Osage Creek Farms
Fayetteville
★5.0(9)Local beef supplier in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Contact them directly for current availability and pricing on bulk beef purchases.
2 local suppliers selling bulk beef in the Fayetteville area. Prices in Arkansas typically range $9.00-10.50/lb per pound.
The 'Golden Window' for Arkansas beef is May through July. Cattle finishing in late spring graze the 'spring flush' of lush grass, gaining weight rapidly and promoting tenderness. Avoid August-September when fescue toxicity peaks. The 'Deer Season Bottleneck' (mid-October through January) makes processing nearly impossible - book by late summer for fall/winter beef.
Fayetteville
★5.0(9)Local beef supplier in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Contact them directly for current availability and pricing on bulk beef purchases.
Fayetteville
★5.0(4)Local beef supplier in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Contact them directly for current availability and pricing on bulk beef purchases.
The 'fescue toxicity' factor is your quality control metric. When cattle consume infected Kentucky-31 fescue during summer heat, they suffer heat stress that can reduce marbling and create tougher meat. Ask your farmer about their fescue management strategy - novel-endophyte varieties, clover interseeding, or moving cattle to summer annuals. May-July harvest captures animals before the heat/toxicity peak.
A half cow in Arkansas costs $2,000-2,500 total. At $5.00/lb hanging weight (360 lbs), you pay the farmer ~$1,800, plus $65 slaughter fee (half share) and $1.15/lb processing (~$415), totaling ~$2,280. Your take-home yield is about 234 lbs, making effective cost approximately $9.74/lb for everything from filet mignon to ground beef.
Arkansas lies in the 'Fescue Belt' where Kentucky-31 grass hosts a fungal endophyte toxic to cattle. During summer heat (June-August), affected cattle suffer from reduced feed intake, heat stress, and poor weight gain - potentially producing leaner, tougher beef. Ask your farmer about fescue management: novel-endophyte varieties, clover dilution, or summer annual grazing mitigates this issue.
The 'Deer Season Bottleneck' overwhelms Arkansas processors from mid-October through January. Thousands of deer carcasses flood small lockers, and many simply stop accepting beef. If you want beef for the holidays, schedule slaughter by late September. The 'Golden Window' is May through July when processors are less burdened and cattle quality peaks.
The Delta's deep alluvial soils are among the most valuable in the world for row crops - rice, soybeans, cotton, corn. Pasturing cattle on land that could produce 200 bushels of corn per acre is economically irrational. Local herds are virtually non-existent. Strategy: source from Crowley's Ridge (Sunshine Farms, Jonesboro) or use delivery services from farms like 2 Rivers that run routes into the Delta.