Please bare with us, our website is under construction. Premium beef is available. Taking orders for wine beef available June of 2021
MWB
Feeding process
Calves are weaned around 210 days after birth. They are provided unlimited hay, fresh grass when seasons are available, and fresh water. In addition, they receive pellets and treats (or cake as we call it!) containing high protein, vitamins and minerals twice a day to supplement any missing vitamins, minerals, etc. “NO growth hormones are ever given! Keeping it natural!” The last 120 days during the finishing process, I pour a half of a (wine) bottle of specially formulated (#cowsmead or #cowmead) Honey Mead over their pellets during feeding time morning and evening. While the yearling calves are in the feedlot area, I take time every morning and evening during feeding time to work with them. I teach them what I call manners. These manners are for my safety and theirs when moving them from pen to pen or just working with them in general. Yes, as crazy as it sounds I do try to add in "Please and Thank you" in the commands. My simple 6 (or 7?) manner rules: 1. Come when you are called. “Come kids (or cows). Dinner time.” 2. Go when you are told. “Hup. Hup Hup. (occasional “Let’s Go.) 3. Back up when you are told. “Back” 4. When they get wild playing and getting to close to me, I will occasional say “Easy. Easy Now.” Just another safety command. 5. No head butting me. 6. No kicking me. OH Yeah, just adding #7 The word "In, In" for telling them to go into there pen! My cattle handling practices are definitely not conventional but works perfect for me. I find by keeping them calm yet slightly playful from time to time, working smoothly and calmly with them, being able to have them eat treats (Cake) our of my hands, along with little to no stress assists in the tenderness of the meat.
How MWB manifested:
Hot summer’s day, after fixing the fence I was sitting on the truck tailgate having a bottle of Blue Moon Beer. My 2-year-old bull, “Zeus The Gladiator,” meandered over to the tailgate to say “Hi.” He smelled my beer, nudged it……so I poured some over his nose. He absolutely loved it. Loved it so much, he left me with grass, slobber, and no beer! From that point on I could not have a “bottle” of Blue Moon Beer or “can” of Mountain Do within smelling distance of him. I started thinking what this would do to the beef. I knew the beer does not mix well with bovines 4 chambered stomach, so I wondered what wine would do. HHmmm that is where Wine Beef began. I tried wine, red, white, blends, and rose’ all seem to give them dysentery. Then, while I was in a store, I seen this wine call Honey Mead. I called the owners up, set up a meeting, to discuss my origination. One of the owners, Joe, chirped up and informed me that Honey Mead would be healthier and balance their process of the wine. This Ladies and Gentlemen is where the true meaning of Montana Wine Beef began. Now I am selling Montana Wine Beef from our (my husband & I) 3rd generation Indian Hammer Ranch, the ranch my grandparents, Art and Dora Buck founded in 1945 and my parents, Vincent (Vince) and Margaret (Penny) Buck, who ran it since the mid-1970’s. Ranch origination:
Indian Hammer Ranch was founded in 1945, by my grandparents, Art and Dora Buck. My grandparents took their fertile riverfront land full of weeds taller than the tractor and started farming it. Their first crop was wheat and their livestock were sheep. Grandpa and Grandma decided since the coyotes enjoyed dining on the sheep, Hereford cattle were a better choice. As time passed, they decided to start introducing Black Angus into the herd. My dad (Vincent R. Buck) and his sister (Elaine Buck) enjoyed showing the calves in 4-H as they grew up working on the farm.
While attending high school in Cascade, MT, my father met my beautiful mother Margaret Buck, best know as “Penny Buck.” After dating for 3 years, they married April 24, 1959!
Following high school my parents were continuing their lifetime adventure together. My father received training in millwright and gunsmithing, worked as a Mill Right/Machinist in Missoula, joined the Air National Guard Crash Fireman Maintenance at the International Great Falls Airport, Carpenter-Laborer on the building the College of Great Falls, before my parents assumed ownership of the ranch from my grandparents. Truly through my father’s legacy his true passion lay in Gunsmithing and Ranching. Meanwhile, my mother studied respiratory therapy under the tutelage of the nuns at the late Columbus Hospital in Great Falls, MT, before receiving her degree and working her lifetime passion as Senior Respiratory Therapy Technician for the next 33 years.
In 1977 my parents, Vincent (Vince) and Margaret (Penny), assumed ownership of the ranch rom my grandparents. Over the year’s wheat, barley, and alfalfa were grown. The Hereford and Black Angus cattle breeds were shifted to the Beefalo breed. All of this while raising 3 wonderful children.
In 2004, sadly my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My mother and the family took great loving care of him on the ranch, until his passing in October 2011 at the age of 73. A few months prior to my father’s passing, my mother was diagnosed as a Diabetic and later with Dementia. Over the next 6 year my family and I also cared for her at the ranch, upon her passing March 2017 at the age of 76. I am very proud of my amazing and inspiring parents for being married for 52 years (together 55 years)! I am honored to be continuing the Indian Hammer Ranch “3rd Generation Legacy,” with all-natural Montana Beef!