Oregon Grass-fed Ranchers Face Criminal Charges for Grazing Animals

The latest from Paradise Ranch: The judge has ordered that all the animals we are charged with neglecting be forfeited unless we pay a bond of $39,780 by 4 p.m. Pacific time, Thursday, June 11. Unless we come up with the money by that time, 35 of our animals (cows and their calves, yearlings, and a boar) will be forfeited. On Tuesday, January 27, 2015 we became accused criminals. The Union County Sheriff’s Department served us with a search and seizure warrant after several animals died over an extended period of time. The next day, they confiscated every head of livestock from our Summerville, Oregon property on the grounds of “criminal neglect”—but nothing more specific than that. They stole our breeding boar and sow, 6 mules, 5 horses, 23 yearling calves, 2 bulls, 4 steers, and 43 cows. The mother cows represent years of genetic selection for cows that will do well living on pasture and eating only grass. Almost all of our mother cows, all of our future beef, and hog breeding stock were taken. This is the majority of our livestock. Prior to the seizure, law enforcement had not presented us with any specific concerns that they wanted to see addressed. They did not work with us to have a veterinarian come on the property to assess our animals. They did not ask to see our hay purchase records to confirm how much hay we were buying and feeding. They had never cited us for lack of appropriate care for our livestock. This led us to think we were meeting their expectations. But in a matter of hours, they took our past, present, and future.