Grimmius Cattle Company is the largest calf-raising company in California, confining around 200,000 calves between its two main locations. Tens of thousands of these calves are confined in tiny hutches that prevent them from walking or turning around easily. On its website, Grimmius refers to these restrictive crates as "apartments." After two months confined in these hutches, the calves are moved to pens.

Grimmius receives calves from dozens of dairy operations across California including the dairies shown on the map below. These calves are separated from their mothers shortly after birth so that the mothers' milk can be sold to humans. Grimmius receives newborn calves on a daily basis. Eventually these calves either go into the beef industry or, for some of the female calves, go back into the dairy industry once they are old enough to become pregnant and produce milk. Grimmius sends calves to the largest cattle feedlot in California, Brandt Cattle Company in Imperial County.

Grimmius Home | Kings County

Major dairy companies that partner with Grimmius, including Land O' Lakes, California Dairies Inc, Hilmar, and Alta Dena, market their products as humane to unknowing customers. This is despite the intensive confinement and other welfare issues calves endure at Grimmius, as well as the systematic separation of mothers and babies that is standard practice across the dairy industry.

Hyper-specialized, calf-raising factory farms like Grimmius Cattle Company are a critical link in the dairy industry to beef industry pipeline. When we understand the grim reality of these operations, we can see clearly how California's supposedly humane dairy operations are actively fueling the largest intensive cattle confinement operations in the state, including Brandt, the largest feedlot on the West Coast. Of course, the dairy industry doesn't want you connecting the dots.

The factory farms shown in the map below have been identified as sending calves to Grimmius:

Investigations of Grimmius conducted via drone by Direct Action Everywhere have documented:

• Baby cows violently shoved and thrown to the ground
• Sick calves dragged and shot in the head
• Calves left to die from neglect inside their hutches, and collected once their bodies had grown stiff
• Piles of dead animals on the property

Grimmius East

In addition to its two massive calf-raising operations in Hanford, Kings County and Strathmore, Tulare County, Grimmius operates a heifer ranch in Kettleman City, Kings County where older female calves are kept until they are old enough to become pregnant and produce milk, at which point they are moved back to a dairy. They are in the process of drastically expanding this location from around 4,000 to 18,000 heifers.

You can see the locations of Grimmius's California factory farms in the map below.