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Presentation by Renee King-Sonnen at the Whole Foods Plant Based Potluck for First Methodist Church in Seguin, Texas on Thursday, August 24, 2023.
VOLUNTEER EFFORTS | Rowdy Girl Sanctuary, the day to day on a rescue farm. Duck, goats & more
We feel lucky to have been able to volunteer at this amazing place for 4 days. We helped build a goat shed, dug a trench, cleaned out metal scraps, cleaned the duck pond and so much more. We knew we loved farm animals, but this place helped solidify our plans for the future... Farm Sanctuary here we come!!! I won’t lie, goats were not my favorite but after meeting Sugar, I cannot wait to save some…they have so much personality! Rowdy Girl is a unique and special place. Prior to the sanctuary they used to be cattle ranchers and after many tears, decided to go vegan, saved their entire heard and have never looked back! They have since been a haven to goats, chickens, pigs of all shapes and sizes, cows, horses and more. Renee and Tommy, the founders, are incredibly compassionate and passionate about their cause. You can’t help but fall in love with the farm. If you would like to show your support, you can become a member for $5 a month, which helps them feed and care for the 50 plus animals they have living on the farm. You can also make a one-time donation or simply subscribe to their YouTube channel, watch, like and comment on their videos. Every little bit helps in the rescue world so don’t discard what one like and one view can do!
Renee spoke at the AVA Summit in Los Angeles July 27-30, 2023. The AVA Summit is an overarching conference series for the animal and vegan advocacy movement, bringing advocates together from around the world who are focusing on systemic change and working on various tactics, strategies, and approaches toward one shared vision: removing animals from our food system and other human use.
Saturday, April 22, 2023 in Austin, Texas
We had an incredible talk with the inspiring Renee King-Sonnen of Rowdy Girl Sanctuary in our AJA Lunchtime Live: From Cattle Rancher to Animal Activist. In 2015, after feeling like she could no longer be a part of the cruelty of the animal agriculture industry, Renee King-Sonnen and her husband converted their Texas beef cattle ranch into an animal sanctuary. At the end of the month a documentary about Renee and Rowdy Girl Sanctuary will premiere at North America's premiere documentary festival, Hot Docs International Film Festival in Toronto. In this AJA Lunchtime Live, we find out what the turning point was for Renee deciding to make herself and the ranch vegan, the viral sensation that resulted, and her hopes for the "Rowdy Girl" documentary. We also dig into the mindsets of animal ag farmers, the possibilities for the AR movement to collaborate with farmers, and the top things about animal farmers and the industry that Renee thinks animal advocates should be informed around.
Dr. Sailesh Rao interviews Renee King-Sonnen about her Rancher Advocacy Program (RAP). You'll learn about ranchers and animal farmers who have gone vegan and transitioned their businesses to plant-based farms and sanctuaries.
About Renee: After witnessing time and time again the ranch’s baby calves going to the sale barn, she became more and more depressed about the inherent cruelty of the ranching business. By October 2014, she had decided she no longer wanted any part of ranching. She went vegan and began her pursuit of a dream to open a farm animal sanctuary. She forged relationships with many key leaders in the vegan movement who offered insight and counsel, and with tremendous determination worked toward creating a sanctuary out of what was once a beef cattle ranch.
As a result of her transformation numerous media stories have been published, and have gone viral. Their story has been seen all over America numerous times on CBS, ABC, RFD, and Animal Planet. Rancher families reach out to Renee on a regular basis because her story has landed in their living room via the news, a TV story or a documentary. Ranchers and their families relate to Renee, and it wasn’t long before she realized that she was also a Ranchers Advocate–and the Rancher Advocacy Program was born.
Dr. Sailesh Rao is your host of the Exploring Solutions Summit, and the Founder and Executive Director of Climate Healers, a non-profit dedicated towards healing the Earth’s climate. Dr. Rao is the author of two books, Carbon Dharma: The Occupation of Butterflies and Carbon Yoga: The Vegan Metamorphosis, and an Executive Producer of four documentaries, The Human Experiment (2013), Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014), What The Health (2017), and A Prayer for Compassion (2019).
For more info and other summit replays, click here: https://www.climatehealers.org/summit
Animal Studies Initiative and the Animal Welfare Collective at New York University Panel
Renee participated on a panel in New York on November 10, 2016 about the role of farm animal sanctuaries in the animal rights movement. The panel, which featured three other sanctuary founders and directors and was moderated by Jasmin Singer of Our Hen House, endeavored to present the many and varied perspectives on this important topic. The topics ranged from the direction sanctuaries will play in the future to the strengths and weaknesses of them as a system for animal liberation. With an audience comprised of NYU’s vibrant animal rights community, and drawing on the city’s activists, and supported by strong social media and traditional promotional campaigns, there was a lively discussion and Q&A session.
Texas is known for farming but what about having a VEGAN FARM? The owners of Rowdy Girl Farm and ranch is one of the first farms in Texas to push the vegan movement on an agricultural level. The Vegan Farm Sanctuary is located between San Antonio and Houston, in Waelder, Texas. @DownieLive decided to surprise me while in Texas and I had no idea this concept existed in my home state of Texas.
Ranch Rescue is a poignant depiction of life as it happened during the epic Hurricane Harvey that tore through Rowdy Girl Sanctuary late August of 2017. This 30 minute documentary is chock full of dramatic footage covering the farm animal rescue, the grueling evacuation, the unfolding topic of climate change and the growing need to rescue ranches and keep animals off of our plate.
DownieLive put this great video together about our sanctuary.