At Rawck Ranch we believe all animals have a purpose aside from being just plain fun to have around. We choose to raise specific animals for the purposes they serve not only for our nutrition but also for the health of our land and soils. We love and care for every one of our animals to ensure they live the best, happiest, and healthiest lives.
Our Management System
Our management system is simple. Follow nature. We choose to follow nature as best as we can as opposed to leading nature to do what we want. Instead of trying to force our animals to live in a way that may make our chores faster or lives easier, we try (to the best of our ability) to let the chickens be chickens and the cows be cows. We do the same with our garden and our pastures. Our animals work in concert with our garden, pastures, and soils and each benefits the other. This method of management requires zero use of any manmade and/or non-natural chemicals.
There are more “official” terms for the methods of agriculture that we practice. The most well-known is Regenerative Agriculture. At the root of these practices is one simple thing – follow nature. We do our best to do just that and we believe it results in much healthier, happier animals, healthier soils, healthier humans, and a healthier planet.
Dexter Cattle
Aside from being the coolest cows ever, our Dexter Cattle play a vital role in regenerating our pastures and soils. Our Dexters are 100% grass-fed and grass-finished. We do not use any chemicals in our pastures (herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, etc). Our Dexters are the fertilizers and weed killers for our pastures. We rotate our herd to new grass every 3-4 days so our Dexters eat just enough of the grasses to stimulate new growth while trampling and stomping the weeds that they do not eat. All while giving valuable nitrogen and nutrient producing micro-organisms back to the soils that will strengthen and enrich the fertility of our soils – which in turn produces a richer and greener pasture for our Dexter cows.
Come meet the Rawck Ranch Dexter herd and see why we chose the Dexter breed.
Laying Hens
Who doesn’t love a rich orange-yolk farm fresh egg? We certainly do. We raise laying hens for the “you just can’t beat it, farm fresh, orange yolk, gimme some more of those” eggs. Aside from the delicious and nutrient-dense eggs, our layer chickens play another important role here at Rawck Ranch. Our chickens live in what we call a “Chickshaw” (a rickshaw for chickens). With this style of coop design, we are able to very easily move our chickens to new fresh, clean grass on a weekly basis. This way, our laying chickens always have new forage of grasses, weeds, bugs, and clean ground away from their manure. Their manure isn’t all bad though as it provides the best natural fertilizer you can find. Moving our chickens this often also “moves” and spreads their manure across our grasses and garden – our version of Miracle Grow.
Lay some eggs, for flock sake!
Let us introduce you to all of our chickens in the Hen House. And yes, Kailey has a name for every single chicken.
Broiler (meat) Chickens
Broiler chickens server as the majority of our protein consumption. Second to chicken would be pork. We eat, on average, 2 whole chickens per week. Chickens are by far the fastest growing animals we raise at Rawck Ranch and its a good thing too, because we eat a lot of chicken and need to keep our freezer stocked. Like the laying hens, we move our Broiler chickens often as well for the same reasons and advantages it provides our laying hens. Fresh forage, grasses, weeds, bugs, and clean ground – spreading the “love” (manure) about evenly in our yard and garden.