IN THE SADDLE more than he is in the courtroom, Colorado attorney Ken Spann prefers bovines to briefcases despite the law license that hangs on his wall. After passing the bar, Spann turned down tempting offers from Denver law firms to return to the century-old family ranch. His legal practice today is a part-time affair, limited mostly to water and land disputes.

Lawyering Doesn’t Get In Way
Of Ken Spann’s Cow Business

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — A lot of lawyers are part-time ranchers, but Ken Spann is a rancher who is a part-time lawyer.

Spann went to law school at the University of Colorado at Boulder after getting his degree in animal science from Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

"I was on the meat judging team at Fort Collins," he says. "Enjoyed it immensely. I've got a buckle that says National Champions on it."

The second semester of his senior year, Spann worked for the president of the Colorado State Senate.

"I learned a lot about the political process," he says.

But his political education was just beginning. After earning his degree at CSU, he started law school at the University of Colorado.

"My family was generous enough to say, ‘we'll run the ranch together for three more years so you can go to law school, then you need to decide on what you want to do,’" Spann says. "My second and third year of law school I clerked for Mountain States Legal Foundation in Denver. It was the year after Jim Watt left the foundation, so I got exposed to the real conservative ideology in the trenches of the battlefield, the good and the bad in that."

Between CSU and law school, Spann married a young lady from Cortez, Colo., named Mary. They now have a nine year-old son, Andy, and an 11 year-old daughter, Laura.

"Law school was hard, really hard," Spann says. "But I passed the bar, and then I had a choice to make because I had some really good offers from Denver law firms."

He and his wife made their choice, returning to the East River ranch in 1982 and moving into the home his grandfather, Virgil Spann, built in 1923. But Spann remains a licensed lawyer and manages to maintain a small practice on the side.

"I do natural resources stuff, principally water and public lands," he says.

Spann's great-grandfather, Lang Spann, settled in this valley in 1880.

"There were some mines back up here in this high country," Spann says. "He came in here out of Missouri. He was the mule-skinner who brought the ore out of the mines on pack trains."

Lang Spann homesteaded in the East River Valley that runs from Gunnison to Crested Butte. Each succeeding generation has added to the ranching operation until now it encompasses between 50,000 and 60,000 acres, including federal grazing permits.

They also have a smaller place west of Gunnison.

"We put up a lot of hay on the ranch at Gunnison, and we have a large calving facility there," Spann says. "I was raised there on that ranch."

His parents, Lee and Polly Spann, still live there.

"The ranch at Gunnison is pretty self-contained," he says. "It's pretty small, about 800 acres, but it happens to be THE 800 acres. It's one of those key pieces of ground."

Spann's grandfather, Virgil Spann, was offered the grazing permits behind the ridge at the Gunnison ranch years ago but declined because there wasn't any grass or water.

"Over the course of the years, we've just grown," Spann says. "A century is a long time, but you can survive if you don't make any major mistakes or if you survive the ones you do make."

As the land around them has been developed for summer homes and ski condominiums, the smaller ranches in the valley have disappeared.

The Spanns’ cow-calf operation is one of three ranches that remain in the valley.

"The cattle winter pretty well," Spann says, "if you feed them and take care of them. We winter them in the meadows. There's a shed out there, so they can get in out of the wind if it's really bad. Because of the high mountains, there is not a big problem with the wind. We don't get what you'd call a 'norther' that comes clear from Canada, because the mountains kind of deflect it, but we get the deep, deep snow."

Their Hereford and black baldy cattle spend the summers on the mountain with Spann's sister Jan looking after them on horseback, along with Manuel Castro, half of a father-son team that works at the Spann ranch in the summer and returns to Mexico in the winter. The rest of the crew is busy below, cutting hay.

"We feed it back in the winter with a big tractor and a feeder," Spann says.

Spann has a commercial Hereford herd and uses those with Angus bulls to produce his own black baldies. The baldy heifers and cows, in turn, are bred to Salers or Limousin bulls for a terminal cross. He generally retains his calves and sells them as yearlings.

"I think the lessons about heterosis sank pretty deep into me," Spann says. "We work really hard and make them good. If you have something that's good and something else that's pure, and you cross them, you get a little extra. But if you go too much more than that, you don't get two plus two equals five. You get two plus two equals 4.2."

Spann says the cattle he raises are based on what the buyer wants. He knows because he asks them.

"They walk right over to one of my steers and say, 'That steer right there,'" Spann says. "One that performs but won't get so big he won't fit the box."

It's because of his conversations with buyers that Spann is changing herd sires. The new bulls should come closer to giving Spann's customer what he wants.

"We sell almost everything," Spann says. "We don't retain them clear to the plant. We retain them until they're big, 850 or 900 pounds. We are good at what we do. What we do is produce a very good feeder animal or a very good replacement heifer."

Spann says his specialty is taking care of mother cows and raising calves, not finish feeding.

"When you change that animal's need for higher energy, you also change that knowledge base you need, and you change the risk," Spann says. "We made a conscious decision to take it to that point and let somebody else handle the risk the last 120 days. But we try to give them a product so they'll come back every time. This year they called us and asked when our steers were coming. You don't get to that point overnight, and you don't keep it just because you got there once."

Consequently, Spann is careful in his breeding program. He tags his heifers, and he matches the bulls to the heifers. When the calves are born, they are tagged.

"We know exactly what we’ve got," he says.

Several years ago, he bought an expensive bull and put it out with his cows.

"The calves we got out of that high-dollar bull were 67 pounds lighter than our herd average," he says, noting he doesn't have that bull anymore.

The whole family makes a concerted effort at maintaining the quality of the cattle year around, Spann insists.

"Everything we do is geared toward that," he says. "Having the feed resource, having enough feed."

It's not unusual for them to leave more grass than a lot of ranches have, he says, but he would rather operate on the excess side than on the short side of the equation.

"We've been really lucky," he contends. "The family has held together and works together. Mary and Mother keep a wonderful set of records. We were among the first ones up here to go on computers. It's an interesting scenario when you go to borrow money at the bank and your banker says, 'I'd like to see your financials,' and you slide them across the table and say, 'Those are current as of about two and a half hours ago. Now I'd like to see yours.'"

Ranching is a business, Spann insists.

"It's a way of life, yes," he says. "It's a great place to raise kids. That's why we're here. But what we do is a business, and we run it like a business."

Spann runs about 950 mother cows year around and normally about 700 yearlings.

"We have almost 800 yearlings this year," he adds, because this year they had the grass, the capital and a good crew.

In the fall, Spann loads up his bulls and takes them down to the Gunnison ranch.

"That keeps them separate," he says. "When we come in we literally stop the breeding."

Then they pregnancy test.

"We wean calves from Thanksgiving through the first 10 days of December, depending upon the weather," he says. "The calves will go to Delta or Montrose. Then we'll roll those cows through the corral and preg test every single cow. They either have one with them or they have one in them or they don't belong to us."

That interval from finding out if they've got one with them or one in them isn't very long, he adds.

"When we pregnancy test, we'll sell all the cull cows. We'll stay up there in that valley until we eat up all the feed or until it snows us out. Sometimes we leave the feed under 24 inches of snow. We feed here."

Another valley is an open south-facing bowl. "Sometimes we can make that go to Christmas," he says. "We feed the cows here until about the first of March. Usually sometime during the first 10 days of March, we'll physical move the cows from here to the Gunnison ranch. Sometimes it's a function of feed, but it's more a function of getting the cows to the ground that's going to dry up soonest to calve. That's the first land in the whole country to dry up."

They calve beginning about March 25 and running through May 10. They brand between the first and 15th of May and move the cattle back into the valley between Gunnison and Crested Butte.

"We do that 100 pair at a time," he says. "About the same time they're calving, our yearlings come back out of Delta. We scatter the yearlings out here, leaving a couple of meadows for cows and calves."

They put the cows out and bring in the bulls.

"Because it's not wide open country, but more pastures, we can put 50 Hereford heifers in this pasture and skip a pasture and put 50 black baldy heifers," he says. "That way we get what we want."

The ranch has plenty of water and good irrigation rights.

"We irrigate like crazy in the hay meadows," Spann says, raising a hay crop between the first of June and the end of July and getting one cutting of native hay. The end of July, they shut the ditches off and roll the cows out into the hills.

"Jan and Manny take care of them," Spann says. "The rest of the crew comes back to the hay field and puts up hay. We raise a lot of hay, we put up a lot of hay, and we feed a lot of hay. It's pretty simple."

Then they gather and sell the yearling steers and spend a couple of weeks catching up and cleaning up allotments.

"We have a plan," he says. "I'm not sure it's the best plan, but we have a plan."

That plan is meant to meet the competition.

"It's a competitive world we live in," Spann explains. "If you don't have the product, either change the product or get out of the way of those who do. That's the whole problem with the beef industry."