Mark Zuckerberg says daughter thought he was cattle rancher

The Meta CEO recently revealed that his daughter misunderstood what his main job was. 

“For a while, she just thought that I was a cattle rancher,” the Facebook cofounder told Morning Brew Daily on Friday.

While Zuckerberg’s fascination with martial arts has been well documented, he’s also intent on producing some of the best beef on the planet—not to sell commercially, but to enjoy with friends and family.

The tech billionaire is raising cattle on Ko’olau Ranch, a property he owns on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. In an Instagram post last month, he wrote: 

“Started raising cattle at Ko’olau Ranch on Kauai, and my goal is to create some of the highest quality beef in the world. The cattle are wagyu and angus, and they’ll grow up eating macadamia meal and drinking beer that we grow and produce here on the ranch.”

Zuckerberg has no shortage of land on the island. According to a Wired investigation published a few months ago, the property includes 1,400 acres. “Less than one percent of the overall land is developed with the vast majority dedicated to farming, ranching, conservation, open spaces, and wildlife preservation,” a spokesperson for Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan told the technology publication.

“We want the whole process to be local and vertically integrated,” Zuckerberg wrote on Instagram. “Each cow eats 5,000-10,000 pounds of food each year, so that’s a lot of acres of macadamia trees. My daughters help plant the mac trees and take care of our different animals. We’re still early in the journey and it’s fun improving on it every season.” 

Zuckerberg jokes with his family that “if I’m ever done with Meta, I’m going to run Mark’s Meats,” he told Morning Brew.

Such an operation would certainly be easier for a child to understand than Meta’s offerings, which include Facebook, Instagram, and the metaverse. 

“If you’re a kid, it’s kinda hard to wrap your head around what Meta is,” Zuckerberg noted.

As for raising cattle, “I just think it’s super fun,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Alright, let’s brew our own beer. Let’s grow our own macadamia nuts.’” His children can be part of figuring out what it’s like run such a process, he noted, and it’s “easier for them to do that than be involved in the software business.”