MORE THAN A CENTURY of ranching in his family gives Jim Hagenbarth a profound fondness for his land and livestock, but he’s concerned that the industry may come under enough diverse pressures to kill it. His hope is that the public will finally discover the importance of livestock and rural people to both the economy and the environment before it’s too late.

Hagenbarth Family In Ranching
Since 1880s And Still Going

By Colleen Schreiber

DILLON, Mont. — Ranching in the West has undergone tremendous changes since its inception more than a century ago, and Jim Hagenbarth’s family and ancestors have lived through a good many of those changes. They’ve been operating in southwestern Montana since the late 1860s and in northern Idaho since the late 1880s.

Jim’s grandfather, F.J. "Frank" Hagenbarth, was the first white man born in Lemhi County, Idaho. They came to the area to mine, but the prospecting business wasn’t as profitable as they’d hoped, and they soon became solely involved in agriculture.

Hagenbarth started Wood Livestock in the late 1880s. At one time the outfit was running 150,000 head of sheep and 50,000 cattle on two million acres. It went broke in 1933, Hagenbarth says, in part because of the Depression and also because his grandfather got too involved in industry organizations and didn’t pay close enough attention to matters at home.

Jim’s father, Dave, born in 1901, worked alongside his own father until the ranch went under in 1933. He then broke the outfit up for the bank, borrowed some money from a man in Helena, and bought a band of sheep. He got his feet back under him and started slowly putting things back together in 1938.

Today Jim Hagenbarth and his brother are partners on much of the same country their grandfather once ran, but the operation is about five percent of what it used to be back then in terms of livestock numbers. Like most western ranchers, they operate on a combination of federal, state and deeded land.

Their Idaho country is 100 miles south of their Montana headquarters, on the south side of the Continental Divide about 40 miles west of Yellowstone National Park. Most of the land that the Hagenbarths operate only has an average annual rainfall of five to nine inches. The growing season averages about 70 to 80 days.

Jim says his father was a tremendous stockman, more of a sheepman than a cattleman.

"Every year he would go to the National Ram Sale in Ogden and buy the best ram there," Hagenbarth says of his father. "The purebred breeders hated to see him coming. He would take a tape and measure everything you could measure. He had a little formula he made up, and the one with the highest figure was the one he bought, period."

Hagenbarth says they have some of the best sheep range in the whole world, though today the brothers no longer run sheep. It’s strictly a cow outfit. They got out of sheep in 1974.

"Right now, even if we wanted to, they probably wouldn’t let us convert back to sheep. They don’t want to mix sheep with grizzly bear habitat because the bears get in trouble," he says of government land managers.

Coyotes and bears are their two toughest predators, but he expects the threat from wolves to increase. Wolves from the park, he says, are getting closer and closer.

"We could probably market branded Hagenbarth lamb in New York City," Hagenbarth continues. "Our grandfather did in the 1920s. It’s unbelievable the kind of lamb we can produce here."

Hagenbarth grew up tending camp. He also helped with the cattle. His father ran about 1200 head of cattle in addition to the sheep.

"The sheep always got the best of everything and the cattle just got to clean up," Hagenbarth recalls. "So the cowboys and the sheep boys didn’t always get along."

Like his father, Hagenbarth says, he too was partial to sheep.

"They’re easier to manage and they’re a better range tool, not to mention they’re better eating."

His father taught him a lot, but the best lesson he taught him was patience.

"You have to understand the livestock, watch what they’re doing. Dad always said, ‘see what you’re looking at.’ Dad was always a year or two ahead. He wasn’t thinking about a week or month ahead, but a year or two."

Hagenbarth graduated from the University of Notre Dame in business management. His father died while he was still in college. Following college he came back to the ranch. It was his plan all along, he says.

Today Hagenbarth runs an English-based cow herd. In 1971 after discussions with folks at USDA’s Meat Animal Research Center at Clay Center, Nebraska, Hagenbarth implemented a rotational backcross breeding system using the Hereford and Angus breeds. Offspring out of Hereford bulls are bred to Angus bulls and offspring of Angus bloodlines are bred back to a Hereford bull. The result enables Hagenbarth to run two herds, one made up of two-thirds Hereford, one-third Angus cows and the other two-thirds Angus, one-third Hereford cows.

Hagenbarth began carrying some of his yearlings through to the feedlot to obtain detailed carcass information. He was disappointed and somewhat surprised in what he learned about his English-based herd. His cattle, he found, did not grade, and many were Yield Grade 3’s, 4’s and 5’s.

"We had a lot of Select cattle, which was very surprising considering that we have a lot of Angus blood."

For years Hagenbarth focused on light birthweights and heavy yearlings weights, which in the end made for a fairly large mature cow. After sorting through the information and visiting more with the experts, Hagenbarth concluded that this emphasis likely contributed to the unexpectedly poor carcass performance.

Hagenbarth felt he couldn’t correct the problem with either of the two breeds, so he’s trial testing a composite bull. The bloodlines making up the composite are half Angus, a quarter South Devon and a quarter Tarentaise. The South Devon, he says, is the highest yielding British breed and is supposedly known for its tenderness; the Tarentaise, he says, should remove any udder problems in his cow herd.

Hagenbarth says his target is YG 1’s and 2’s and 70 percent Choice, a target he believes should be attainable.

Composites offer a big kick in hybrid vigor, but there are drawbacks, the rancher notes. The first is that there is little EPD information available on composite breeds. Another important consideration is that those developing composite breeds must have a large enough "bull factory" to prevent line breeding.

Hagenbarth is currently running about 2200 mother cows in a spring and fall calving program. The fall calving program was only started this year. Having two calving seasons allows him to cut his bull herd in half and gives him two different marketing periods.

In the spring, starting the first of April, one man is in charge of calving about 1000 cows in three bunches of 300-some. They brand on average 97 percent. The spring pairs are trucked to their Idaho ranch for summer grazing. Grass starts coming by May 1. There the pasture is so good, Hagenbarth says, that last year the cattle averaged 2.56 pounds a day over 81 days.

Spring calves are marketed in November and December, usually weighing 750 to 800 pounds, and fall calves are shipped in March and April. The spring market, Hagenbarth says, is usually the best market.

Hagenbarth raises his own replacements. In doing so he first looks for the average and picks right out of the middle.

"You don’t want the real good ones because they’re on the outside of the bell curve and they’re not breeding true," he explains.

He picks his fall calving replacements at 14 months of age. Because he has a longer time to choose them, Hagenbarth says he’s able to make a better pick. Spring calving replacements are chosen about the middle of April.

"They’re pretty naked at that time, so I can see exactly what I’m looking at," he explains.

Fall calving first-calf heifers this past year had a pregnancy rate of 90 percent, and 95 percent of those produced calves.

"You determine the genetics," he says. "Your success in the cow-calf industry depends first on whether or not you get that cow bred back every year."

Hagenbarth carries most all his calves over to yearlings. He eventually hopes to retain ownership through the feedlot stage, but he says that until he gets carcass performance to the level he wants, he won’t take on the added risk of feeding.

"We now know enough about our cattle, and until we get them where we want them to be carcass-wise, a grid will kill us," he explains.

It’s very important that producers be students of the market, Hagenbarth believes. "After all, it determines down the road whether you survive or not. It’s inexcusable for so many people in this business to be ignorant about the market."

He recently sent 58 composites weighing 888 pounds to Decatur County Feedyard. They were priced in at $65.75.

"If you work through that, you have to have $62.50 to break even and you can’t even hedge that on the board now," Hagenbarth notes. "Other than the carcass data we will get from them, we’re a fool to feed them.

"If you understand how your cattle feed and you understand the grids, the futures, the cattle cycle, etc. lots of times you’re money ahead to sell your cattle on the hoof."

Stocking rates are variable throughout his operation depending on whether it is summer or winter range, location, etc. Hagenbarth is about to complete a 10-year project which involved developing several intensive grazing systems. Some of his desert country is in an intensive grazing system which can be stocked at three acres per animal unit month. It’s only grazed once for about seven days in the spring during the growing season and then twice during the dormant season, once in the fall and once in the winter.

"The most important factor in any grazing system is time," Hagenbarth insists. "The number of livestock doesn’t make much difference. That’s why sheep are such a good grazing tool. They cause a lot of disturbance for one day, and then they move to another area.

"The biggest part of management of the resource is calculated disturbance," he continues. "You have to graze the land to keep it healthy. There’s really no other option unless you go around with a bunch of people with weedeaters.

Even the wilderness needs management," he continues. "If you don’t have disturbance, you’re in trouble. Disturbance is what nature is all about. If you disturb it too much, if you overgraze, you have a problem; if you undergraze, you have a problem.

Hagenbarth has implemented a monitoring system in his intensively grazed pastures to track the vegetation and ensure that the diversity of the plant community remains intact.

He has also implemented various water projects to help improve grazing distribution and get better or additional use in areas that would otherwise be unusable.

On some of his desert country, he put in a $100,000 project which includes using two submergible pumps to move water from a warm spring through 15 miles of pipeline to 14 troughs and four storage tanks. This project alone, he says, allows him the flexibility to carry up to a third of an AUM per acre on ground that has an annual precipitation of five to nine inches.

Fencing off riparian areas, Hagenbarth insists, is not a solution.

"Generally the reason we have a problem on riparian areas is because the grazing system being used is dysfunctional. You can cure the problem by developing the uplands, putting in water, burning sage, etc. We run into problems on some areas because prescribed fire has been eliminated. We have sagebrush areas we treated with fire that we actually had to salt the cattle back down on the creeks because they were using the uplands too much."

Hagenbarth also uses the various classes of livestock to manipulate the rangeland so he gets the most grazing possible off a particular area. For example, he says, the lower meadows have a tremendous amount of forage.

"The way you graze it depends on how much good you get out of it. We’ll first graze it with fall calvers. We’ll let them top it and we’ll wean the calves there and let them top it until they get over weaning, and then breed the fall calvers and they’ll top it again. Then we bring some cows in off the desert and they clean it up."

Hagenbarth says it has become tremendously difficult to make a living in the livestock industry. For that reason he’s continually searching for new ways to make his operation work. One of the first things he did was put the cow back to work.

"We used to calve in sheds. We were calving the cows. We want the cows to calve themselves," he explains.

They no longer bale their hay meadows, either.

"It doesn’t make sense to harvest it by haying it," Hagenbarth comments. "It costs too much money and we simply can’t afford it. We can’t support any iron with cattle, and you can’t support much supplemental feeding except for strategic supplementation."

They do bale their alfalfa fields, from which they get their first cutting about the first of July. Because of their short growing season, they generally don’t get more than two cuttings per season. Their alfalfa meadows are irrigated by gravity flow or flood irrigation from rivers and streams.

Hagenbarth says his area is good cow country, in part because he doesn’t have much winter.

"We might get a storm that will dump 15 inches of snow, but very rarely will it ever stay for more than 10 to 15 days."

Last year, though, an El Niño year, was a little different story. They had a foot of snow and it stayed the entire winter. Hagenbarth says any time additional supplementation is required, it’s questionable whether or not you can survive in the livestock industry they way it is right now.

"We have the potential for the cattle to gain in the summertime, but the winter costs add up. I don’t see how those folks in the mountain valleys who have to feed their livestock four or five or six months out of the year survive," Hagenbarth says.

Government-protected "endangered" species, particularly the wolf and the grizzly bear, are making deep inroads in a rancher’s ability to manage public lands in a stewardship-like manner, Hagenbarth says. The rancher, he insists, is now the predator.

"It’s gotten worse over the last decade. Environmentalists are using the Endangered Species Act to deepen and wrench private property rights away from the rancher. They don’t truly understand what our function is out here. We have one of the three tools that can be used to manage the resources of the West, and that’s grazing, the other two being timber and prescribed burning. Recreation is a use of the public lands, but it doesn’t enhance the lands at all. We shouldn’t allow recreation to be given priority over use if the use is used to manage the resource," Hagenbarth stresses.

Recreation, he insists, is by far the most highly subsidized use on federal lands.

"The general public is getting a freebie on recreation. You shouldn’t believe you have the right to recreate for free just because you’re a taxpayer. Everyone pays taxes. Some people choose to go golfing or go to a Cubs game. Some want to go out here, but that doesn’t mean they should get to do it for free. You pay to go to a Cubs game. You pay to go to a show. We pay for our livestock use, and everyone should have to pay for the recreation use.

"Environmental communities are all about exclusive use for exclusive people," he continues. "Wilderness is beautiful country, but they’re going to lock everyone out unless you can carry a backpack, you’re healthy and you have the money and the time to do it."

There are some who refer to federal grazing as a subsidy, but Hagenbarth insists that’s far from the truth.

"We pay $1.35 an AUM on federal land, and private leases run between $15 to $18 an AUM. What people don’t understand is that a public land lease is like an unfurnished apartment that doesn’t have a roof on it. Before you can use it you have to finish it, whereas on a private lease, everything is finished," he explains.

All costs considered, "Our Forest Service allotments cost us about $18 an AUM. I can lease pasture cheaper than that. So federal land is certainly not a subsidy."

Hagenbarth notes that U.S. consumers spend only a small percentage of their disposable income on food while in most other countries consumers spend 50 or 60 percent.

"America hasn’t been hungry for a long, long time. Food doesn’t mean anything to us, consequently, those who produce it don’t reap any benefit."

Open spaces and the rural West, he adds, are beginning to mean a lot to the general public.

"They don’t understand what makes it open, though. If we’ve done such a poor job of taking care of the public resource for them, then you ask them why they’re coming out here," he says.

"Ranchers have created value in this land over time," Hagenbarth continues, "because they have been good stewards of the land. That work has been paid for out of our own pocket. That’s a value that we have never been paid for. If the American public continues to want the ground to be open and rural and they say they want that, then they’re going to have to figure out some way to compensate the rural public western land rancher. Otherwise, he’s not going to be able to survive, and he’s going to cash the heart right out of that public land."

Hagenbarth fears that in the short term there is a good possibility all grazing will be eliminated from public lands.

But in the long term, he predicts, grazing will be back.

"Our standard of living can’t stay as high as it is," he explains. "The way our economy is going and the way we’re relying on imports and with our national debt, I really think that our standard of living will drop. People will finally have to go to work to make a living. I’m talking about the recreationists. At that time we will rotate back into a more realistic approach in regards to land management in the West.

Of course, he adds, "I may be wrong."

For landowners like Hagenbarth, the appeal of the West is a catch-22. On one hand it drives the cost of land up, which makes it difficult for ranchers to expand their operations. The other problem is that most private lands are alongside creeks and rivers. Selling those areas, Hagenbarth explains, renders a lot of the public land allotments useless because they no longer have access to water.

On the other hand, it’s good in that ranchers reap handsome returns from their land if they decide to or are forced to cash out.

Generally, he notes, the people who buy these ranches don’t understand much if anything about ranching — or the environment, for that matter.

"They don’t have the drive or the knowledge as to what it takes to maintain a healthy ecosystem. The only way to do that is to put your nose in the dirt and your ass in the air and study it and look at it and live it and work with it. That’s how you learn it. That takes a lot of time and a lot of money. Those folks coming in are not willing to put out that effort," Hagenbarth says.

"It’s more of a hobby or playtime for them. They want to live the life, but they don’t want to pay the dues to be successful, and when I say successful I mean to keep the ecology healthy, diverse and vibrant."

Government regulation on public lands has made it increasingly difficult to manage the resource in the way it should be managed. Because operating on federal land is taking so much more management time, Hagenbarth says he’s seriously considering divesting himself of all public lands which are not absolutely necessary to his operation.

Hagenbarth has one son in college who is interested in coming back to the family operation, but he worries about his future. The estate tax issue, he says, is the real killer now.

"We’re not out here to make money. We’re here to make a living, to work with the land and leave it better than we found it, to make a good lifestyle and family life.

"We’re asking agriculture to operate and compete on a free trade basis when the trade is not fair. That will eventually break us in agriculture. The European Community realizes that agriculture is very important to their countries and they subsidize it. Whether or not we should be subsidizing agriculture I don’t know, but if things don’t change, we’re not going to have any agriculture to subsidize, and if you ever start importing all your food, it’s going to be a disaster down the road."

As for the future of the beef industry itself, Hagenbarth says it’s up to the producers to move the industry forward in terms of convenient, consistent beef products.

"The rest of the world isn’t Santa Claus. You have to make your breaks. The beef carcass is like gold. It has so much more going for it than chicken, yet look what they’ve done with chicken," Hagenbarth says.

"We must produce a safe, convenient, good tasting product. If we don’t, then we’re done and we will go the way of the sheep industry."