Our ranch is located in the Texas Gulf Coast region—50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico at an elevation of 97 feet above sea level and receiving 40+ inches of rain per year on average.
This location is ideally suited to raise Wagyu cattle. This is contrary to common opinion that the best cattle raising country in the United States is a colder, dryer and higher elevation climate at a more northern latitude. This is because Wagyu cattle are genetically different than other cattle breeds.
Kobe Beef—the branded beef product widely recognized as the highest quality beef in the world—is beef produced from Wagyu cattle in Hyogo prefecture in Japan.
Kobe City, Japan—from which Kobe Beef derives its name—is the capital of Hyogo prefecture. As shown in the graphs below, the climate at Rocking 711 Ranch is much more similar to Kobe City than Omaha Nebraska. Omaha is located in the upper mid-west area of the United States and common wisdom dictates that this is a more ideal cattle raising country compared to the Texas Gulf Coast region, but this is not the case.
Rocking 711 Ranch is located at latitude 29.5 North at an elevation of 97 feet above sea level, which compares to Kobe City at latitude 32.5 North at an elevation of 194 feet above sea level. In contrast, Omaha, Nebraska represents the upper mid-west region commonly considered to be prime cattle raising country in the United States, and is located at a latitude of 41.2 North at an elevation of 980 feet above sea level.
The monthly average temperatures at Rocking 711 Ranch—while somewhat warmer than Kobe, Japan particularly in the Winter months—are much closer to the temperatures of Kobe, Japan than the temperatures of the midwest.
The average annual rainfall at Rocking 711 Ranch, at just under 41 inches per year, is almost exactly the same as Kobe City, Japan. Average annual rainfall in the upper mid-west region of the United States, represented by the Omaha, Nebraska data, is much lower at just over 30 inches.
Viewed on a quarterly basis, the rainfall of Rocking 711 Ranch and Kobe City, Japan, is very similar in the Jan-Mar quarter and the Jul-Sep quarters, and is closer to Kobe, Japan in the other two quarters than the United States upper mid-west region represented by the Omaha, Nebraska data, which shows much lower winter rainfall and slightly lower summer rainfall, which results in approximately 25% less rain than at Kobe City, Japan and Rocking 711 Ranch.
