LOVE OF HORSES at a young age propelled Roy Fisher Jr. toward the ranching career he’s followed for more than 40 years. In the process, he’s consolidated several thousand acres of land broken into small farms when the Creek Nation’s holdings were parceled out.

Fisher Ranch Made Up Of Old
Fragments From Creek Nation

EUFAULA, Okla. — Standing on a hilltop, Roy Fisher Jr. looks out to the east, over elm and oak trees beginning to don their red and gold fall attire, over hay meadows dotted with large round bales from a second cutting and cattle and horses grazing the thick grasses. On the horizon is Lake Eufaula, the second largest man-made reservoir in the country.

The ranch, Fisher explains, sits between the North and South Canadian Rivers, which flow into Lake Eufaula.

The Fisher Ranch was originally part of the Creek Nation.

"They broke it all up and each Indian got so much land," Fisher says. "They had Negro slaves, so after the Civil War, they gave each slave so much land."

The Creek land was divided into 80 to 160 acre plots.

"That's one of the reasons there aren't any big ranches over in this part of the state," he says. "It was broken up into such small tracts. Since then, it's been pulled back together into economical units."

The people from whom Fisher bought his first property had started putting tracts together in the 1930s and had accumulated fewer than 5000 acres when he bought them out.

"I've spent my lifetime adding to it," he continues. "It's a little over doubled in size. It just takes that long to try to put one back together."

Fisher bought the first part of the ranch in 1954.

"I was just out of OSU and back from the army," he says. "It had 4500 acres originally. We've increased it to 12,000 acres in size, and we lease another ranch, so we're running cattle on 27,000 acres."

It's all mostly back to grass now, native species such as big and little bluestem. In addition to the native pasture, Fisher has about 2500 acres of bermuda grass.

"Where we have bermuda grass is all the country that was farmed," he explains. "We don't have a whole lot of farming over here in Eastern Oklahoma now. All this used to be in cotton, peanuts and corn."

"We've had the best moisture we've had in the 45 years that I've been here," Fisher says of this year, which was as good in his country as it was bad throughout the Southwest. "We've just gotten a second cutting of hay, which we’d never done before. We've got more grass than we've ever had this time of year."

They've also sprayed about 10,000 acres of the ranch as part of their timber control program, pushing the oak and elm back for more grass. It's expensive, Fisher admits, but he expects it to pay off.

Fisher was born and reared near Edmond, Okla., on the north side of Oklahoma City.

"I grew up in a farming operation," he explains, "but my father was in the automobile business in Oklahoma City, also. We had cattle and horses at Edmond."

Fisher decided what he wanted to do with his life the first time he was on horseback. He wrote a paper when he was in grade school saying he wanted to be a rancher.

"We basically looked for ranchland all over the area, in the Osage, in Western Oklahoma and Eastern Oklahoma," Fisher says. "We were able to get in here at a price we felt like we could afford to ranch on. I borrowed a quarter of a million dollars and my Dad went on my note with me, and that's the way I started. He never was involved over here, but he made it possible for me to borrow the money that got me started.

"Then I had four sons and a daughter. Two sons and a daughter are ranching here with me. This ranch is in trust for them, so we'll be able to pass it on without having a big inheritance tax problem."

Fisher runs a cow-calf operation along with stockers and horses.

"We run about 1000 mother cows and about 2000 to 2500 yearlings," he says.

One cow herd is straight Angus and another black baldies.

"On the Angus cows we use Polled Hereford bulls," he says. "On our black baldface cows we use Charolais bulls."

They keep about 100 head each year of straight Angus heifer calves and black baldface heifer calves for replacements.

"All our terminal cross calves, what I call three-way cross calves, we graze past weaning time and make yearlings out of them," he says. "Then we'll summer them. We feed all of our own cattle at Ford County Feedlot at Dodge City, Kan."

They have bought performance tested bulls since 1956. Fisher says he's very particular about the genetics in their herds.

"The reason we started feeding our own cattle was that we felt like it was the only way we could really capitalize on the genetics we’ve developed here," he says. "They talk an awful lot about giving a premium for calves that have the right genetics, but it just doesn't seem that they ever get around to getting that done, so we just own them from the time they’re born 'til they kill them."

There are about 100 ponds on the ranch, all filled by seasonal rains. The ranch gets about 42 inches of rain each year. The summers are hot, but the winters are generally mild, he says.

"Primarily, it stays in the 20s and 30s," Fisher says. "It doesn't get much colder than that. We have two or three snows a year, but it never stays on for more than two or three days at the most. We feed about 100 to 120 days out of the year."

They winter their cattle on cake and dry grass.

Fisher's retained ownership program affects what he looks for now in his bulls and cows.

"When we started out in the 1950s, we were picking the traits for milk production and what have you," he says. "At that time we were selling our calves at weaning time. We sold to the same man in Iowa for about 15 years. He was a corn grower and had his own feedlot up there, a small operation."

When that customer died, Fisher started retaining ownership of his cattle and feeding them out himself. That led to some changes in what he wanted in his herd.

"It became more important to us to get gainability and feedlot performance," he explains. "We found out that we weren't so concerned with getting these calves big by weaning time like we had been. It became more a question of fertility, more calves on the ground. We weren't so concerned with how big they were, because we'd graze them on through. It was more important how they converted that feed in the feedlot."

Retained ownership has also changed his calving schedule.

"We started out working real hard at early calving, fall calving, in this part of the country in order to get a big calf," he says. "Now, we've changed over to where we're spring calving altogether. For one thing, we can winter our cows a whole lot cheaper without a calf on them. We're getting better calf crop percentages than we were when we were trying to fall calve."

Fisher also has an active health program. All the calves get a series of immunizations when they are weaned and then boosters before they go to the feedyard.

"When they get to the feedlot, they've got pretty good immunities built up," he says. "We don't have any problems of losing cattle."

In addition to his calves, Fisher brings in yearlings, depending upon the grass he has.

"We buy 2000 to 2500 yearlings a year and put them with our home-raised cattle," he says. "We don't particularly run them together, but they're here as a way of harvesting the grass. By using the cow operation and the yearling operation, you can kind of adjust to how much grass you have."

In addition to their cattle operations, the Fishers also have a hunting program.

"We have a hunting club on the ranch," Fisher explains. "That's the responsibility of my son David. We have 35 to 40 members. It's primarily a family oriented type thing. They pay a fee of $1000 and can hunt on a year-around basis."

The ranch offers deer, turkey and quail, and also raises birds for custom hunts.

"They'll put so many birds out in the morning when someone's going to come here and hunt," Fisher says.

An area is set aside for hunters to park their vehicles and camp out.

"We have about 12 different entrances on the ranch with combination locks on them," he says. "The hunters have those combinations, and we have all-weather roads at those locations where they can come and go as they please. Each year, my son changes that combination when he gets new members. That's how we control this thing."

A lot of people in the club bring their families. They hike and picnic and do other things besides hunt, Fisher says.

"This has been a good alternate source of revenue for us to go along with the cattle and horse business," he notes.

While the Fisher Ranch has a hunting program, cow-calf operation and stocker operation, Fisher's horses are his passion.

"I started in the horse business in 1949 when I was still in high school," he explains.

They maintain three bands of broodmares and three studs.

"Primarily, we've used the Bert bloodline, the Oklahoma Star bloodline and the Leo bloodline," Fisher says. "Over the year’s we have done a lot of line breeding and developed a set of mares. We run about 65 brood mares here on the ranch. They're primarily three-quarter sisters. We pasture breed. We turn out a stallion with those mares about the middle of March each year and they stay out until the first of August."

They foal in the pastures, and colts are sold at weaning in the fall.

"All the colts every year are contracted by weaning time," Fisher says. "The buyers make a down payment. We write a contract guaranteeing that the colts will be sound at weaning time. They pay the balance in October when they come pick up their colts."

All the working horses in Fisher's remuda are from the herd. They usually retain about 15 head for their using string, and David will keep about 10 head for hunters.

"We also retain a lot of fillies, because everything on the ranch is from our breeding program," Fisher continues. That includes the studs.

Retained colts are halter broken at weaning time, then turned loose. They are broken as two year-olds and ridden for 60 to 90 days, then turned out for a year.

"Then we pick them back up and stay with them," Fisher says.

Everybody who rides trains his or her own horses.

"My daughter, Anne, is probably the best hand when it comes to really handling the horses," Fisher says. "She does a lot of the halter breaking. We used to halter break these colts before people would come and get them, but we don't do that anymore. We've just got too many."

Fisher is proud of his family, the ranch he has built, and the quality of his cow herds, but he maintains that his horses are the best in the country.

"There does not exist another horse breeding program in America that can out-perform our horses in the various working events," he contends proudly.