The Vision: A Research Ranch

Push every front, with an army of agents

My approach in one line: push every front I can tolerate, as far as I can tolerate it, with an army of AI agents working for me. Fencing, water, animal health, soil, marketing, hay, processing. On each one I want to find the edge of what a small place can do.

The agents are how one person can try this. They research, compare vendors, read the regulations, track the numbers, and draft the plans. The robots do the physical work. I keep the judgment, and I keep my ear open to the ranchers, vets and sale-barn folks who learned this the hard way. Every claim on these pages still carries its honesty label: ambition isn't evidence.

Why I'm doing this

I'm going to raise cattle for myself, my friends, and my family. That alone would be enough. But I also want to understand the whole industry, from grass to genetics to processing to the plate, and I want to see how far automation can go on a small place.

So this isn't a hobby farm and it isn't a feedlot. It's a research ranch: a small place of around 20 acres in the Kansas City area, where I test ideas at a scale I can afford to get wrong, and write down what happens.

Why a small place

A small place of around 20 acres is the right size for what I'm trying to do. It's small enough to run as a research ranch on my own while I raise a few cows for myself, my friends, and my family, and small enough that a mistake is a lesson, not a disaster. It's also big enough to split into paddocks, rotate the herd through them, and give my robots real ground to work on: moving the water, following the cattle with the chickens, and showing whether the whole pasture gets better.

What "good" looks like

1. Healthy cattle. Clean water every day, fresh grass, low stress.
2. Healthy soil. Manure and grazing spread across the whole pasture, not piled up around one tank, one gate, or one shade tree.
3. A pasture that looks good everywhere. Even grass, no bare loafing spots, no mud holes.
4. As little drudgery as possible. If a machine or a piece of software can do a chore reliably, it should.

Why the robots matter

Cattle go where the water, shade, and minerals are, and they hang around there. Research and extension guidance back that up: when water is more than about 800 feet away, cattle graze unevenly and manure piles up near the water (University of Kentucky Master Grazer). Spots where cattle gather end up with compacted, nutrient-loaded soil (Journal of Soil and Water Conservation; Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems, 2025).

The traditional fix is lots of fence, lots of pipe, and lots of labor moving them. My bet is different: make the infrastructure move instead of the rancher.

• Virtual fencing moves the boundary.
• A water robot (my design) moves the drinking spot.
• Robotic coops move the chickens in behind the herd.

What's proven vs. what's mine

What I'll share

Everything: designs, costs I actually pay, failures, and data. See the roadmap.

Back to the mission.