Woman turns cattle ranch into vegan animal sanctuary

For generations, Sonnen Ranch has been a place for raising livestock, where animals, though treated humanely, were destined to be used for meat or dairy products. Now, after several rounds of fundraising, the ranch has been transformed into Rowdy Girl Sanctuary, a safe haven for farm animals, allowing the creatures to live out their lives without distress. The sanctuary’s development was the brainchild of Renee King-Sonnen, who moved to the ranch when she and Thomas Sonnen remarried. “I’m a Texas girl through and through, grew up eating barbecue, wearing boots, going to the rodeo,” King-Sonnen said. “Until I moved out here to the ranch, there was no connection to the animals that ended up on my plate. I’d experimented with vegetarianism, raw food diets, but never really called it ‘vegan.’ It all happened as a result of me living here.” Being in the presence of farm animals — and seeing their reaction after calves were sold — was enough to change her mind about her diet and lifestyle, King-Sonnen said. “The cows were so depressed,” she said. “I wasn’t prepared for the way it happened. And every year, it got harder for him to sell the calves, because he didn’t want me to see, wanted to hide it from me.” “I’d been trying to sneak them out whenever she wasn’t around,” Thomas Sonnen said. “But she’d know anyway.” Eventually, King-Sonnen laid down the law: If the “red trailer” came again to take calves to the sale barn, she’d follow it herself...more 

The title should have had something in it about a pw'd cowboy.