, just drop us an email and we will be more than happy to provide it for you.

Looking forward to seeing all of you soon on the Fall 2009 co-op day.

Many Blessings,

The Dunham Family