Our Company
The Bakewell Reproductive Center has become the Rotokawa Cattle Company. Our new company was formed to make the world's best genetics for 100% grass-fed cattle available to beef producers in North America.
We sell semen, embryos, bulls, and will eventually sell female breeding stock. We are also consultants on raising high quality livestock and producing consistently healthy meat.
Our Mission
The goal of the Rotokawa Cattle Company is to establish
local, sustainable economies based on 100% grass-fed beef
production that benefits the animals, the producers, the
consumers, and the environment.
Co-Founder Chuck Lacy
Chuck Lacy is co-founder and Chairman of the Rotokawa Cattle Company, based in Massachusetts, which imports, breeds, and sells breeding stock for grass based beef production nationwide. He is also co-founder and Chairman of the Hardwick Beef Company, the leading marketer of 100% grass fed beef produced in the Northeast.
He produces 100% grass fed beef on his home farm in Jericho, Vermont, which consists of three former dairy farms converted to beef production. With these three beef projects, Chuck's goal is to promote 100% grass-fed beef production in the Northeast to improve human health, the environment, and the rural economy.
Chuck is also founder and President of the Barred Rock Fund, a Vermont-based venture capital fund. He works side by side with emerging entrepreneurs to plan, finance and execute businesses with a social purpose. Among his current or recent projects include: Indigenous Designs (organic sweaters produced in Peru by worker owned co-ops); CellBazaar (a cell phone-based kind of "Craig's List" in Bangladesh); Emergence BioEnergy (manure to electricity in rural Bangladesh); Vermont-based Samosaman Natural Foods (founded by refugees from Congo).
Previously Lacy was President of Ben & Jerry's; Director and Treasurer of Gonofone (founder of GrameenPhone the largest cell phone company in Bangladesh); and Director of PICO (the largest faith-based community organizing network in America).
Lacy has a BA from Amherst College, and an MBA from Cornell University. He is a regular guest lecturer at the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT.
Cell 802-355-6596
clacy@together.net
Co-Founder Ridgway F. Shinn III
Described in The Stockman Grassfarmer as a "pioneer" in the field of grass-farming, Ridge Shinn has extensive experience and achieved success in organizing and guiding innovative agricultural and business ventures.
Upon graduating from Earlham College, Ridge became a field representative for an environmental agency in Washington D.C., organizing conferences on environmental issues nationwide. From there his interest in farming led him to Sturbridge, Massachusetts, where he became a herdsman on a modern dairy farm in nearby West Brookfield and also developed agricultural demonstrations for a living history museum.
His work in historical agriculture included a survey of Devon cattle in New England, and in 1978 he organized the American Milking Devon Association. He was a founding director of the American Minor Breeds Conservancy (now the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy at www.albc.org) in the same year. In 1983 he became its executive director, and secured funding for the first survey of rare breeds of livestock in the United States.
Ridge and his wife, Lynne Pledger, purchased land in Hardwick, Massachusetts, and started their own farm and timber frame construction business in 1984, Hardwick Post and Beam Corp at www.hardwickpostandbeam.com, which is still operating, now under the direction of a general manager. Ridge raises Devon cattle, Soay sheep, and heritage breeds of swine.
In the winter of 2001, Ridge founded the New England Livestock Alliance (NELA), with the mission of revitalizing farming in the Northeast by linking farmers to markets for healthy meat. As Director of NELA, he created the Pasture Perfect brand of grass-finished beef, which Wine Spectator magazine rated the best among samples from five other purveyors of high-end grain-finished meat, including Omaha Steaks and Niman Ranch. He was also vice president of Stafford Enterprises, a slaughter-house in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, and was actively involved in the renovation and reorganization of that facility.
In June 2003, he resigned from NELA to focus on grass-finished meat exclusively, recognizing its health benefits and marketability as superior to natural or organic. In this connection he co-founded two related organizations of which he is executive director: the Bakewell Reproductive Center, LLC, finding and promoting bovine genetics for grass-based systems, and Hardwick Beef, Inc., organized to link farmers to the profitable markets for grass-finished meat.
Ridge Shinn's success has gained attention in the fields of food and nutrition as well as agriculture. In the past year articles about his work have appeared in House and Garden (March 2003) and Atlantic Monthly (May 2003).
Contact Us
Please contact us with questions. Our staff can assist you in designing and implementing mating systems appropriate for your operation.
info@rotokawacattle.com
Our address: Rotokawa Cattle Company, 213 Peoples Road, Ligonier, PA 15658
Phone: (800) 477-7579 or (413)477-6500
