Growing up near Houston, Texas, and married to a cattle rancher, Renée King-Sonnen never imagined she'd one day challenge the very lifestyle she married into.
Things changed when she and her husband, Tommy Sonnen, bought a calf named Rowdy Girl.
She fed and cared for the calf herself and formed a deep bond, which eventually made her question the “disgusting” nature of the cattle industry.
Highlights
- A Texas cattle rancher’s wife went vegan and stood up to her husband about his livelihood.
- Their conflict nearly pushed the marriage to the brink of a divorce.
- She raised over $30,000 in a fundraiser to buy her husband’s cattle herd and started a sanctuary for rescued farm animals.
On Halloween 2014, she decided to turn vegan. Shortly afterward, she confronted her husband and offered to buy his ranch for $30,000 to turn it into a farm animal shelter.
The standoff nearly destroyed her marriage with Tommy, she revealed in her book, Rowdy Girl: Confessions of a Vegan Cattle Rancher.
“We had already been divorced once and remarried, and suddenly we were staring down the barrel of a second divorce,” she told Bored Panda exclusively.
Rowdy Girl made her look at the cattle ranch industry differently
Before founding Rowdy Girl Sanctuary, Renée King-Sonnen built a career as a musician, honky-tonk performer, live entertainment promoter, and music teacher.
Tommy Sonnen was a multigenerational cattle rancher who also worked at Dow Chemical, a US-based chemical manufacturer.
The two were set up in 1990 by Tommy’s best friend, Robert, at Michael’s Club, where Renée was performing that night.
They first wedded in April 1991, but the marriage saw its end over Renée’s struggle with substance issues and borderline personality disorder.
They reconciled in 2009 after her mother bumped into Tommy at a VHS store, and remarried in 2010, with the hope of starting a family in the near future.
However, due to medical complications, Renée was unable to have children and was exploring surrogacy and adoption when Rowdy Girl was bought.
She soon began to see the calf as her own child.
Caring for Rowdy Girl led her to look more deeply into the industry and to do more research into modern animal agriculture. She watched “horrific” slaughterhouse videos one after another, and her heart broke for the animals.
“I was in shock, and I was obsessed,” Renée, who experienced violence and trauma earlier in her life, wrote in her book. “I walked around carrying the weight of their pain, and it matched my own.”
Tommy’s family history made Renée’s transformation harder for him to accept
On October 31, 2014, she finally decided to go vegan, and it “threatened the very bond” of her marriage, she told us.
“I’ve always said that telling Tommy I had gone vegan was almost worse than telling him I’d had an affair,” she said. “I think he could have at least comprehended an affair.”
To Tommy, it felt like “a betrayal of everything” they had built together, Renée said.
What made it even more difficult was Tommy’s history with the industry.
His family had lost everything after his grandfather’s farm was destroyed in a fire years ago. Despite working at Dow Chemical, Tommy “picked up the ranching baton” both for the sake of legacy and as a retirement plan.
“Ranching, farming, and hunting were part of his family heritage… Then I went vegan and, from his point of view, totally screwed up everything,” Renée shared.
Renée was ready to “take a bullet” to save Tommy’s cattle from slaughter
In December 2014, Renée had a “good ole-fashioned Texas showdown” with Tommy just before he was about to sell his entire herd to get out of the cattle business.
When Tommy told her to stay out of his business, Renée put her foot down and threatened to follow him to the sale barn and buy back the herd using his credit card.
She was willing to embarrass Tommy and even go to jail if necessary.
“By then, those cows had become like family… “I could no longer bear the thought of them being loaded onto a trailer and taken to the sale barn, knowing where that road would eventually lead,” she told Bored Panda.
“I would have stood in the road in front of that cattle trailer and taken a bullet before I let him drive away with them.”
Tommy agreed to sell his herd to Renée for $30,000
Irate, Tommy asked her what she would do with the cows, and Renée, for the first time, shared her plan: “I’m gonna start a sanctuary. A nonprofit that saves animals from going to slaughter.”
She then offered to buy her husband’s herd with her own money and asked him for a price. They shook on $30,000, but Tommy still thought she was “bluffing.”
However, he played along and also agreed to lease her the farmland for $1 for two years, Renée’s book states.
However, by then, she had started a “secret diary” on Facebook called “The Vegan Journal of a Cattle Rancher’s Wife” and had amassed a significant number of followers.
She was confident she could raise the money and launched the fundraiser in January 2015. Money soon started to flow in.
Renée’s farm animal sanctuary now has 130 animals and will soon have a medical center
Renée’s Rowdy Girl Sanctuary, established in February 2015 and located just outside Austin, Texas, is reportedly the world's first documented beef cattle ranch to become a vegan animal sanctuary.
Although the road wasn’t easy, and she faced significant criticism and online trolling, she kept at it and began taking in rescued farm animals of all species — cows, pigs, chickens, horses, ducks, and more.
Among them are Rowdy Girl’s three offspring, Houdini, Magic, and Stella.
The sanctuary’s website states that they now have 130 rescued farm animals, each with a “name, a story, and a unique personality.”
They are now working on building an on-site veterinary medical treatment facility named after Stormy, a blind calf with a compromised immune system who passed away during a devastating flood.
“The answer is not to treat ranchers as the enemy,” Renée said about ranchers and vegans finding common ground. “It is to honor what they love while showing them that there is another way—one that protects their land, provides for their families, and allows the animals to live.”
Renée witnessed her father nearly end her mother’s life before the two divorced
Renée, whose own life was shaped by years of trauma, substance use, exposure to domestic violence, and health battles, said she saw her tragedy reflected in the violence animals sustain in the ranch industry and beyond.
“I understood what it meant to feel powerless, to have your voice taken away, and to suffer behind closed doors while the rest of the world carries on as though nothing is happening,” she said.
Renée grew up in a troubled home, witnessing her father subject her mother to severe domestic violence.
One day, when Renée was 10, her dad beat up her mom and threatened to end her life with a rifle. After this incident, she filed for divorce.
Renée later reconciled with her father and became the manager and lead singer at his nightclub, Coconut Grove.
Renée believes she would have relapsed if not for her vegan journey
However, her relationship with her father remained complicated.
This period of her life introduced her to drinking and substance misuse, which continued to plague her life for years.
She fought hard and relapsed multiple times, with long stretches of sobriety in between, before quitting for the final time in early 2013. She decided to go vegan 21 months later.
“It wasn’t until I was editing the book and looking back over my life that I fully understood how closely those two events were connected,” Renée told Bored Panda.
“If I had betrayed what I knew in my soul to be true — if I had silenced myself again to preserve my marriage or keep the peace — I believe I would have relapsed,” she said, adding that she believed her next relapse would’ve likely taken her life.
“Standing up to my husband and fighting for those animals was also me finally standing up for myself. I was fighting for their lives, but in doing so, I believe I was also fighting for my own.”
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