Sixty ranchers recently attended a livestock symposium hosted by the Ute Mountain Ute Farm and Ranch Enterprise.
Experts from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Ute Mountain Utes, Jicarilla, Navajo and Hopi tribes gave presentations on livestock management. Topics ranged from rangeland science, ranch business, appropriate herd stocking, drought planning, agri-tourism, insurance and safe cattle handling.
Local veterinarian Gerald Koppenhafer gave a vaccination seminar on cattle that were set up in a coral with a chute.
The Ute Mountain Ute Farm and Ranch runs a commercial cow-calf operation with a herd of 640 cattle. The livestock graze in the reservation valleys and mesa tops, and on the post-harvest stubble of alfalfa, wheat and corn crops at the Ute Mountain center-pivot farms.
The tribe also has grazing leases at Lone Mesa State Park and on the San Juan National Forest.
Ranch manager Hardy Tozer said one of the goals of the symposium was to encourage younger tribal members to learn about ranching and its career opportunities.
“We work with as many tribal members as possible, and put on events like this to offer information about the industry,” he said.
Clayson Begay works with the Ute Mountain Ute’s natural resources department, and benefited from the all-day seminar.
“There is some new technology out there,” he said. “They have automated chutes now that take just one person to operate, compared to three. It was a good event with a lot of useful information.”
The tribe’s been upgrading ranch operations, and it provides local jobs, he said. Their preferred livestock is an Angus-Gelvey cross.
“They are adapted to high altitudes, have good weaning weights and fast rates of gain,” Tozer said. “Our buyer is a main supplier of Whole Foods.”
Drought forced the tribe to downsize the herd to 600 three years ago, but as conditions improve, the herd has been gradually rebounding back to its target of 700.
Speaker Delane Atcitty, a BIA natural resources specialist and graduate of the King Ranch Institute, helps to manage the ranching operations on the nearby Jicarilla tribe, in northern New Mexico.
Jicarilla tribal members run an estimated 3,200 head of cattle on 880,000 acres. The average age of a rancher is 56, so it is imperative to get the younger generation of people interested in farming and ranching, Atcitty said.
“We’re presenting at career days and at schools to let tribal members know there is a good future in cattle right here at home,” he said. “They can make decent money and don’t have to go to Albuquerque or Denver for a job.”
Ranching on reservations has advantages, Atcitty said, offering tribal members the opportunity to run cattle on their own land and then expand operations through grazing permits on national forests.
Tribal ranchers could further grow their businesses, he said, by partnering with farms to graze cattle on crop residuals, such as at the Navajo Agricultural Products farms south of Farmington.
Nationwide, there are 46 million acres of grazing land on Native American reservations and 4.5 million acres of farm land.
