Let’s talk about stocker cattle

Colorado State University Extension, University of Wyoming Extension and the USDA Agricultural Research Service are announcing a new research effort targeting stocker operators in eastern Colorado and Wyoming, in preparation for the Flexible Stocking Summit at Nunn Sept. 19.

Maybe they’re known as savvy buyers of “odds and ends” at the sale barn. Perhaps they are cow-calf operators who hold back some steers for extra profit. Or, they run a crackerjack starting yard. They are the so-called “elusive” stocker operators. These operations exist because of a simple fact­ — young cattle are risky cattle, and feedlots prefer a safer investment. Stocker operators get those rangy steers into feedlot shape.

Many of the adventures of the open range period in eastern Colorado — illustrious outfits led by stockmen such as John W. Iliff, Jared L. Brush and Tilghman P. Hersperger — were operations that are similar in several ways to modern stocker operations. They would purchase low-cost, high-risk longhorns from the Texas/New Mexico country, improve the cattle on their shortgrass ranges in eastern Colorado and deliver them on the hoof as required by contract buyers.
 

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