Jon Taggart was a typical Texas rancher with 1,400 acres and a cow-calf operation until a decade ago. He raised stockers to 700 pounds and shipped them to a commercial feedlot for grain finishing. “We were the definition of a commercial cattle operation – high volume and low margin,” says Taggart.

The margins became higher when he and wife Wendy took a different path. “When we made the decision to go with marketing our own beef, it pretty much went hand in hand with grass-fed to form our own niche,” he says.

Their niche is producing 100% grass-fed beef on pastures near Grandview, Texas. Located within 45 minutes of downtown Dallas, the couple birthed Burgundy Pasture Beef by delivering natural beef without hormones, antibiotics, or grain within the Metroplex area in 1999.

After their home freezers started bursting at the seams and they were spending $30,000 a year on processing and having to wait two months in line behind deer meat, the Taggarts and partners David and Debbie MacDonald built a USDA-inspected processing facility in 2004. The Burgundy Boucherie is the first pasture-meat butcher in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Processing five to 10 head of grass-fed beef a week year-round, the meat is aged for 21 days at 36°F. and 85% humidity or above.

Selling his mama cows, Taggart now pays a set price for calves from ranchers in West Texas. Cattle are pastured on the ranch using high-intensive grazing with legumes, clover, and alfalfa. “I don't bale any hay. We graze dormant native grasses and cool-season annuals over winter,” says Taggart. If the cattle need supplemental feed in winter, they receive organic alfalfa.

The 500 head are finished at 1,200 to 1,250 pounds. The right amount of finish is critical for delectable grass-fed beef.

“You have to have an ability to know when the animal is finished,” he notes.

The fat protects the meat during dry aging. Like commercial cattle, you want fat on the brisket, no ribs showing, and fat on the hips, Taggart points out.

He prefers heifers because females finish several months faster, have better marbling, and have a more tender beef.

He believes the right amount of marbling starts with genetics; that's why their herd is entirely Angus.

“There's good beef and lean beef, and the two don't go together,” he says.

Even though grass-fed requires less inputs, the process takes more patience. About 24 to 28 months are required to finish cattle because of fewer calories in grass compared to corn.

Grass-fed also requires specialized marketing. Along with shipping meat by the package nationwide, Burgundy Beef markets steak, pork, and lamb to small high-end independent restaurants.

Instead of selling 500 pounds at a time, Taggart says he is marketing meat in “little itty-bitty pieces.” Marketing beef the previous way, “if you could make $20 to $30 a head, you were doing good.” What's the price per head now? “It's more within four figures instead of two,” he admits.