Everything we do is to support one goal: bring you the best beef possible.
The quality you taste in Black Hawk Beef is a direct result of the care and commitment we take in the health of our animals and stewardship of our farmland.
Sure, there are cheaper ways to raise beef. But cheaper rarely means better. It’s not always easy to do the right thing, the right way, every time; but we’re passionate about taking good care of our land, our animals, our team and you.
Black Hawk Farms produces the best meat possible by going back to the basics. We take care of our soil and pasture. We raise healthy, happy animals. We grow the grains used to finish our beef. We humanely process the meat locally to ensure quality and freshness.
The Black Hawk DIFFERENCE
AMerican wagyu
We start with American Wagyu cattle. We have spent years selectively breeding our cattle to develop key personality traits and ideal characteristics of the finished beef. Wagyu are sought after for their superior marbling and flavor. And we know ours are the best of the best.
American Wagyu has its origins in the acclaimed Wagyu cattle of Japan. Over centuries of careful breeding, the Japanese have developed four breeds of Wagyu beef that produce some of the most beautifully marbled, umami-rich beef in the world.
american raised & grazed
While our cattle might come from Japanese breed stock, they are bred in America and graze right here on our Kentucky farm. We know that great tasting beef starts at the ground level - literally the ground. It all starts with the grass, and we've spent years perfecting our grazing methods and are working every year to produce the best grazing environment for our herd.
The awesome thing about this (beyond the flavor difference) is that to craft an excellent grazing environment requires a number of farming practices that have a positive environmental impact. By employing methods that promote environmental stewardship (like rotational grazing), we can produce an amazing product while protecting the environment!
500 Day Feed Finish
We grow and harvest five thousand acres of food-grade white corn on our farm. This corn is used in the making of many products from tortillas to grits. But the manufacturers we sell it to only want perfect kernels, so we sift the corn when processed and separate out the corn screenings. These corn screenings are the bits of broken corn and would be considered waste by some, but we blend these into nutririous alfalfa and hay from our red winter wheat fields to provide an optimum food for the grain finishing process.
Unlike conventional cattle farmers who finish their cattle for an average of 180 days, we finish our herd for a staggering 500 days. By taking a slower approach, our cattle gradually gains fat which ensures a dense and even marbling.
No hormones or antibiotics
Most importantly, we do not add any hormones or antibiotics to our feed. This means our finishing process takes about 180-200 days instead of the industry average of 120 days. This extra time certainly increases our expense, but it also means better flavor and more consistent marbling of the beef.
