“Food, Water, and…Movement”: Inside TLC Ranch’s Leap into Bison, Rotation, and Resilience
A flood, a parasite, and a stubborn dream: how Cindy’s bison and pecans are teaching Oklahoma to move.
Rebels,
Meet Cindy of TLC Ranch in southern Oklahoma. A pecan grower turned bison rancher who’s betting on rotation, instinct, and grit. This is a story about what happens when a lifelong dream collides with a 100-year flood (twice), a parasite you can’t see, and an animal you can’t domesticate.
Quick facts
Where: Southern Oklahoma (pecan country)
Who: Cindy & family, TLC Ranch
Livestock: American bison (added fall 2021)
Practices: Rotational grazing (expanding), organic pecan orchard, on-farm harvest experiments, planned chicken follow-grazers
Recent shocks: Catastrophic spring floods; parasite outbreak that killed multiple calves
Vision: Build resilience with tighter rotations, fecal monitoring, natural parasite control, and multi-species grazing
The farm (and the dream)
Cindy and her husband bought the land in 1997 for hunting and family food security. Cattle never felt right; bison did. They’re “non-amenable,” regulated differently than cattle, and very much not domesticated. That wildness was the point. In autumn 2021, the first bison arrived. By sunset, the new ritual was set: feed, watch, learn.
Then the water came.
When a “hundred-year” flood shows up twice
Late April into early May, the bottom ground filled and stayed wet. Ducks loved it; the bison wallowed; calves played. Under the weeds and in the shade, a blood-sucking parasite thrived. Within weeks, animals got sick. Two died back-to-back, then two more. Cindy sent carcasses to Texas A&M; lab results confirmed the culprit.
Working bison through a chute during heat and early calving is risky, so spring deworming hadn’t happened. That choice, plus a freak weather pattern, turned into a brutal lesson.
Resilience isn’t theory. It’s timing, terrain, and luck.
What’s changing now:
Earlier fall working so spring health work can be done sooner.
Fecal testing to verify if natural anti-parasite protocols are actually working.
Rotation across six pastures with shorter stays (2–3 weeks) so parasite life cycles break between returns.
From “set and pray” to “mob and move”
Before rotation, the herd self-sorted: nibbling north by morning, south by noon, cherry-picking what they wanted and leaving other areas untouched. The result? Uneven grazing and underused pasture.
Cindy is shifting to 10–15-acre moves, using water access and temporary fencing to harness natural bison behavior (eat, trample, seed, move). This isn’t copy-pasting a cattle system; it’s adapting to an animal that evolved to roam. She’s exploring “back-grazing” (leaving the rear fence open knowing animals won’t revisit already-picked ground) to streamline moves and trampling.
Next act: chickens behind the bison for manure breakup and fly control. This regenerative feedback loop that shifts nutrients faster and keeps parasite pressure down.
Yes, the Savory-style ideas are in the mix; Cindy’s heard the talks and is localizing them to Oklahoma grass, weather, and wildlife.
“All hell could break loose”: The reality of in-field harvesting
The ranch experimented with on-site butchering to reduce stress and hormones associated with transport. One harvest was textbook: a clean shot, animal down, herd calm.
Another was chaos. The shot dropped the animal. The herd wheeled, circled, and began trying to lift the downed body. The sharpshooter managed the situation; equipment and vehicles became mobile barricades; the team got it done. But the lesson stuck: with bison.
The plan is only the plan until the herd makes a different one.
Why they built the working system (and what it costs)
TLC Ranch has a manual alley, squeeze, head-catch, and scale. It works — barely — for an animal that can separate heavy steel if you mis-pin a latch. Hydraulic, portable chutes made for bison exist; they’re $55,000+ compared to roughly $14,000 for the current setup. In a year of flood losses and medical surprises, capital choices are survival choices.
So for now: manual, meticulous, and fast.
The orchard that won’t quit
Before bison, there were pecans. Improved varieties (paper shell) replanted in 2017–2018 after a 2015 flood took most of the first planting. Organic management here means fighting scab with biologicals (Serenade, Regalia), thyme/orange-oil carriers, and timing that hinges on soil firmness. When the ground is impassable for six weeks, fungus throws a party.
Harvest windows are tight: mid-to-late October for improved varieties, Thanksgiving to New Year for natives. One late April freeze can erase an entire year. Heavy fall winds can, too.
Markets? Also fickle. A buyer who’d agreed to take TLC’s crop got acquired; nuts ended up in cold storage instead of moving through retail.
Insurance for losses? Not without a prior-year sales history — a catch-22 for young orchards and transitioning growers.
What bison want (and what the land needs)
“Food, water, and sex,” Cindy laughs, then points at manure consistency changes after adding apple cider vinegar and minerals. Dung beetles respond. Microbes respond. The ground starts to respond. The team is tuning minerals (including Redmond salt/garlic), ACV, and forage to push the system toward biology, not bottles.
Rotation is the accelerator. Chickens will be the clean-up crew. Rest is the secret ingredient.
The human side: losing calves, finding resolve
Losing animals hurts. Doing everything “right” and losing them anyway hurts more. But there’s resolve in Cindy’s cadence: change timing, shorten grazing windows, verify with fecals, iterate mineral programs, add species, and never stop walking the pasture.
There’s also a boundary: “Shake the hand that feeds you” doesn’t mean accepting toxicity next door. If local gardens spray glyphosate and synthetics, that handshake is a hard pass.
Cindy’s exploring a nursery partnership to germinate organic seedlings with her seed, local supply without compromising standards.
What TLC Ranch Learned, so You Can Apply
Shorten your grazing window. Parasites have clocks; rotation is how you break them.
Verify, don’t guess. Fecal egg counts turn “natural” deworming into data, not vibes.
Design for the animal you have. Bison aren’t cattle. Build lanes, catches, and plans that assume impact.
Stack species. Poultry behind hoofed animals is free labor for sanitation, fertility, and fly control.
Expect the unexpected. Floods, freezes, and buyers flake. Cash buffers and flexible infrastructure are part of “regenerative.”
Hold your line on inputs. Organic standards matter most when it’s inconvenient.
Rotation first, recipes second. Mineral and botanical tweaks matter, but movement is medicine.
Infrastructure = speed. The faster you can safely process animals (weigh, worm, tag), the kinder it is for them — and you.
Measure your risks. If spring working is dangerous, pull more health work forward into fall — and build your plan around calving.
Design for water. If a “hundred-year” flood has already come twice, treat it like an annual visitor.
Watch the full farm tour
Want to see the working system, the rotation plan, the flood line, and those red-coated calves losing their color as they grow? The full TLC Ranch farm-tour episode is on our YouTube. Hit Subscribe so you don’t miss the follow-up podcast with Cindy on what changed after spring. (We’ll link the premiere in today’s notes.)
Thanks for reading & Viva La Regenaissance!
-Ryan Griggs