the feeling of shepherd, rather than predator

“our earliest representational art—paintings from the paleolithic era found in caves from spain to africa, australia to india—shows a singular obsession with herbivores…they figured amongst our first god’s and goddesses.  we drew them and dreamed them, sang them and ate them; and our passion for hoofed beings only deepened once we herded instead of hunted them.”  goat song, by:  brad kessler

a couple nights ago her and i had a friend over for dinner—similar age, similar passions, similarly distant roots that somehow landed us in athens to farm—and he got to explaining his attraction to working with cattle.  to paraphrase his simple, and eloquent, attempt at putting his explanation to words, he said, “it’s almost biblical.”  without knowing exactly how or why, i definitely understood, but it wasn’t clear.  it made me want to investigate a bit. 

“long before hunter-gatherers began roaming the earth, the ancestors of our cattle, sheep, goat, pigs, and domestic birds lived much as their wild counterparts do today, flourishing within the balance provided by natural selection, nature’s seasons, their specific environmental adaptations, and competition for resources with other species.”  grassfed cattle:  how to produce and market natural beef by julius ruechel.

choose an example of a wild herd that’s easy for you to visualize.  the classic apple pie example:  the bison roaming the great plains.  in the southwest, migrating big horn ship.  the arctic, oxen.  in two thousand six i was fortunate enough to see the wildebeest migration in tanzania.  millions of them stampeding by for days on end.  from afar huge blobs of black convulse and expand in unison.  up close we could notice individual harems of ten to fifty females protected by a constantly challenged male.  no resting for that guy—not never.  

these wild migrating herds around the world have stomped, chewed, torn, and defecated on grassy pastures for millions of years.  competition for resources, both above the ground, and beneath it, fueled the engine that supported a massively diverse and fruitful ecosystem, all churned by the hoofed foot power of these migrating beasts. 

still mentally picturing your above chosen wild herd, imagine the constraints and stresses it would put on these animals for them to live the lifestyle mandated by the mainstream meat industry (the overwhelming majority of all meat eaten in the us).  standing upright in a box, ankle deep in shit, eating corn.  ironically, the pasture building and improving effects of these wild herds across the american plains was essential for the development of the hyper productive american grain belt, and the corn surplus which is then pumped back through the livestock, sickening the cattle, and creating toxic levels of waste.

in grassfed cattle, ruechel cleverly illustrates that if the five million years of history behind these animals is placed on a twenty four hour clock, man’s first domestication of livestock comes at two minutes ‘till midnight, and the current model of factory farming wasn’t thunk up ‘till the last one and a half seconds of the herds five million yr/twenty four hour day.  with the cattle first appearing on the first minute of the day, early man doesn’t learn to hunt until five forty two pm.  the last ice age ended and the glaciers retreated at eleven fifty seven pm.  man, and man with cattle, is but a blink.

our method of raising cattle, which is called rotational (or rational) grazing, pays great respect to the nature of these early herds.  all of our management decisions come back to the basics:  is this good for both the herd and the pasture—and are we maximizing the herd’s efficiency.

the herd—packed tightly together by the constant threat of predation along the outer edges of its mass—marches across a pasture and applies a generally consistent beat down across it’s path.  this beating and stomping down introduces plant matter, as well as important digestive enzymes from the cattle’s manure and urine, which provide life to the millions of organisms feeding on this cycle beneath the surface.  it injects pockets of oxygen beneath the grass, and the hoof prints aid in holding water after a rain storm.   

in our system of rotational grazing we move them daily through an electrified paddock of fresh grass.  the fence replaces the predator, and the herd grazes consistently and efficiently across the entire given area.  if the herd were managed more loosely, and left to their own accord to roam free, they would begin to spread out and cherry pick for their favorite plants.  soon areas of the best plants would be overgrazed and disappear forever.  other areas would be undergrazed, and these poorer plants will get the competitive edge they need to thrive and reproduce.  it’s a downward process for both the herd and the pasture. 

back to the beginning of the story, with my friend and his biblical explanation, i’ll leave you with one final quote from grassfed cattle that for me explained the attraction best.  “seeing the great herds gathering and moving through the plains, a hypnotizing, awe-inspiring experience, triggers in us a passion that may be a window into our long-forgotten past as hunters and predators.  certainly, the animal kingdom still recognizes humans as predators.” 

for me it’s the feeling of shepherd, rather than predator.  tapping into this early man relationship feels intriguing to the core.  beast, earth, weather, and man.