Curtis Ranch: Providing grass-fed beef from their ranch to your table
With ancestral ties to Pueblo’s historic Nuckolls Packing Company, the Curtis family raises grass-fed cattle on over 500 acres of land in the Wet Mountains to this day.
Kendall and his wife Lori Curtis own and operate Curtis Ranch with their daughter Karlee and son Nik. The ranch is certified by the American Grassfed Association (AGA).
As an AGA certified ranch, free-range, unconfined Black Angus cattle are 100% grass-fed and grass finished. Cattle are not treated with hormones, steroids or antibiotics. Curtis Ranch raises and harvests grass hay on-site to be fed to cattle during the winter months.
“There is a whole process to become certified and you have to abide by those standards in order to stay certified,” said Lori, the general manager at Curtis Ranch. “It does an annual inspection to make sure that you are abiding by all those standards.”
“We just feel it’s important to be certified because we want to be able to provide a healthy product to consumers,” she said.
Curtis Ranch sells packages of a quarter, side or whole beef. Packages include various steaks including the ranch’s “flagship” Tomahawk Ribeye, various roasts and ground beef among other cuts.
“It’s very flavorful,” Lori said. “It’s lean but it still has the right amount of marbling with the fat content.”
Individual cuts of Curtis Ranch’s grass-fed beef can be purchased at local markets like Mauro Farms & Bakery at 936 36th Lane, and Milberger Farms at 28570 E. U.S. Highway 50.
“Say the quarter, side or whole is just a little bit too much or they want to just try it out, a few cuts here and there or some burger,” Lori said. “They can buy individual cuts or burger either at Mauro’s or Milberger farms.”
In 1893, Kendall’s great-grandfather William Raschke was curing cellars at the Chicago Packing and Provision Company. Raschke worked in Chicago for 10 years before managing Cooperative Packing Company in Rockford, Illinois and Armstrong Packing Company in Dallas, Texas.
Capitalizing on the Colorado sunshine and ample opportunity for raising grass-fed cattle, Raschke moved West once again in March 1930. He became the general manager of the Nuckolls Packing Company, a 250,000 square-foot state of the art packing facility in Pueblo, Colorado. It was the largest and most technologically advanced beef processor west of the Mississippi. Nuckolls Packing Co. was later known as Alpha Beta Acme Processing Company and known today as WaterTower Place.
“Colorado’s supremacy as a stock raising center is demonstrated in the fact that its grassfed beef compares favorably in nutritive value with that obtained from corn fed cattle from eastern markets,” he told members of the Pueblo Chamber of Commerce in March 1930.
A young man named Adolph D. Curtis became the National Sales Manager at Nuckolls in 1932. He married Raschke’s daughter Sylvia.
Adolph founded his own company, Pueblo Packing Company in 1938. The company’s beef products were shipped across the nation and found on local shelves at Arapahoe Foods, Chet’s Market and Safeway stores. Adolph’s son Warren began helping his father at age 15, as the company’s cattle buyer.
The legacy continues through Warren’s son Kendall and his family at Curtis Ranch.