Wild Idea was founded in 1997 by Dan O’Brien. Through partnerships with likeminded ranchers, Indigenous communities, and conservation organizations, Wild Idea is repairing a broken ecosystem and food system by returning buffalo to the Great Plains.
We are committed to large-landscape grazing. The American bison is a keystone species of the grassland ecosystem. When buffalo are allowed to move freely across great swaths of landscape as they did for millennia, they can feed on native grasses without overgrazing. They gently disturb the earth with their hooves without damaging soil structure essential to native grasses.
We use only humane field harvest. Just as we give our buffalo the room to roam that they require, we believe in honoring their dignity at harvest. Our humane field-harvest means we only harvest our buffalo on the prairie where they graze. They never see the inside of a trailer or a feedlot, unlike 90% of the buffalo raised for meat in the US.
Our meat is always 100% grass-fed and grass-finished. Wild Idea’s commitment to large-landscape grazing and a humane field harvest means that our buffalo are never fed grain and are never given antibiotics or hormones. From birth to death, 365 days a year, they know only the openness of the plains and the taste of prairie grasses, free of GMOs, herbicides, and pesticides. And because they are never subjected to the stress of transport and confinement, their meat is unaffected by a surge of stress hormones.
The health of our planet depends on changing the way we feed ourselves. A food system that relies on chemical intervention, monocropping, and animal confinement is a broken one. We believe in empowering people to make better choices about their food, and we provide meat that not only unparalleled in taste but truly nourishing—for people and for the planet. And that impact reaches beyond the buffalo and the grasses of the Great Plains, to strengthen the connection between us and all living things.
