NY Times - A Harder Outlook for Today’s Cowboy

For more than a century now, the National Western Stock Show has been a proud totem of the old frontier — a place where rodeos, ranching and cowboys still live and breathe, even as Denver’s cow town roots have long since faded. These days, as lofts and breweries spring up in the once blighted industrial neighborhoods near the old stockyards, the show has also become a colorful illustration of just how strikingly life on the range has changed. And there is perhaps no greater example of this shift than cattle ranching. As suburbs around the West have crept farther out onto the plains and the cost of raising cattle has risen, the number of cattle has dwindled to the lowest level since 1952, according to 2013 data from the United States Department of Agriculture. Years of drought have also left pastureland harder to come by, ranchers say.

At the stock show last week, generations of ranchers who come each January to showcase and sell their animals told of the marked changes they have had to make in recent years to maintain their livelihoods and traditions. Gone are the days when a cattleman could simply eyeball his herd to figure out which animals to breed; these days, cutting-edge genetic techniques are used to identify the strongest cattle and those requiring the least amount of grass. “It’s a tough, rapidly changing business,” said Marshall Ernst, a cattle rancher from Windsor, Colo., who serves as senior director of livestock operations at the two-week stock show, which runs through Sunday. “Those who are not taking advantage of new technology or are resistant to change may not be able to survive.” Finding good, knowledgeable cowboys has also become harder, as more people have moved to cities away from the rural communities that raised them, cattlemen here said. And these days, ranchers must spend considerably more money and time on marketing their cattle over the Internet to stay relevant and profitable. At a showcase of breeding cattle last week, ranchers drawled quietly into their cellphones, negotiating sales and checking on business back home. From his front-row seat, Newley Hutchison, a sixth-generation rancher from Seiling, Okla., whose ancestors were original homesteaders, watched intently as a set of prized heifers he was trying to sell stared blankly out at the crowd. He talked of the mounting pressure ranchers feel to keep up with all the advancements, like the newest genetic markers being used for herds and the latest computerized equipment to maximize the efficiency of land...more