OKEECHOBEE, Florida — At daybreak on a misty-blue Wednesday, a herd of cows and bulls are horseplaying on a South Florida prairie when a tractor roars to life, hoisting in its jaws a hay bale as golden as the sun. Curious copper-red cows crook their heads toward the noise.

It’s ear-tagging and DNA tissue-sampling day at Rancher’s Reserve in Okeechobee, which can be stressful on cows and humans alike. The cattle — a mix of Akaushi, a rare Japanese heritage breed, and Florida Cracker Criollos — are creatures of habit, and familiar rhythms help keep the peace. Once ranch owner Nick Scalisi opens the paddock’s gates, cowboy Tayloe Glass steers the tractor onto the grazing field, waving a green flag, and eight stocky bulls saunter in behind him, lured by the aromas of the open grain bags in the rear cab.

At 100 acres, Rancher’s Reserve hardly matches the Montana expanse of TV’s “Yellowstone.” For one, there are no horses or mountains. This is Everglades cattle country, with miles upon miles of slash pines and flat scrubland, pristine and still untouched by developers just 35 miles from Palm Beach County’s suburban sprawl.

“The old-school guys like doing this on horseback, but that’s not needed here,” says Glass, the ranch manager, with a laugh. “My buddies like ribbing me that herding cattle with a buggy instead of a horse isn’t real cowboying, but look at ’em: The cows are pretty gentle and obedient, no?”

Such is life on this reserve, home to 115 livestock and a cross-breeding program that’s serving one restaurant and multiple green markets — and is aiming for more.

‘Literally ranch-to-table’: Where it’s going

Right now, Rancher’s Reserve’s sole restaurant client is Fern, which is Scalisi’s downtown West Palm Beach eatery with partner Chris Muneio.

But that’s expected to change on March 25 when the pair open Steak Shop by Rancher’s Reserve, adding to their rising ranch-to-restaurant empire. Part boutique butchery and part sandwich shop, this new West Palm Beach spot will offer high-end cuts of American Wagyu steak, wood-fired burgers, chicken wings and steak-topped pizzas from Rancher’s Reserve, as well as pork products brought from a 600-acre ranch he leases near Ocala, called Kanapaha Prairie in Micanopy, where he breeds heritage Berkshire and Duroc pigs.

Then, sometime later in 2025, Scalisi and Muneio plan to open the steakhouse Rueshaw, also in West Palm Beach and incorporating his cattle. It’s named for what ranchers consider the cream of the American Wagyu crop, Rueshaw, one of four Japanese purebred bulls that were imported to the United States in the 1970s. High-end and beefy and packed with what Scalisi calls “excellent marbling genetics,” Rueshaw “grandfathered” all the Akaushi cows now living on his ranches, he says.

“It’s literally ranch-to-table,” Scalisi says of his beef operation. “America’s cattle industry is a profit-making machine that’s not necessarily in the best interest of consumers. So it’s a good thing to give the local community a beef they can trust. But this gives us cred in the farm-to-table world, because it proves to Florida cattlemen that we can move lots of high-quality beef quickly through our restaurants.”

Chef Daniel Ramos serves farm-to-table dinners at his Red Splendor Farm in Lake Worth using ingredients entirely from local homesteads. He says Rancher’s Reserve is a rarity in South Florida dining.

“I’ve never heard of any South Florida restaurant growing beef for its own menu,” Ramos says. “Like, how does he make the margins work, or find outlets for his product? I did buy some flank at the [Delray Beach] green market, though, and it’s really good.”

‘He’s ready!’: From ranch to dinner plate

Rancher’s Reserve is a start-to-finish breeding program: Some calves are raised in Micanopy, until they’re weaned from their mothers about a year later, then some are brought to Okeechobee for “finishing” (in which they’re fattened with a nutrient-heavy, energy-rich diet of alfalfa, corn, barley and oats).

A third party handles slaughtering in Gainesville and ships the meat to a 1,000-square-foot industrial freezer on the Okeechobee ranch, where Scalisi takes inventory and devises the menu. The whole supply-chain pipeline, from calves to customers’ dinner plates, takes 24 to 28 months, Scalisi says.

Most days, these cattle live out docile, carefree lives on the ranch, grazing on tall grass.

But not on this recent Wednesday — because the herd is restless. Glass, a professional bullfighter-turned-cowboy, is busy herding 22 Akaushi and Florida Crackers from wooden-fenced pens into a 4-by-10-foot green metal cage called a squeeze chute. They’re ushered one by one into this cow-shaped restraint, sort of like airport travelers at TSA checkpoints, so Glass can safely replace their ear tags and extract DNA tissue samples without harming the animal or himself.

First up is No. 112, a year-old Akaushi bull. Standing in the pen behind the bull, Glass makes kissing noises and pats the animal’s rump for encouragement, while Scalisi stands ready, hand on the chute’s lever.

As the bull warily enters, Glass gives the cue — “He’s ready!” — and Scalisi yanks the lever, and the chute clamps shut around the bull’s head with a metal clang. The noise spooks the farm’s newest residents, sandhill cranes in the west pasture, who leap from their roosts and swoop low over the vast prairie. Glass hops the fence post and replaces the bull’s ear tag, which lets ranchers keep accurate livestock inventory.

“These new tags have bigger numbers so they’re easier to spot from afar,” Glass explains, as the chute opens and the bull slips out, wagging his head. “They’re going in super-smooth today. We want them to associate the pens as a positive place, not where they get needle shots, so that’s why we feed them afterwards.”

But it’s not all smooth sailing. Next comes No. 2, a feisty year-old Florida Cracker bull with a squiggly curl on his head that resembles a comb-over wig. The black-and-white-spotted animal is thrashing in the squeeze chute, but the agitation is expected, Glass says, because No. 2 is a new arrival, recently transported here from Scalisi’s Kanapaha Prairie ranch.

“Yeah, he ain’t from around here, but we love him just the same,” Glass says with a chuckle, as he gives a mineral booster shot, extracts tissue using a syringe and stores the DNA in a vial. The chute opens, and rambunctious No. 2 bursts out with an impatient huff.

No. 2’s DNA will be sent to Texas’ American Akaushi Association to certify its genetic grading, so that Scalisi can label his meat products as authentic Wagyu. In Okeechobee, all Akaushi bulls are full breeds, while the cows are between 50% and 88% Wagyu, Glass says.

Once every ear is tagged, Glass and Scalisi let the cattle roam a massive feedlot as they unroll the hay bale and break nutrition grain pellets over the straw. Once finished, Glass removes his wide-brimmed hat and relaxes in the driver’s seat of the tractor, denim shirt thick with sweat.

The Alabama-born Glass, who lives in a ranch house on the property, says he cut his teeth feeding livestock during harsh winters. He also toured the rodeo circuit until it “became harder to walk away in one piece.”

“My great-grandad had cattle, but not my parents, so it kind of skipped a generation where I caught the bug,” says Glass, 45, watching the grazing cows. “Playing cowboy every day is pretty fun. My cows are kind of like real human kids: They associate food with me.”

In a few weeks, Glass and Scalisi plan to install a 20-by-48-foot chicken tractor in Okeechobee — basically a chicken house on four wheels — and raise birds for eggs and fertilizer.

“It’s the circle of life,” Scalisi says. “After cows graze on grass, the chickens will eat the larvae from cow droppings, and their chicken poop makes a great fertilizer, producing a nutrient-rich grass year-round. I think the best grass growers are cattle ranches.”

‘They’re super majestic’: Preserving Florida’s cattle legacy

The privately owned Rancher’s Reserve is the latest reminder of Florida’s rich cattle heritage. America’s first cowboys ranched in Florida 500 years ago, after explorer Ponce de Leon brought the country’s first cattle along with Spanish colonizers to the Sunshine State, according to the Florida Cattlemen’s Association, a nonprofit promoting Florida’s beef industry. These so-called Cracker cowboys would use whips to lure what became known as Cracker Cattle out of the swamp and thickets.

Florida beef operations like Rancher’s Reserve are a $546 million industry, according to the nonprofit Florida Beef Council, with 15,000 beef producers in the state owning roughly 886,000 head of cattle. Rancher’s Reserve is among the closest to South Florida, although many more are clustered farther west in Lake Placid, southeast of Orlando and around Gainesville.

In the tricounty area, a few exist in Southwest Ranches, and some small-herd outfits thrive in Miami-Dade’s Redlands. But Ranchers Reserve’s ranch-to-restaurant formula appears to be one of a kind. In Palm Beach County, for example, chefs like Clay Conley, Pushkar Marathe and Jimmy Everett source herbs and specialty greens from local farms, but don’t operate their own.

Scalisi, in sharp contrast to Glass, says his farm experience is strictly self-taught. Meat price instabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic “lit a fire under my butt” to build a ranch-to-restaurant supply chain from scratch, he says. After some deep-dive research into America’s cattle industry, Scalisi and his Fern partner, Muneio, spent $100,000 on Akaushi bulls and cows at a Texas cattle auction.

“These bulls carry the best genetics,” says Scalisi, 39, whose parents own a produce wholesaler, Oceanside Produce in West Palm Beach. “We ended up with 40 cows and two bulls to start, which allowed us to keep our high-end genetics in-house. And honestly? They’re super majestic. They do really well in the Florida heat, they’re docile and friendly, and they’re 100% Wagyu. We got lucky picking the right breed on our first try.”

But to support all three restaurants — Fern, Steak Shop and Rueshaw — Scalisi says he needed more beef diversity than just Wagyu. So it was Billy Ray Hunter, a fifth-generation cowboy, who convinced Scalisi to invest in a piece of Florida history: Florida Crackers.

“The Cracker cattle have tremendous flavor, very unique and beefy, and for my money there’s nothing tastier,” says Hunter, 61. “But they’re taken for granted by cattlemen in Florida because they’re smaller and have a longer growth period. On the upside, they produce calves well into their 20s. Criollos are the unsung heroes of Florida beef.”

Hunter, who tends to Berkshire and Duroc heritage-breed hogs at a 40-acre land-lease in Lulu, is what Scalisi affectionately calls the “Chuck Norris of cowboys” for his chiseled jawline, goatee and brief stint acting in TV and movies. Hunter, a self-described “proud Florida cracker” and a retired deputy for Alachua County Sheriff’s Office, says Scalisi, for a first-time rancher, has mustered an “impressive” supply chain of elite bovines.

“For someone who didn’t grow up in the Ag industry, but rather in food and restaurants, I’d say he’s a visionary,” Hunter says. “He understands that in the animal industry, breeds and what they’re fed directly affect the flavor of the meat you consume. A lot of people are ignorant to that fact because they’ve had no exposure to it. He’s got a great business mind, and he’s come up with a plan that’s going to be awesome and unique.”

That plan continues with Steak Shop by Rancher’s Reserve, a 1,500-square-foot shop equipped with a red-brick oven, where pork sausage hot dogs on sourdough buns, potato salad and steak sandwiches will be fired with Florida white oak. The menu will change daily based on beef and pork availability, and will be posted on handwritten butcher paper in the dining room, Scalisi says.

Beyond restaurants, Rancher’s Reserve beef is sold to the public at green markets in Delray Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, West Palm Beach, Boynton Beach, Port St. Lucie and Stuart.

“Eventually, we’ll sell to other restaurants when we breed enough cattle,” Scalisi says. “Our cattle program is young, but it’s getting mightier.”

Steak Shop by Rancher’s Reserve, at 500 Palm St., Unit 22, West Palm Beach, is expected to debut on March 25. Go to RanchersReserveFL.com/steak-shop.

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