we get new zealand beef here (god knows why, canada grows a lot of it’s own beef, it’s a major export), and was wondering how new zealanders treat their beef. do they do the whole feedlot thing? or do they let your cows wander thru the fields eating grass?
Every cow I ever saw in NZ (and I lived there for 18 years) was simply left to wander around the fields eating grass, and when it was time to turn them into food, they were herded into cattle pens, loaded onto trucks, and taken away.
(Dairy Cows were simply milked and put back in the fields, of course)
The farms I shoot on here in Australia work the same way (we’ve got to watch out for the cows when we’re hunting, because they’re expensive!)- the cows are simply left to do their thing until they’re needed for food or milk.
How does it work in the US/Canada? I thought it would be much the same everywhere… 
A quick google on “feedlot beef site:nz” shows they have plenty of feedlots. If my experience is anything to go by, some beef will be grass fed, and some feedlotted. Same as in Australia.
Wow. I’d never heard of feedlots!
Irish cattle are grass fed (they are fed silage made from grass in the winter- if you don’t know, silage smells awful).
My brother-in-law (well, my sister-in-law’s husband) is from dairy farming people, and their cows are left in the fields to graze, except for milking, very bad weather or for calving, when they’re brought into the barn. They rotate the fields, and use pig slurry as fertiliser twice a year on the fallow fields.
I know that some of the farmers supplement the grass diet with food pellets, turnips and the like, but the majority of farms rely on grass for the most part, and aim to slaughter the beef cattle before 30months, and no animals are kept in pens permanently.