A friend of mine, Paul Greive, built an incredible chicken business based on a simple idea: animals are meant to move. Even animals like chickens that prefer the shelter of a coop.
Paul was not the first person to built a mobile chicken coop, he was inspired by the work of Paul Salatin (and others), but as far as I know Paul was the first one who thought to make autonomous electric mobile chicken coops that drive around the pasture like slow-paced Roomba's.
But for all of the benefits of rotational grazing and mobile chicken coops, I think the simplicity of the concept can sneak by: "animals are meant to move".
When animals are stationary, their food has to be brought in and their excrement has to be brought out.
While convenient for keeping tabs on them, this system of raising animals is really quite contrary to the way animals move, feed, and fertilize their way across the landscape.
In the wild, plants feed animals and animals feed plants... but only when they are free to roam. Again, so simple but so central to the way the natural world works.
When we were starting to conceptualize Ranger Bison, one of the major attributes that drew me to jerky was the fact that it is shelf stable—and therefore can go with you anywhere you want to go.
So I am hijacking Paul's line and adding to it... "people and animals are meant to move."
Enjoy your Ranger Bison jerky outside, on the move. Because people, like animals are meant to move.
Clean protein on the go.