🦃THANKSGIVING TURKEYS ARE HERE! SHOP NOW!

Healthy Grass Makes Healthy Cows Make Healthy Milk

written by

Marie Reedell

posted on

May 26, 2017

cows-eat-grass.jpg

I had the pleasure of visiting the farm this week and was astounded at how much I learned about our cows and grass.

As you know, our cows eat grass. During the warmer months, the grass that they eat is not only green but also fully grown. The farmer moves the cows to a new paddock 3x per day. They waddle into a waste high field of green and begin chowing down. On the day that I visited, the herd cleared out a whopping half-acre of grass.

The farmer pays close attention to his soil health. He works with a soil expert and has his soil tested regularly. In addition to the natural fertilizer provided by the cows, he will grow cover crops or supplement his soil with any minerals that are lacking.

Given what it needs, the alfalfa grass grows tall and strong. The farmer makes sure that the cows eat it when it is just right, full grown but not old. It is a delicate balance of nature that simply works.

In return, we gain milk that is packed with vitamins, minerals, and probiotics. Healthy soil makes healthy grass makes healthy cows make healthy milk make healthy consumers. The farmer is so proud to provide his dairy products to his members and, in turn, bring health to their families.

-----

*9/4/25 Update: Since this blog post was written, the farm has expanded some. There are currently 4 small herds (each with 50 cows or less) providing milk for Miller's. They all operate under the same 100% grass fed standards:

Cows are fed 100% grass, fresh as much as the weather allows. When the weather is warm enough, they are moved to fresh pasture at least once a day. The soil is, of course, managed naturally and regeneratively and with a lot of care. Nothing synthetic is allowed. 

Health and Nutrition

Farming Practices

Raw Dairy

More from the blog

Cheap beef is coming to the US, but where is it actually coming from?

Beef is more expensive than it's ever been, and the government's answer is to flood the market with hundreds of millions of pounds of imported beef. But "cheaper" comes with a question no price tag will answer: where did this beef actually come from? Here's what's really driving prices, why importing won't fix it, and how you can put beef on your table that you can trace.

Why your milk should be a little yellow and what it has to do with your eyes

Pour our raw milk next to the grocery store stuff and you'll spot it immediately: ours is golden. That color isn't food dye or a fluke, it's lutein and zeaxanthin, two carotenoids your eyes depend on and your body can't make on its own. So we sent both milks to a third-party lab at Utah State. The store-bought grass-fed milk came back with zero lutein. Not less. None. In this post, we get into where that pigment comes from, why heat and skimming wipe it out, and how to check your own cream line at the kitchen window.

We sent our grass-fed raw milk to a university lab. Here's how it compared.

We've always believed that real food should be able to stand on its own, no marketing fluff required. So this spring, we did something we find deeply satisfying: we sent our milk to an independent lab and asked them to tell us exactly what's in it. Not just our milk, either. We tested three milks side by side, ours, a grain-supplemented raw A2/A2 milk from another farm, and one of the most widely available organic pasteurized milks on the market. We wanted an honest picture, and that's exactly what we got.