Tangle Ridge Ranch

When Vicky Horn moved from a suburb to an acreage in the fourth grade, her uncle bought her family a horse, which led to a new obsession. “I became the crazy horse kid and that’s all I did: ride horses and love animals,” she says. “So, when I was old enough to work, the easiest job was to work for all these farmers around me because they had cattle and horses and I could do what I loved.” Vicky still has that horse, 25 years later, and now lives on her own family farm, Tangle Ridge Ranch, where she and her husband, Shayne, raise grass fed lamb.

First generation ranchers, both Vicky and Shayne have Bachelor of Agriculture degrees, majoring in animal science, from the University of Alberta. This led them to work on a custom grazing ranch, where they fell in love with each other and pasture management. Vicky’s original plan was to become a veterinarian, but the manager at the custom grazing ranch convinced her to “focus on prevention of health problems in animals rather than treatment” through pasture management. “If we properly manage how we graze these animals, we’re going to build up the health of the soil, we’re going to build up the plant communities and, if we have healthy soil and healthy plants, that’s going to give us healthy animals,” says Vicky.

The Horns are animal lovers. Knowing that they wanted to custom graze their own animals, and given that they bought a small farm and didn’t have enough land to run cattle, they decided to go with sheep. “We thought with small land, you need small animals,” says Vicky. Shayne adds that “sheep are gentle creatures” and they wanted animals that were safe for their children to work with. Tangle Ridge Ranch is home not just to a herd of sheep and lambs, but also to five dogs (three of which are sheepdogs that guard the herd), a dairy cow, chickens, horses and a cat.