A globe-trotting rancher who calls himself ‘The Lost Cowboy’ has traveled across six continents to prove that cattle can be raised anywhere on planet Earth.
JB Zielke is an author, filmmaker, and agriculture expert, chronicling his travels on social media, in short films, and in a recent award-winning book.
He grew up in the traditional ranching states of Colorado and Wyoming, but has taken his interests around the world as a rancher for hire.
“Almost every place I went was like, ‘Can you take this wild, angry, spoiled, half-psychopathic horse that no one’s touched in three years and work on it for a day?’ says Zielke.
After a brief career as a bull rider, he has dedicated his life to herding in some of the most remote and rarely visited places on the planet.
A globe-trotting rancher who calls himself ‘The Lost Cowboy’ has traveled across six continents to prove that cattle can be raised anywhere on planet Earth.
JB Zielke is an author, filmmaker, and agriculture expert; He chronicles his journeys on social media, in short films, and in a recent, award-winning book.
When he was there, he was delighted to see that many of its places resembled the Old West of the United States.
‘People sometimes say they were born 100 years too late. They’re nostalgic for a time gone by,” Zielke said. Cowboy State Diary.
‘Well, the truth of the matter is that you can still come back. It still remains. These places are like time capsules that you can return to.
He has visited every continent except Antarctica in an attempt to ply his trade.
‘Meeting dynamic and dynamic people was a great motivation for me. “Everywhere there are people like this who adapt in different ways to the lot they face,” Zielke said.
‘I learned a lot from them. “It’s something I aspire to be every day.”
Some of his favorite experiences come from visits to Cape Town in Queensland, Australia, when he was 21 years old.
Zielke has been everywhere, from Sweden to Australia to Mongolia, to herd cattle.
After a brief career as a bull rider, he has dedicated his life to herding in some of the most remote and rarely visited places on the planet.
When he was there, he was delighted to see that many of its places resembled the Old West of the United States.
‘The most important thing about my stay in Australia is that it made me realize how big the world is. “It was hard for me to understand how many more people are out there,” Zielke said.
He often had to herd wild cattle using trucks and motorcycles in a style he compared to the movie Mad Max while surviving in crocodile-infested waters and being chased by wild dogs.
The biggest problem, he claims, was a breed of green ants.
‘The green ants caught me. “The biggest animals are always thought to be the most dangerous,” Zielke said.
‘I had been warned about them and I guess I didn’t know anything about them or how they behaved. They just told me to never hit one of their nests or they would all come out and tear you apart.
He said the trip ultimately showed him there was more to the world than just his backyard.
‘Go to the other side of the earth and meet the people there. Seeing them farm and do things in a very different way, but still get the same results, if not better, than the way I knew how to do things.’
Those better results left him with a reputation as a ‘bell ringer’ or expert cattle herder, as well as a carefree attitude and a desire to see the world as a cattle herder a little more.
He often had to herd wild cattle using trucks and motorcycles in a style he compared to the movie Mad Max while surviving in crocodile-infested waters and being chased by wild dogs.
He gathered many of his stories into a book that shares a title with his own nickname: The Lost Cowboy.
Zielke visited every continent except Antarctica in an attempt to ply his trade.
His next experience, at a five-star ranch in Argentina, was not to his liking, as he said he did not work with horses enough and that everything was too sophisticated. He also didn’t like the way the country treated its horses, comparing it to the way some people treat their cars.
‘I saw the great horsemanship and equine culture that Argentina is known for. But I also saw for the first time a culture in which horses were not highly valued,” Zielke said.
‘I saw a lot of things I didn’t agree with. They were quite tough on their horses and harsh in their training techniques.
Zielke was also robbed for the first time while living in Argentina
He then traveled to work in Sweden, where he found himself disillusioned with the Social Democratic government’s infringement on agriculture.
“It was eye-opening to go from a place where things were pretty lawless, where the police and the government had no force whatsoever, to the other end of the spectrum where the government came into your life every day and told you what to do,” Zielke said.
He described the country as “many rural Americans’ worst nightmare.”
“Sweden is a country where many decisions are out of your hands and the government has much more power and influence over your life.”
Zielke says that despite seeing the beauty of the world, he was also robbed on several continents
He advises people with dreams like his to just try it and go.
From there he went to South Africa as a trainer of young agricultural workers, where he was robbed again.
“My travel experience was making me more desensitized toward strangers, maybe not fast enough,” he said.
“It’s unfortunate because some of the nicest people and coolest things I’ve ever done only happened because I trusted a stranger. But I was fooled several times. I learned to put myself on guard where I don’t trust like I used to, but I still try to remember.” that the world is full of good people.’
Once there, however, he found the continent beautiful and “stirring”, despite having to deal with runaway horses at one point.
“There is an ever-present feeling that hangs over you all the time, an inherent sense of how old the culture is. How this land feels like the beginning of time and still today is simple. The food, the lifestyle, everything is incredibly simple and in the best way possible.’
He also saw a lot of death, which taught him the lesson of always trying to live in the present.
After returning to work in Wyoming, he accepted a winter job in Mexico, which he found dangerous and tough, in addition to dealing with powerful cartels.
‘I try my best not to scare people away from going there. Yes, there is danger. Yes, I was in the middle of a real shooting,” Zielke said.
‘But there were also some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been and amazing people I’ve met there. I wish people would visit and see the real Mexico. I’m not talking about Cancun and the isolated all-inclusive places.
Some of his most recent work was done in Mongolia, where he discovered that the culture respects horses.
“I think Mongolian horses are technically not horses at all. “They are more closely related to donkeys,” Zielke said.
‘They’re really small. One interesting thing I noticed was that they were constantly bobbing their heads (up and down) while standing still. At first I thought they were trying to get the flies off their faces, but there were no flies around so it wasn’t that. Everyone did it and I never knew why.
The pandemic eventually slowed his world travel, and he now shoots music videos for a company he founded and owns in Texas.
He advises people with dreams like his to try it and walk away.
‘I mean, sell your stuff and move to Mongolia or Argentina. They don’t have phones. They don’t check their email. Many of them do not know how to read or write. They are riding horses to get food and everything else,” he said.
Zielke worries that places like that are no longer the mantle of yesteryear they once were.
‘And, unfortunately, many of them are disappearing. So it was important to me to go see them before they disappeared.’
