Wild Game versus Grass-Fed versus Grain-Fed

[Qondrar_The_Redeemer]

I've been wanting to eat raw wild game for some time now. For those of you who eat it, how would you compare versus grass-fed and then grain-fed? I already know grain-fed organs and bone marrow usually taste horrible to me, and grain-fed marrow was the only time I got diarrhea on this diet. Grass-fed is good, but I'd like to know what you think about wild game? The last time I ate wild game was back on cooked Zero Carb, although I do remember it having a strong taste.

[TylerDurden]

Raw wild game is far superior to anything else. Very, very few grassfed/domesticated meat/seafood even compares to genuine wildcaught meat/seafood. First of all, wild game/wild  fish/shellfish  all have access to far superior nutrition in the wild. Domesticated animals, even the grassfed ones, generally have access to grassy fields, but not necessarily fields with lots of herbal varieties as wild aurochs/palaeo-cattle  would have had access to in palaeo times. Farmers, nowadays, rely too much on monocultures. Then, many cattle , outside warmer climes, only get fed on hay and sileage in winter. I presume wild cattle migrated to grassier, warmer climates in winter months... Another point is that most domesticated animals  are heavily inbred  due to recent idiocies re having the semen from 1 bull artificially inseminate  thousands of cows, and have had millenia of dysgenics applied to them since the Neolithic era, plus most domesticated animals have far less access to daily exercise as wild animals do. Some farmers have understood some of this a tiny bit and have started to farm wild animals such as deer or wild boar, albeit not in ideal circumstances.

[Qondrar_The_Redeemer]

Thanks for the information, Tyler. What exactly is the difference between farmed wild game and truly wild? And how would I be able to tell the difference? I've been able to buy some cheaper wild game recently and am looking forward to trying it, but I wasn't able to get any information on if it was farmed or not. The animal I got is deer.

[Qondrar_The_Redeemer]

I just tried some raw deer muscle. By far the strongest tasting meat I've ever tried. My grass-fed lamb might taste good, but compared to this it's basically tasteless. And this was just the muscle, so I am very intrigued how the organs and bone marrow would taste. It doesn't seem to have almost any muscle fat at all, however. The meat itself tasted like some very potent combination of herbs to me. I wonder, is it supposed to taste like this? Not that I'm complaining, I think it's a pleasant taste, even if I'm not that used to it yet. And I've tried raw wild caught fish before but this tastes quite a bit stronger than even those (at least to me, and I'm not really usually a fan of seafood either).

[TylerDurden]

Precisely. Raw wild game/raw wildcaught seafood has a much richer taste than raw grassfed meat and much much more than cooked foods. Cooking reduces the taste, which is why people often add so many extra spices to it. The catch is that newbies are highly unused to the stronger taste so find it takes longer for them  to get used to raw wild game compared to raw grassfed meats. Raw organ-meats from wild game are even richer in taste. Wild game, due to being exposed to higher levels of daily exercise, is generally leaner. Buying raw wild game is a problem since sellers do not generally bother extracting the small amount of marrow in the legs, except occasionally from, perhaps, the really big wildlife, and the hunters usually take away most of the organs (give them to the dogs etc.) as the general public is  stupid and finds the organs yucky, so that the organs are considered too cheap and bothersome to make enough of a profit with.

I highly recommend raw blood from raw wild game  if you can get it, as it is so high in nutrients that it is instantly invigorating. In the UK, I used to get raw wild hare carcasses all the time. As they were vacuum-packed, the blood in the carcass oozed out prior to sale, and I was able to get about a pint or more of blood in addition to the blood still present in the muscle-meats.

[Qondrar_The_Redeemer]

Yes, that's my plan, get as much of the animal as possible. Although the muscle itself is very dark and bloody in my case, so I guess that's pretty good as well. Just tried another piece of deer muscle today (from a different deer) and this one has to be the best tasting food I've had in a long while. It tasted like nuts (mostly like peanuts) and it was the first time I liked muscle more than liver or bone marrow. Obviously the muscle is from wild game and the bone marrow and liver from grass-fed animals, so it's not exactly a good comparison. I do very much look forward to trying those in wild game now. It's interesting how this deer tasted like peanuts which was so good to me, while the other one had a sage/juniper taste, while not bad, wasn't as good as this one in my opinion. I think I will eat only wild game muscle from now on when I can. If I can get the organs, I'll take those as well. The fat I will probably have to take from grass-fed animals as these don't have enough, and I doubt I could get enough bone marrow (unless there's some very big wild game that is legal to hunt which I haven't heard about) from wild game.

I will post further updates here eventually, once I try the other parts of the animal/animals. Looking forward to it.

[dariorpl]

Raw wild game is far superior to anything else. Very, very few grassfed/domesticated meat/seafood even compares to genuine wildcaught meat/seafood. First of all, wild game/wild  fish/shellfish  all have access to far superior nutrition in the wild. Domesticated animals, even the grassfed ones, generally have access to grassy fields, but not necessarily fields with lots of herbal varieties as wild aurochs/palaeo-cattle  would have had access to in palaeo times. Farmers, nowadays, rely too much on monocultures. Then, many cattle , outside warmer climes, only get fed on hay and sileage in winter. I presume wild cattle migrated to grassier, warmer climates in winter months... Another point is that most domesticated animals  are heavily inbred  due to recent idiocies re having the semen from 1 bull artificially inseminate  thousands of cows, and have had millenia of dysgenics applied to them since the Neolithic era, plus most domesticated animals have far less access to daily exercise as wild animals do. Some farmers have understood some of this a tiny bit and have started to farm wild animals such as deer or wild boar, albeit not in ideal circumstances.

How would you suggest one go about breeding healthy grass fed animals?

Also I'd consider that that some hay might be part of the wild animals diet, even if they migrated, right?

Re: dysgenics, don't farmers select the best genes (from the point of view of the farmer and consumer), and would this not mean that the animals are in some way better for us?

Of course this may mean that the meats are better for cooking, for example, or that they are less firm which may be preferable for delicate palates without improving the health giving properties, or even being detrimental to them; in the same way that many fruits have been bred for sweetness with little regard to how they affect our health. But I think we shouldn't assume that all selective breeding is negative.

I do agree that too little genetic variation may become a problem if the same bull is used to inseminate subsequent generations, but this has really only become possible in recent times, up until 50 or 100 years ago, while breeding was selected, it was done in the traditional way through mating.

On the other hand, we should also recognize that nature doesn't necessarily select for the best health giving properties of the meat, but rather for the best fitness of the animals, and a large part of this fitness may have little to do with health itself, but rather with sexual competition. If the strongest bull is the one which breeds, that may or may not produce offspring with meat that is of better quality for us humans.

[dariorpl]

plus most domesticated animals have far less access to daily exercise as wild animals do.

The edit function doesn't seem to work, so I'll just make a new post for this.

Aren't grassfed cattle exposed to more exercise than wild deer for example, first because cattle are forced to constantly move from one plot of land to another before the time when a wild animal would choose to leave, and second because cattle have been bred to carry around massive amounts of weight in the form of fat, that deer don't possess in order to stay lean and nimble?

[TylerDurden]

Read up online about permaculture farming re the best way to farm/feed animals etc.

Hay might be a minor part of their diet, but highly unlikely to be any more than that.

Re dysgenics:- Yes, farmers select the strongest/healthiest bulls but they do not necessarily eugenically select the females. This 1 bull: 30000 male:female ratio  results in very severe inbreeding. Inbreeding of this sort causes vast genetic problems resulting in lowered immune-systems, lowered fertility, lowered intelligence, overall lowered health etc. Admittedly, inbreeding can be very beneficial, such as mating between 3rd and 4th cousins(
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-incest-is-best-kissi/
) but anything closer than that is generally a disaster.

Also, selective breeding by humans since the Neolithic era has been a disaster for  domestic animals. For example, dogs are bred to be less intelligent than their wild counterparts, wolves,  and cows have overly large udders. Modern breeding has also resulted in chickens having way too large body parts so that they often die early. Humans have also domesticated themselves since the Neolithic era got started, resulting in lower intelligence/smaller brains:-
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/sep/25-modern-humans-smart-why-brain-shrinking

[TylerDurden]

The edit function doesn't seem to work, so I'll just make a new post for this.

Aren't grassfed cattle exposed to more exercise than wild deer for example, first because cattle are forced to constantly move from one plot of land to another before the time when a wild animal would choose to leave, and second because cattle have been bred to carry around massive amounts of weight in the form of fat, that deer don't possess in order to stay lean and nimble?

  Wild cattle would be at risk from predators so would have gotten more exercise. Plus, the genetically-unfit, unhealthy types in the wild populations would routinely get killed off as predators prefer targetting the weaker members of a herd, for obvious reasons.

[dariorpl]

Read up online about permaculture farming re the best way to farm/feed animals etc.

The problem is that most permaculture literature I've seen is about growing plants, usually associated with a vegan lifestyle.

Hay might be a minor part of their diet, but highly unlikely to be any more than that.

I think that, just as sabertooth likes to eat his meat at varying degrees of dryness, so too herbivores in the wild may be exposed to eating grass at varying degrees of dryness during those times where there is little rain and fresh grass is scarce. I'm talking about unsalted hay, of course. I think the salting of hay to facilitate drying large rolls and simultaneously prevent molding, may be part of the problem with most heavily hay-fed meat.

Re dysgenics:- Yes, farmers select the strongest/healthiest bulls but they do not necessarily eugenically select the females.

They do select the females also.

This 1 bull: 30000 male:female ratio  results in very severe inbreeding.

Yes, but this can only come about with very modern, highly tech assisted artificial insemination practices.

Also, selective breeding by humans since the Neolithic era has been a disaster for  domestic animals. For example, dogs are bred to be less intelligent than their wild counterparts, wolves,  and cows have overly large udders. Modern breeding has also resulted in chickens having way too large body parts so that they often die early.

Part of this may be true, but part is also dependant on how you look at it.

From the article you cited:

“Wolves seem to be a little bit more persistent than dogs in solving simple problems like how to open a box or navigate a detour,” Hare says. “Wolves persevere when dogs readily give up.” On the flip side, dogs leave wolves in the dust when it comes to tracking the gaze and gestures of their masters—or as Hare puts it, “They are very good at using humans as tools to solve problems for them.”[quote/]

Humans have also domesticated themselves since the Neolithic era got started, resulting in lower intelligence/smaller brains:-
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/sep/25-modern-humans-smart-why-brain-shrinking

That appears to be the case, and it's likely that cooked foods have played a part. However, like the same article says:

When anthropologist Richard Jantz of the University of Tennessee measured the craniums of Americans of European and African descent from colonial times up to the late 20th century, he found that brain volume was once again moving upward.

[dariorpl]

I think the salting of hay to facilitate drying large rolls and simultaneously prevent molding, may be part of the problem with most heavily hay-fed meat.

Salt is the traditional way, but modern non-organic practices also include chemicals of all sorts for the same purposes.

[dariorpl]

  Wild cattle would be at risk from predators so would have gotten more exercise.

That would be a rare occurrence. Grass-fed cattle are typically forced to move very frequently to maximize the efficiency with regards to the amount of energy that can be derived from the grass growing in a piece of land.

Plus, the genetically-unfit, unhealthy types in the wild populations would routinely get killed off as predators prefer targetting the weaker members of a herd, for obvious reasons.

And the genetically unfit, unhealthy types are also not the ones that farmers would choose to allow breeding from.

That said, if predators always target the weaker, then in a way it makes sense that we as predators should also prefer to eat the weakest members of the herd, but since we eat mostly all of them, having a herd that is weaker overall might be to our advantage health-wise?

[Xisca]

How would you suggest one go about breeding healthy grass fed animals?

Easy: breed Guinea pigs!
They eat almost all grass leaes veggies and fruits.
They have no disease like rabbits.
At home like it was done in Perou and equador, you can have them. Almost no noise, they do not bite, they do not dig nor jump. They also give compost for your garden...

[TylerDurden]

No, DPL, predation would NOT be a rare occurrence, but a near-constant threat. Also, grassfed cattle being moved from 1 field to another field is not the same as vast herds of aurochs migrating regularly migrating over vast distances, while hardly ever stopping etc.

Plus, humans are very poor  as regards choosing the best genes. In the case of dogs, for example, there are many breeds which have awful inherited health-problems re breathing-difficulties etc. etc., just because humans bred those dog-species over many millenia  to look more like human babies. Indeed, scientists theorise that, if humans disappeared, and dogs were left to themselves, almost all domesticated breeds  would quickly die out, with the remainder gradually reverting back to wolf form due to natural selection.

Re guinea -pigs:- I had one in Peru. Not much meat on it, though, perhaps with rawpalaeoish nutrition, they could gain enough meat and fat to be worth raising.

[dariorpl]

Easy: breed Guinea pigs!
They eat almost all grass leaes veggies and fruits.
They have no disease like rabbits.
At home like it was done in Perou and equador, you can have them. Almost no noise, they do not bite, they do not dig nor jump. They also give compost for your garden...

That sounds like a good idea if you're limited in space but can spend the time to manage them. I'll keep it in mind. I have no idea what they taste like, though.

[dariorpl]

. Indeed, scientists theorise that, if humans disappeared, and dogs were left to themselves, almost all domesticated breeds  would quickly die out, with the remainder gradually reverting back to wolf form due to natural selection.

All domesticated breeds would eventually revert or die out without humans. They're been selected naturally to do better in captivity, and they're been bred selectively to better benefit us humans. So they are better for us, and they are better with us. Just like bees would die out without the flowers, and the flowering plants would die out without the bees, that doesn't mean that they're unfit, it just means that their fitness is dependent on each other.

Without domesticated animals, I suspect we too would be screwed, as wild animals, while they may have meat that is more health giving, are not as effective as turning wild plants into meat as our domesticated types are.

[TylerDurden]

That sounds like a good idea if you're limited in space but can spend the time to manage them. I'll keep it in mind. I have no idea what they taste like, though.

Sounds cliches, but they do rather taste like chicken.

[Projectile Vomit]

Another option if you want to raise animals on a wild-type diet for food is insects. I don't do this currently but intend to start this coming summer, probably with what we call waxworms in the US because their generation times are short and because they are quiet. And their fat content is very high, as is the case for most larvae. I did a podcast about this not too long ago, feel free to give it a listen:

Episode 17: Wendy Lu McGill on Reclaiming Insects as Food

[TylerDurden]

DPL, our palaeo ancestors did very well on wild game meat.They had no need to domesticate any animals.

[Xisca]

We are now too many on earth to rely on wild game only... And even to rely on animal foods only.... Population would not have increased if we had kept a paleo diet, and vegetarians argue badly when they say they have the solution, as this is only the solution to postpone the problem of food for everybody.

At least my guinea pigs eat only from my land, and I know all herbs and all what they can eat. The only problem is to see the euphorbia peplus when I cut herb.... I did eat my first in pery too and saw the preparation. Little meat because they are small of course! But they eat the skin too, and also fry the intestine. This I would not eat raw.

They taste more like rabbit than chicken. They are not time consuming if you have a garden that you weed. I do a selecgive weeding as I am skilled in recognising plants and know when I have to remove them, and I leave what I can, so that I cut and not pull weeds that are edible both for me and the guinea pigs! But I have to be here for feeding....

I also want to raise insects and plan to start with meal worms.

BTW, no wild game here appart from rats and some rare rabbits and lizards! Fish yes of course in an island....

[dariorpl]

I'm mostly interested in ruminants such as cattle, sheep and goats, perhaps also some fowl such as chicken, turkey, geese and ducks.

[dariorpl]

I am however interested in breeding insects and worms as feed for chicken, for example.

[dariorpl]

DPL, our palaeo ancestors did very well on wild game meat.They had no need to domesticate any animals.

Humans were few and far between back then. 1 fertile square mile of land (250 hectares, or 650 acres) only produced enough edible food for 1 human.

[TylerDurden]

Humans were few and far between back then. 1 fertile square mile of land (250 hectares, or 650 acres) only produced enough edible food for 1 human.

Not true and/or pointless. First of all, the fact that humans were rather few in those days was a major plus for them. It meant that human destruction of the environment was much less(with the destruction of the megafauna occurring only near the end of the Palaeolithic era). Current vast numbers have led to such (ongoing/ever-increasing) despoiling of the environment that we face a couple of extinction scenarios as a result.Imagine a situation(like in the wonderful Neanderthal Parallax  series of science fiction books:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neanderthal_Parallax
)
It is feasible to assume that a small population could develop enough  technology so that agriculture is no longer necessary.For example, in palaeo times, you had ever-present vast herds of animals to get food from.Another reason for why I suspect that Neanderthals were more intelligent than humans was that they were far more in tune with their environment, not outbreeding themselves to extinction. One definition of  real intelligence is that a truly intelligent person is one who plans for the longer-term as much as possible. Stupid people think only of the present or the very near future......