October 14, 2025 • 36 mins
A lobby fight over the beef checkoff. A dusty arena humming with beginners and world champs. And a simple reframing that changed everything: team roping isn’t just a rodeo discipline - it’s “cowboy golf.” We sit down with Denny Gentry to chart how a ranch kid from southern New Mexico helped unite a divided industry, grew local qualifiers into national institutions, and built the infrastructure that turned a ranch skill into a billion‑dollar ecosystem.
Denny recounts the hard lessons from Santa Fe, where ranchers split over a new assessment and the vote became an eye‑opener in coalition-building. That political savvy carried into the arena, where smart handicaps and day permits opened the gate to new ropers without diluting the culture. We follow the rise of USTRC and the World Series of Team Roping, the birth of a barrier system now used nationwide, and the people-powered database that quietly became a travel safety net and community directory for Western families crisscrossing the country.
Horses, cattle, and beef are the same story here. Denny explains how roping cattle move into the beef supply, why Corrientes fit evolving consumer tastes in lean beef, and how the Riata Stallion Incentive links earnings to bloodlines in partnership with AQHA and Equine Network. The result is a clearer market for performance horses and a recognition that roping increasingly sets the price signals for the broader Western horse economy. We also touch on modern nutrition science, methane research, and how better data has shifted the tone from defense to confident clarity.
If you care about ranching, horses, beef demand, or just love a good origin story, this one is packed with trail-tested insights and practical wins. Subscribe, share with a friend who ropes (or wants to), and leave a review telling us the moment that surprised you most.
Thanks for tuning in to Behind the Burger!
Stay connected with us — follow @NMBEEF on TikTok and Instagram, New Mexico Beef Council on Facebook and visit nmbeef.com for recipes, nutrition info, a local beef directory and more.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:03):
Welcome back to another episode of Behind the
Burger.
I'm Caroline Romo, the executivedirector for the New Mexico Beef
Council, and I'm here with DennyGentry, who lives here in
Albuquerque, and he is theformer executive of the New
Mexico Cattle Growers, founderof the USTRC, the World Series
Team Roping, the Super Loopermagazine, and Riata Stallion
(00:26):
Incentive.
Denny, thank you for joining thepodcast.
My pleasure.
I'm so excited to have you here.
Well, I kind of like to startfrom the beginning.
SPEAKER_00 (00:33):
So where are you from and and uh kind of what's
the background that down insouthern Otero County, there we
are placed that kind of straddlethe Texas-New Mexico line
between Carlsbad and El Paso,there, a little town called Dale
City that my grandfatherfounded.
SPEAKER_01 (00:49):
Perfect.
Well, and and uh you've livedother places and you started at
um um or you helped start withthe New Mexico Beef Council, and
we you told me about the um atbeing the executive secretary
for the New Mexico cattlegrowers.
Of course, our organizationswork hand in hand in a lot of
ways, but ta talk to me aboutthe the New Mexico Beef Council
and your involvement there.
SPEAKER_00 (01:10):
Well, as in the mid-80s, I think it was mid-80s
when the beef checkoff waspassed, and of course it was
building up steam.
Check-off was getting passed inlots of states, and that was the
promoting beef was the the um uhwhat every association was
wanting to do.
Uh, you know, we've got topromote ourselves.
(01:31):
If we don't, well, you know,that was going in, the farm
bureau was doing it, and all thecattle organizations were doing
it, and here in New Mexico, theytried a couple of times and got
close.
But one year pretty mucheverybody got on the same page
and they were gonna try to getthe beef checkoff done.
And uh at that time I was uhrunning the Cattleman
(01:54):
Association and the mainlobbyist there handled all the
lobbying in Washington and SantaFe.
And um I I would say probably umuh as it went along, I wound up
Farm Bureau was partners with uson this thing, but as it went
along, they started dumping moreand more of that on me.
(02:16):
And all and the reason was isbecause when we went up there,
we thought all the cowboys wereunited in one group and we were
gonna rah-rah pass this thingthrough.
And that was not the casebecause there were a lot of
cowboys that didn't like thatidea of being taxed on their
cattle, and um they were alittle bit unhappy about it, and
(02:37):
uh, two or three of them weresenators.
Oof.
And so they were very silentlyworking behind the scenes to
counter everything that we weredoing.
And at some point, Farm Bureausaid, Okay, we're we're handling
this.
You try to handle your peopleover there.
And I understood what theymeant.
So we had two groups of rancherswalking around that rotunda up
(03:01):
there, one group working for andone group roping working
against, and us running aroundtrying to patch all the places,
and the and the legislators,representatives of the senators
were saying, Hey, we'll dowhatever you guys want to do as
soon as y'all can agree on whatit is you want to do.
SPEAKER_01 (03:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (03:19):
And uh, and eventually we got it through,
you know.
But it was it was um it was thefirst time that I had ever
lobbied on something, you know,because usually when you go up
there, all the cowboys were forthe same thing.
This was the first time that itwas split down the middle and
and it was an eye-opener.
SPEAKER_01 (03:37):
Oh yeah, it makes you worry.
I think I think in some wayssometimes the checkoff is still
a split conversation.
Um but or and I'm reallygrateful that that it is in
existence for not only mycareer, but also the the impact
that I see it ha has withconsumers.
Yeah.
Um so well, I and I also thinkthat when we talk about the
podcast, we try and kind ofexplain who the beef council is.
(04:00):
And it's interesting to me thatwe're created by state and
federal law, but then now as ouras an organization, we can't
lobby and we don't do anythingpolitics.
That's what New Mexico CattleGrowers is for.
SPEAKER_00 (04:12):
Yeah, that was exactly that was it was that way
back then, see, because a lot oftimes I would be carrying the
water for the livestock boardand in a lot of cases for New
Mexico State University, becauseat that time they weren't
allowed.
So anything that was going onwith the Ag College, Farm Bureau
and Cattle Growers were the twothat were carrying the carrying
the mail on that.
SPEAKER_01 (04:32):
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, and it's come a long way,right?
I think uh New Mexicoagriculture has uh has won a lot
of um big things, and and uh I Isee positivity uh and I also see
positivity in me not having toto take bills to the floor.
SPEAKER_00 (04:47):
That's well we we and we had a really Farm Bureau
had always been kind of um theyweren't real proactive
politically, and cattle growerswas during that time period, and
then in the late 80s they hadthis young guy come along and he
was was pretty aggressive and hehe did a hell of a job.
(05:07):
His name was Jeff Wheedy.
SPEAKER_01 (05:10):
Uh well we just had a podcast with Jeff.
He was one of our one of ourguests a couple times ago.
Yeah, and he said he was uh areluctant politician.
SPEAKER_00 (05:19):
Well, he wasn't actually, he can say that on um,
but but I had worked with fivedifferent um uh government guys
for Farm Bureau and and Jeff waswas in a different league.
SPEAKER_01 (05:31):
Yeah, oh man, that's so cool.
Yeah, I know he he said his histrajectory wasn't originally
that, but then it worked, andthen he realized he found a uh
found his place.
SPEAKER_00 (05:40):
There you go.
So yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (05:42):
That's neat.
That's neat.
Um we've already talked about uhbefore we started recording the
the small world of New Mexicoagriculture, and even
agriculture in general.
Uh so to kind of get right intoit with um even your your titles
and the the introduction.
So New Mexico cattle growers,the the rumors are or the story
(06:02):
is which you've you've nowconfirmed and we'll let you
confirm again that that one ofthe first team ropings that you
put on was for the New Mexicocattle growers.
SPEAKER_00 (06:09):
I had a friend over there, Don King, was the
executive director for Texas andSouthwestern Cattle Raisers.
And uh we had a membership.
Um membership in ourorganization was a little bit
stale, and then you know you'dhear them talking, you know,
everybody here is old, and wegot to get the kids involved,
and how do you do that?
And so every cattle organizationwas trying to get new membership
(06:33):
in.
And and Don King had a programhe was running in Texas, and it
was um association uh cuttings,and they wouldn't allow anyone
that was a professional horsetrainer or involved in a QHA
cutting or anything.
They had to be on the ranch andthey had to be either an
employee or family member orsomething like that.
(06:55):
And they had kicked that off andran it for two years and were
just going gangbusters on theirdeal and getting all these young
people in and getting theirmembership picked up.
And Don called me up on thephone and he said, You need to
do that in New Mexico.
You need to go.
I said, We don't have anycutting over here.
And he said, Well, what do theywhat do the cowboys do?
And I said, Team rope.
(07:16):
He'll team ropers.
He said, Well, do it with teamrope, but don't be a dummy.
So uh Jasper Coons, who livedover on the in Rio Rancho over
there, Jasper was an old turtle.
And he was a rancher, and he wasformer chairman of our
membership committee andeverything.
And when I hit him with that, heoh, I'll run interference with
(07:37):
the board of directors, I'll getthis through.
So we built a a uh county bycounty um um we'd go around
qualify ropers in the counties,and then we would have at the
state convention, we would havean event here in Albuquerque
over at Tingley.
(07:57):
And what started happening wasis we started having people from
Texas and Colorado and Arizonajoining New Mexico Cattle Grove
so they could get in that teamroping.
And um uh we that we startedthat in '83, and by about
eighty-six or eighty-seven itwas getting out of hand, and the
board of directors called me inand said, Well, our dues at that
(08:21):
time was$40 a year, and theysaid, you know, um Stockman
magazine cost us X dollars amember, and the newsletters cost
us X doll a member, and thesepeople aren't interested in
categories, they're interestedin roping, and by our
estimation, we're losing tendollars a member to your team
roping.
(08:41):
And so I said, Well, I'll comeup with an idea because this was
a benefit.
We were the funds werebenefiting New Mexico and uh and
uh boys and girls ranch.
Okay.
Is what that where that wasgoing to.
So the next year I came in and Isaid, Okay, if you're not
interested in cattle growers, wewill let you come, but you're
(09:02):
gonna pay a day permit.
And so 380, 390 teams ofdivision over here at Tingley
Coliseum with Calcuttans.
And when it was all said anddone, the permits made more
money than the roping did forthe for the charity.
And by that time it's dawning onme that kind of like you said
(09:25):
about Jeff Wheedy, that I mayhave found my niche here.
SPEAKER_01 (09:28):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (09:29):
And that's kind of where it all took off at.
And so we did New MexicoChampionships in 88 and 89, and
uh turned my resignation in in89, and we started US TRC in
January of 1990.
SPEAKER_01 (09:43):
Wow.
Wow.
So I I know for some NewMexicans they're really proud of
the fact to see how how that'sgrown and that it that it
started in New Mexico.
Uh I've I had a rancher tell methat story as I was getting on a
flight to to go to Vegas to gorope in the finale.
Well, you know the history, andso that's really neat.
SPEAKER_00 (10:02):
Well, and it's it's it was uh really funny because
New Mexico has never ever reallyacknowledged that.
In fact, uh we had every majorfacility in the United States
trying to get us to come put onthe U.S.
finals in their area, and wecouldn't even get the the um
Chamber of Commerce or anybodyin Albuquerque to acknowledge
(10:26):
that they were worried about theArab horse show.
SPEAKER_01 (10:29):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (10:30):
And and we're saying we're homegrown.
We're building this wholeindustry here in Albuquerque.
They didn't care, and the samewith World Series.
When World Series came on, uhthis is not cowboy country.
Right.
And it just doesn't, it does itnever did resonate here.
SPEAKER_01 (10:48):
Well, and it's a it's a important part of what we
do at the beef council too.
We had billboards this summerand and then we have this
podcast trying to teach peoplethat New Mexico is beef country,
and New Mexico is cowboycountry.
I mean, yes, Albuquerque,obviously, in in ways you've
seen more than me that themisn't as accepting of it, but
(11:09):
New Mexicans, we there'scowboys, the cowboyist of
cowboys.
Like we are the wild west in alot of ways.
SPEAKER_00 (11:16):
It's it's all together, you know.
The whole I I'm um of course,you know, for the last 30 years
I'm dealing with United Statesand Canada and Brazil and and uh
I even have ropings in DominicanRepublican.
I did I we did ropings for awhile in the Czech Republic, a
little uh in Italy.
(11:38):
My man that was in Italy thatwas putting on the events in
Europe has retired and startedgrowing almonds now, so I don't
have that over there anymore.
But when you start thinking interms of national and
international, um I just don'tthink in terms of New Mexico any
longer.
You know, I mean it's part ofthe But yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (11:59):
Yeah, gone beyond.
It's gone beyond.
Yeah, yeah, no doubt.
Um well, so for for folks ifthere's listeners or um or
viewers watching that um maybedon't understand team rubbing,
so I just want to kind of goback to team rubbing from from
the very base of it is a skillor a or a tool, or can be a
(12:20):
skill or a tool used on a ranch,right?
When you're in a pasture,especially in New Mexico, you
can't get an animal to a horsetrailer or you know, a cow
trailer, you can't get them to atrailer necessarily, you can't
get them to a small pen todoctor.
But what you do have is a horseand a rope.
And that's still a pretty commonway of doctoring um and managing
herds.
And then like like anything, wegot it we got a little
(12:44):
competitive back in the day,right?
And so um so so team roping isnow a competition, right?
It's now an equine competitionand a very large equine
competition thanks to a lot ofthe work you do.
SPEAKER_00 (12:55):
Well, I've I've been pitching the same pitch for
three decades and it's startingto catch on now.
I'm starting to see it in a lotof crit and everything because
they always would try to go,well, you've got working cow
horse and you've got cutting andraining, and team roping is a
discipline.
It's one of the rodeodisciplines and everything.
Well, the drum I've beat allalong is no, no, no, no.
(13:15):
This is cowboy golf.
We are cowboy golf.
We are not a discipline.
And now everybody's starting tocatch on and going, because
we've got all the cutters andthe reiners and the racetrack
guys and the ranchers and thefarmers, and anybody else that
watched Yellowstone that wantsto compete.
SPEAKER_01 (13:32):
Yeah, they come to team roping.
Well, and it has such a greatentry-level uh thing, not not to
go too far into it, but it'sit's set up that that uh we can,
that beginners can be winners insome ways.
SPEAKER_00 (13:43):
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01 (13:43):
Yeah, yeah.
Um so how else would you say theindustries are connected, team
roping and ranching?
SPEAKER_00 (13:51):
Um you know, I think there was a time I've talked to
you two or three times, andyou're kind of thinking in terms
of beef, beef, beef.
But I've never looked at that inin that paradigm.
Um To me, it's cattle and horsesand cowboys and the whole realm
(14:14):
of it.
How you can't separate it.
I mean you can't separate thehorse breeding and it's another
side of it and no more than youcan with water and minerals and
every other thing that goesalong with living in the sixteen
western states and now beyondthat, you know.
So it's I don't view beef as aseparate entity.
(14:35):
And in fact, you know, I guessthat's had a guy tell me here a
while back, he said, Well, youyou don't know that much about
the beef industry.
And I said, Well, I know alittle.
And he said, Well, what do youknow?
And I said, Well, I know thatthere's 40,000 members in our
organization, there's 20,000that come and go, there's sixty
thousand, and if you take thatsixty thousand, cut it in half
(14:56):
to about thirty thousand, andfigure out that they buy two
sets of cattle to practice on ayear from six to twelve head.
Um we're handling about aquarter of a million head of
steers a year that are gonnawind up in slaughter at some
point.
And he kind of looked at me,what are you talking?
I said, Well, we're in the beefbusiness.
SPEAKER_01 (15:16):
Oh, but yeah, absolutely.
I think uh the yeah, the cattlethat are used for roping might
not be the same cattle that arefor the stakes and the the you
know, high quality cuts, butthey're still a high quality
meat and it's still a greatanimal that's gonna go into the
beef supply.
SPEAKER_00 (15:34):
I mean, with this grass-fed thing going on, I mean
you're you're seeing a lot, alot of marketing and packing
going on on these coriantes andand or the native um rope and
cattle.
And it's happening more andmore, and people are moving to a
thing.
I mean, that's that's what theysee.
(15:54):
What's what y'all areadvertising, lean beef, and so
they know where to find it, andthat's usually us first.
SPEAKER_01 (15:59):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think uh yeah, I mean, that'sI always tease uh I don't have a
lot of cattle myself, but I dohave seven head of core innies.
SPEAKER_00 (16:08):
I kind of nailed you, didn't we?
SPEAKER_01 (16:10):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
How many times do you buy those?
Well, we actually uh we've heldon to these ones for quite some
time.
Yeah.
We don't practice very much.
SPEAKER_00 (16:19):
Of course, this market right now, we'll never
see this again.
And a lot of people are hangingon.
SPEAKER_01 (16:24):
Yes, yeah, yeah.
We are we are those.
And uh for whatever reason we'vebeen really lucky with uh some
of our cattle.
We can keep them about twoyears, but we we are also
weekend warriors, so we when werope, we're roping in the tiny
bit of daylight we have afterwork and and before the kids
gotta get to bed.
SPEAKER_00 (16:42):
There you go.
SPEAKER_01 (16:43):
And uh so they they stay fresher longer at our
house.
SPEAKER_00 (16:47):
No dally, none of that stuff.
SPEAKER_01 (16:49):
Yeah, yeah.
We take really good care ofthem.
They're they live the high life.
They're they we usually don'tget rid of them until they don't
fit in the shoot.
SPEAKER_00 (16:55):
There you go.
SPEAKER_01 (16:57):
Uh so well, um what is something that you are proud
of that you've worked onrecently?
SPEAKER_00 (17:05):
Oh gosh.
Um we're the the last frontierfor team roping is to get the
earnings on.
We've s spent a good part ofthree decades creating this
cowboy golf deal that's that'sproducing over a hundred million
dollars a year in earnings.
It's a billion dollar a yearindustry.
(17:25):
Um within the horse industry,though, um we never tracked
earnings or any of those type ofthings.
And so when we started the Riataum Stallion Incentive a few
years ago, we had 180 stallionscome on board to promote their
stallions.
Uh kind of a way I I candescribe it is um a country
(17:49):
club, and we put a we've got anevent coming up in three weeks
where we've got a million eightadded money.
That's never occurred in thecowboy world ever.
And that's all stallion moneythat we're using.
But the only way you get in isif you're riding a horse that's
out of one of those that's aprogeny from one of those
stallions.
(18:10):
Um recently the um uh my partnerthat I had in Riyadh sold uh
their part of Riotta to EquineNetwork, who has global
handicaps, which has got all ofthe earnings records for every
cowboy in the world.
So now we're working with AQHAand Equine Network, and we're
(18:32):
gonna marry those earnings tothose um uh to those horses.
So potentially, and I'll giveyou a picture of that, um the
top three would be uh cuttingproduces about sixty million a
year in earnings for stallions,barrel racing sixty-seven
million, and horse racing 150million.
(18:54):
Um since um Riota uh stallionincentive came along, us and the
fraturities, we're laying downabout fifteen million in
earnings on those horses.
But in the very near future,we're gonna try to pass the
barrel racers and the and thecutters, and then at that point,
(19:16):
the whole breeding aspect, uhwhether they are ranch bread,
cutting bread, working cow horsebread, whatever, we're gonna
find out what the true market isfor the horse, because we've
known all along that the cowboygolf world actually controls the
horse market.
Nobody wants to admit it, butit's the truth.
(19:38):
Stevie Ray Bon in there lastyear, year before last, he was
one of our he was our topstallion last year.
And uh Alvin uh told me thestory.
He said, Um we had 200 Colts inthe NCHA fraterturity, and so he
said I said to my trainer, youknow, I'm not quite sure why we
(19:58):
need to get involved in the teamroping deal, and he said,
Because these 200 Colts, byMarch, 90% of them are gonna be
team roping horses.
So th that's catching on.
You know, a lot of these theseguys that have been
traditionally reigning cuttingreiners are going, you know, we
recognize this is is our marketalso.
SPEAKER_01 (20:19):
Yeah, that's that's that's always been the thing
since I was a kid.
Everybody wanted a a cuttingreject, or you know, that that
phrase or whatever.
But the truth of the matter isis they didn't have to be a
reject.
SPEAKER_00 (20:29):
They had they could have been a prospect or that's
what the security people aredoing right now.
They're saying these are notrejects.
We start them at three yearsold.
They're being trained for onepurpose and one purpose only.
SPEAKER_01 (20:39):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think uh that's that's uh agreat thing that they've seen.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Uh so um so you've got thatcoming up soon, which by the
time the podcast releases, itmight have just happened.
Um and and uh but that'll be aninteresting thing to follow.
What uh um so we talked aboutcattle and the roping industry.
(21:05):
Of course, those those cattle uhare really important to the U.S.
cattle herd, especially rightnow because we have low herd
numbers.
Um so those cattle are probablycoming into the beef supply
maybe, maybe more often in someways, or we're holding on to
them.
Um what would you say is themost rewarding part of uh so I,
you know, typically we often areinterviewing ranchers, but of
(21:27):
owning cattle or of being inthis cattle, uh cattle and
equine-focused uh industry.
What what do you find the mostrewarding?
SPEAKER_00 (21:35):
Well, yeah, you know, of course, when I got out
of college and I took this jobhere, it was supposed to be a
temporary job.
They had lost their executive,and they said, Yeah, you're
gonna come in here and you'regonna do this for three or four
months until we have a chance tofind somebody that's qualified
to do it.
And uh and uh and I took to theassociation business pretty well
(21:59):
and and that became myoccupation and something that
I've done and I've enjoyed thatpart of it for a long, long
time.
But um if you take the hundredsand hundreds of events and these
big events take uh like thefinale there, which last uh year
was at nineteen point sevenmillion, which is the richest
(22:22):
quarter horse event, and thelargest performance horse event
in the in the world now.
Um the planning and all of thatto see this stuff come off, um
you're in the entertainmentbusiness.
You're dealing with lots ofpeople and you're making lots of
people happy, maybe a few ofthem mad, but most of them
(22:43):
happy.
And so looking back throughthose 30 years, I think the most
rewarding part of this was isthat we were able to be in the
association business and in theentertainment aspect of the
business at the same time.
And I would have never dreamedwhen I came to Albuquerque for
the very first time over herethat this is the way it would
(23:07):
have gone, but it took its ownlife and when it's owned, took
took me where it was going.
And my now my family is all overmy my wife Connie runs the uh
Equine Network events division.
She's running seven companiesover there.
Both my daughters are in it, myson is my partner in uh in the
Riata uh Stalin and Center.
(23:28):
So we've got our whole claninvolved, and they all grew up
in it.
SPEAKER_01 (23:32):
I think that's a really special part.
We often talk about it inranching and in the industry for
something to be generational isa really special thing that
doesn't happen in allindustries, but it does in the
Western industry.
It does.
Yeah, yeah, that's really neat.
Um so uh Okay, so you've talkedabout your family now.
Hold on, let me think.
What what inspires you to keepgoing and to keep coming up with
(23:56):
uh the next great idea?
SPEAKER_00 (24:31):
Um you know, I I guess I would um have been asked
that a lot, and I I wish therewas an easy answer, but to me it
it's kind of a um these thingstake their course and you know
one thing leads to another, yousolve a problem, you create a
new, and it just transpires overtime and everything.
(24:52):
And and the creativity part,there's been a few things that
I've invented through the yearsthat there's patents on and uh
very unique things that theother organizations have
borrowed and everything, andthose were unique.
And the only way I can tellpeople that we came up with
those is I said, Well, I don'tknow.
It was kind of like I hear theseguys talk about these songs they
(25:15):
write and they don't know wherethe songs came from.
Well, you know, a lot of timesI'd go to bed thinking about
this problem and I'd wake up thenext morning and here's the
solution, you know.
I mean, it's the divineintervention or whatever you
want to you want to call it.
But uh in a lot of them, youknow, that that have come up
were by accident.
(25:35):
I did a an interview for amagazine one time, and they
asked me the question uh what'sbetter, the uh uh a electronic
barrier or a rope barrier?
And you know, that's always beena good argument for rodeo
cowboys to argue about thatbecause because team roping,
everybody was going toelectronics, and in the early
(25:56):
years there were a lot ofproblems with it.
And my comment was real simple.
I said, um, neither, they'reboth crappy.
And well, what do you mean?
And I said, Well, they they, youknow, I mean, they're predicated
off the same theory that theanimal starts and you give him a
head start, and then the horsegoes, and then you've got to
learn to judge all this and allthis rigomrow, and we are in the
(26:20):
uh now that we deal with alldifferent classes of cowboys, we
need a better system than that.
And so the very next day I hadmaybe five phone calls of guys
that had thought up new systemsand everything, and and they
weren't um none of them werevery viable.
And that's when we came up withthe uh uh the World Series
(26:45):
system, and we started out withPrefort Manufacturing and and
Farm Tech was doing ourelectronics for us, and the
first one we did was not verygood, but it led to the second
one, and now you can't find ateam rope in this country that's
not using that World Seriesbarrier.
And so that one thing there ledto that whole deal.
(27:06):
And the first one that I did,Preford Manufacturing gave me
the patent on it, so you'reabsolutely worthless because we
threw it in the trash after thefirst year, but I've got that I
got that patent anyway.
SPEAKER_01 (27:17):
That's neat.
SPEAKER_00 (27:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:19):
That's neat.
Uh well I I think uh findingfinding solutions to problems is
is always a that's the answer.
Great way.
Great way to live.
SPEAKER_00 (27:28):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:29):
Uh what about um you've you've mentioned lots of
connections in New Mexico, and Iprobably couldn't name a a
cowboy or a or even a rancher inin the U.S.
that you didn't know or youdidn't know somebody that knew.
SPEAKER_00 (27:43):
Uh what's that like making those connections and and
uh those building thoserelationships with within the I
we had a good start though,because the in the early years
of classifications, uh we didn'thave any of this computer
technology we've got now.
So we had to first uh identifywho all the ropers were and then
(28:05):
try to get them classified onthe system that we had.
And to do that, I built um in1990, I got on the road and
lived.
I in fact, I lived in a on theroad for two years, and we had
uh 1,800 committee members inthe United States, and we were
doing two votes a year on100,000 ropers.
(28:27):
So that was two million, twomillion key punches twice a
year.
And then I would go to thosestates and I'd get the committee
members there, and then I wouldshow them how I saw the
different handicaps as we wentthrough.
So all of those networks werebuilt right then on year one,
(28:47):
because they were the leaders ofthe industry in their area, and
a lot of them were well-knownranchers and rodeo cowboys and
everything.
And that was my six degrees ofseparation from every cowboy in
the United States.
If and in fact, when we got thedatabase up, even before the
handicap deal started, we'd havesomebody whose daughter had
(29:10):
broke down in the middle ofbetween blank blank Oregon and
blank blank Austria, and we'reout here at mile mark or
so-and-so, and we'd go in andpull the zip code up and say,
these are the two phone numbers,call these people, they'll come
help you.
And it might be a ranch that wasfive miles away.
So before the triple A gotgoing, we were providing triple
(29:32):
A to our people when they weregoing all over because we had
that network built and it wasall coming off of that database.
SPEAKER_01 (29:39):
Yeah, and that association mindset that when
you're part of our group, we'regonna take care of you.
Yeah.
That's really neat.
That's great.
Um, so maybe maybe uh if youhave anything else to add, and
then I like to ask the lastquestion is uh your favorite way
to eat beef, but any anythingelse you'd like to add about uh
ranching or or uh the horse andcattle businesses?
SPEAKER_00 (30:01):
No, you know, the only thing the only uh you're
you're in here marketing beefand and uh and the one thing
that I want to tell you is isthat I'm the the greater
greatest marketer of beef in thehistory of New Mexico.
And uh because every associationexecutive that ever came along
was supposed to promote beef,whatever that meant.
(30:25):
And if you were from New Mexicoor Idaho or some other state
that didn't have a packingplant.
It was pretty hard to say we'regoing to promote New Mexico beef
when we knew they were all goingto the Panhandle of Texas over
there.
So I had this friend at thelegislature who was a lobbyist
for public service company inNew Mexico.
And back in the 80s, publicservice company in New Mexico
(30:47):
was uh diversifying.
They had a lot of otherbusinesses going.
And one Friday afternoon afterthe session, we stopped by the
bull ring for a refreshment.
And um he said, What are yougonna do this weekend?
I told him, What are you doing?
He said, Well, I've got to go uphere to uh Four Corners area,
Mitsubishi Trading Company,which was the um largest trading
(31:08):
company in the world at thattime, is coming in and we're
gonna meet with them and theywant to buy some um uh coal from
us.
We've got huge coal deposits onour our land up here.
Well, I knew that they were thetop trader in beef.
And so I just made a smartremark and I said, Um, well,
(31:29):
while you're at it, get us abeef contract while you're up
there.
Get in Mexico some beefcontract.
So about two months later, uh,Don Hoffman, who ran the Bell
Ranch, called me up on the phoneand he said, Hey, he said, Mac
Baldridge, who's a Secretary ofCommerce, is coming into town,
and he said, He's a neighbor,he's got a ranch next to me down
at Clunch.
(31:50):
And he said, Mac wants to tomeet you.
And I thought, Me?
Well, but he said, he wants tomeet you, come to lunch and go.
So I went in and Mac stood upand shook my hand, introduced
himself, and he said, Um, you'rekind of famous in our office
right now.
And I said, I am.
What did I do?
And he said, Well, uh uh MitchBC carved off uh 200,000 metric
(32:13):
tons of beef for the state ofNew Mexico when I'm here to meet
with Carter Packing Company tosee, because that's the only
packing company we can find thatcan handle this this bid.
So I'd always beat my chest allthe time and I'd say, you know,
I'm worth a fortune because I'mI'm the only one that's ever
sold any beef in the New Mexicobeef.
SPEAKER_01 (32:32):
Oh man, that's that's quite the legacy to
follow.
What a deal.
What a deal and what a funstory.
Um, well, thank you for forselling New Mexico beef.
Um long before they hired me,because that's that's uh what a
great great thing.
Uh well, uh again, I just uh welove to we love to l leave this
(32:53):
question for last, but what'syour favorite way to eat beef?
SPEAKER_00 (32:56):
Often.
Often that's probably the bestanswer.
It is time changes a lot.
And you know, when this beefcouncil first came in and right
near here, Paul Freed used tohave his office right here, and
Paul and I are good buddies.
And and we talked about this alot, how times were gonna
change, and he was alwaysdefending against the the um
(33:19):
PETA and the the anti-beefgroups and all of that.
At that time, you know, theywere beating the drum, and
you're not supposed to eat morethan six ounces of beef, uh, and
you don't eat it more than everythree days, and they had all of
these things going on.
Now, 30 years later, here youguys are, and um you you've got
(33:41):
these diets that have beenscientifically put together, you
know, and and the carnivore dietand all that.
I mean, everybody's you're onthe other side of that now.
I mean, you're not over heredefending yourself.
They're trying to figure out anew strategy to stop the
science.
Because basically yournutrition's the nutritionalists
(34:01):
that you've got right now, theirguns are loaded.
Our nutritionists were were werejust defending themselves with
shields was all they were doingat the beginning.
So so that's the that's the thethick of it.
There's been a huge change.
SPEAKER_01 (34:15):
Huge, huge.
We have a dietitian that worksfor us, and we talk about the
the plethora of resources andand uh things that are to our
advantage or to our uh benefitthat yeah, people are seeing.
And we've been taught for awhile now to stay on the edge of
the grocery store.
That's good for beef.
That's that's everything tellsus that beef is healthy and beef
(34:37):
can and should be a part of ahealthy diet.
And uh so yeah, we do get toride the wave of the the battles
won.
SPEAKER_00 (34:43):
Well, and in talking front of the front of the cow to
the back of the cow, you know,when when uh Paul and I were
here visiting about it, he said,you know, I spend a lot of time
just talking about cow farts.
And he said, and I was thinkingabout the other the other day,
you know, I was listening tosomeone talk about it, and and
we've moved from that end to theother end, and they figured out
(35:05):
now that cows don't fart.
So we're talking about cow burpsnow.
SPEAKER_01 (35:07):
Right.
At least we've gotten thecorrect.
Well, at least we have theanatomy correct now.
Uh and the good news is we havea lot of research and a lot of
studies now.
I know uh the Colorado StateUniversity Agnext program has
studied more cattle um in thelike four years that they've
been in existence than were everstudied before on these cow
(35:30):
farts and cow burps.
And now we've got a lot of newinformation that's telling the
truth that cattle aren't aren'tbad.
SPEAKER_00 (35:37):
I mean, that's still a defensive posture.
You have to you have to defendthe ridiculous, but that's just
part of the Yep.
That's part of the game, youknow.
SPEAKER_01 (35:45):
Absolutely.
Well, we're we're reallyexcited, uh, or really grateful
that you were willing to tellyour side of the story and uh
and even talk about a uniquething that a lot of uh a lot of
uh you know, especially me thatI'm kind of agriculture
adjacent.
Uh what we do on the weekends isteam roping.
And so um thank you for for uhtalking beef and talking roping
(36:07):
with us.
And yeah, again, thank you.
Thank you for everything.
SPEAKER_00 (36:10):
Thank you for asking me over.
SPEAKER_01 (36:12):
Behind the burger is a podcast produced by the New
Mexico Beef Council with thegoal of telling the stories of
the cattlemen and cattle womenof the New Mexico beef industry.
Thank you for joining us fortoday's episode.
If you would like moreinformation, please visit
nmbeef.com.
Whether it be a burger, a steak,or another beef dish, we hope
you are enjoying beef at yournext meal.
Welcome back to another episode of Behind the
Burger.
I'm Caroline Romo, the executivedirector for the New Mexico Beef
Council, and I'm here with DennyGentry, who lives here in
Albuquerque, and he is theformer executive of the New
Mexico Cattle Growers, founderof the USTRC, the World Series
Team Roping, the Super Loopermagazine, and Riata Stallion
(00:26):
Incentive.
Denny, thank you for joining thepodcast.
My pleasure.
I'm so excited to have you here.
Well, I kind of like to startfrom the beginning.
SPEAKER_00 (00:33):
So where are you from and and uh kind of what's
the background that down insouthern Otero County, there we
are placed that kind of straddlethe Texas-New Mexico line
between Carlsbad and El Paso,there, a little town called Dale
City that my grandfatherfounded.
SPEAKER_01 (00:49):
Perfect.
Well, and and uh you've livedother places and you started at
um um or you helped start withthe New Mexico Beef Council, and
we you told me about the um atbeing the executive secretary
for the New Mexico cattlegrowers.
Of course, our organizationswork hand in hand in a lot of
ways, but ta talk to me aboutthe the New Mexico Beef Council
and your involvement there.
SPEAKER_00 (01:10):
Well, as in the mid-80s, I think it was mid-80s
when the beef checkoff waspassed, and of course it was
building up steam.
Check-off was getting passed inlots of states, and that was the
promoting beef was the the um uhwhat every association was
wanting to do.
Uh, you know, we've got topromote ourselves.
(01:31):
If we don't, well, you know,that was going in, the farm
bureau was doing it, and all thecattle organizations were doing
it, and here in New Mexico, theytried a couple of times and got
close.
But one year pretty mucheverybody got on the same page
and they were gonna try to getthe beef checkoff done.
And uh at that time I was uhrunning the Cattleman
(01:54):
Association and the mainlobbyist there handled all the
lobbying in Washington and SantaFe.
And um I I would say probably umuh as it went along, I wound up
Farm Bureau was partners with uson this thing, but as it went
along, they started dumping moreand more of that on me.
(02:16):
And all and the reason was isbecause when we went up there,
we thought all the cowboys wereunited in one group and we were
gonna rah-rah pass this thingthrough.
And that was not the casebecause there were a lot of
cowboys that didn't like thatidea of being taxed on their
cattle, and um they were alittle bit unhappy about it, and
(02:37):
uh, two or three of them weresenators.
Oof.
And so they were very silentlyworking behind the scenes to
counter everything that we weredoing.
And at some point, Farm Bureausaid, Okay, we're we're handling
this.
You try to handle your peopleover there.
And I understood what theymeant.
So we had two groups of rancherswalking around that rotunda up
(03:01):
there, one group working for andone group roping working
against, and us running aroundtrying to patch all the places,
and the and the legislators,representatives of the senators
were saying, Hey, we'll dowhatever you guys want to do as
soon as y'all can agree on whatit is you want to do.
SPEAKER_01 (03:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (03:19):
And uh, and eventually we got it through,
you know.
But it was it was um it was thefirst time that I had ever
lobbied on something, you know,because usually when you go up
there, all the cowboys were forthe same thing.
This was the first time that itwas split down the middle and
and it was an eye-opener.
SPEAKER_01 (03:37):
Oh yeah, it makes you worry.
I think I think in some wayssometimes the checkoff is still
a split conversation.
Um but or and I'm reallygrateful that that it is in
existence for not only mycareer, but also the the impact
that I see it ha has withconsumers.
Yeah.
Um so well, I and I also thinkthat when we talk about the
podcast, we try and kind ofexplain who the beef council is.
(04:00):
And it's interesting to me thatwe're created by state and
federal law, but then now as ouras an organization, we can't
lobby and we don't do anythingpolitics.
That's what New Mexico CattleGrowers is for.
SPEAKER_00 (04:12):
Yeah, that was exactly that was it was that way
back then, see, because a lot oftimes I would be carrying the
water for the livestock boardand in a lot of cases for New
Mexico State University, becauseat that time they weren't
allowed.
So anything that was going onwith the Ag College, Farm Bureau
and Cattle Growers were the twothat were carrying the carrying
the mail on that.
SPEAKER_01 (04:32):
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, and it's come a long way,right?
I think uh New Mexicoagriculture has uh has won a lot
of um big things, and and uh I Isee positivity uh and I also see
positivity in me not having toto take bills to the floor.
SPEAKER_00 (04:47):
That's well we we and we had a really Farm Bureau
had always been kind of um theyweren't real proactive
politically, and cattle growerswas during that time period, and
then in the late 80s they hadthis young guy come along and he
was was pretty aggressive and hehe did a hell of a job.
(05:07):
His name was Jeff Wheedy.
SPEAKER_01 (05:10):
Uh well we just had a podcast with Jeff.
He was one of our one of ourguests a couple times ago.
Yeah, and he said he was uh areluctant politician.
SPEAKER_00 (05:19):
Well, he wasn't actually, he can say that on um,
but but I had worked with fivedifferent um uh government guys
for Farm Bureau and and Jeff waswas in a different league.
SPEAKER_01 (05:31):
Yeah, oh man, that's so cool.
Yeah, I know he he said his histrajectory wasn't originally
that, but then it worked, andthen he realized he found a uh
found his place.
SPEAKER_00 (05:40):
There you go.
So yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (05:42):
That's neat.
That's neat.
Um we've already talked about uhbefore we started recording the
the small world of New Mexicoagriculture, and even
agriculture in general.
Uh so to kind of get right intoit with um even your your titles
and the the introduction.
So New Mexico cattle growers,the the rumors are or the story
(06:02):
is which you've you've nowconfirmed and we'll let you
confirm again that that one ofthe first team ropings that you
put on was for the New Mexicocattle growers.
SPEAKER_00 (06:09):
I had a friend over there, Don King, was the
executive director for Texas andSouthwestern Cattle Raisers.
And uh we had a membership.
Um membership in ourorganization was a little bit
stale, and then you know you'dhear them talking, you know,
everybody here is old, and wegot to get the kids involved,
and how do you do that?
And so every cattle organizationwas trying to get new membership
(06:33):
in.
And and Don King had a programhe was running in Texas, and it
was um association uh cuttings,and they wouldn't allow anyone
that was a professional horsetrainer or involved in a QHA
cutting or anything.
They had to be on the ranch andthey had to be either an
employee or family member orsomething like that.
(06:55):
And they had kicked that off andran it for two years and were
just going gangbusters on theirdeal and getting all these young
people in and getting theirmembership picked up.
And Don called me up on thephone and he said, You need to
do that in New Mexico.
You need to go.
I said, We don't have anycutting over here.
And he said, Well, what do theywhat do the cowboys do?
And I said, Team rope.
(07:16):
He'll team ropers.
He said, Well, do it with teamrope, but don't be a dummy.
So uh Jasper Coons, who livedover on the in Rio Rancho over
there, Jasper was an old turtle.
And he was a rancher, and he wasformer chairman of our
membership committee andeverything.
And when I hit him with that, heoh, I'll run interference with
(07:37):
the board of directors, I'll getthis through.
So we built a a uh county bycounty um um we'd go around
qualify ropers in the counties,and then we would have at the
state convention, we would havean event here in Albuquerque
over at Tingley.
(07:57):
And what started happening wasis we started having people from
Texas and Colorado and Arizonajoining New Mexico Cattle Grove
so they could get in that teamroping.
And um uh we that we startedthat in '83, and by about
eighty-six or eighty-seven itwas getting out of hand, and the
board of directors called me inand said, Well, our dues at that
(08:21):
time was$40 a year, and theysaid, you know, um Stockman
magazine cost us X dollars amember, and the newsletters cost
us X doll a member, and thesepeople aren't interested in
categories, they're interestedin roping, and by our
estimation, we're losing tendollars a member to your team
roping.
(08:41):
And so I said, Well, I'll comeup with an idea because this was
a benefit.
We were the funds werebenefiting New Mexico and uh and
uh boys and girls ranch.
Okay.
Is what that where that wasgoing to.
So the next year I came in and Isaid, Okay, if you're not
interested in cattle growers, wewill let you come, but you're
(09:02):
gonna pay a day permit.
And so 380, 390 teams ofdivision over here at Tingley
Coliseum with Calcuttans.
And when it was all said anddone, the permits made more
money than the roping did forthe for the charity.
And by that time it's dawning onme that kind of like you said
(09:25):
about Jeff Wheedy, that I mayhave found my niche here.
SPEAKER_01 (09:28):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (09:29):
And that's kind of where it all took off at.
And so we did New MexicoChampionships in 88 and 89, and
uh turned my resignation in in89, and we started US TRC in
January of 1990.
SPEAKER_01 (09:43):
Wow.
Wow.
So I I know for some NewMexicans they're really proud of
the fact to see how how that'sgrown and that it that it
started in New Mexico.
Uh I've I had a rancher tell methat story as I was getting on a
flight to to go to Vegas to gorope in the finale.
Well, you know the history, andso that's really neat.
SPEAKER_00 (10:02):
Well, and it's it's it was uh really funny because
New Mexico has never ever reallyacknowledged that.
In fact, uh we had every majorfacility in the United States
trying to get us to come put onthe U.S.
finals in their area, and wecouldn't even get the the um
Chamber of Commerce or anybodyin Albuquerque to acknowledge
(10:26):
that they were worried about theArab horse show.
SPEAKER_01 (10:29):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (10:30):
And and we're saying we're homegrown.
We're building this wholeindustry here in Albuquerque.
They didn't care, and the samewith World Series.
When World Series came on, uhthis is not cowboy country.
Right.
And it just doesn't, it does itnever did resonate here.
SPEAKER_01 (10:48):
Well, and it's a it's a important part of what we
do at the beef council too.
We had billboards this summerand and then we have this
podcast trying to teach peoplethat New Mexico is beef country,
and New Mexico is cowboycountry.
I mean, yes, Albuquerque,obviously, in in ways you've
seen more than me that themisn't as accepting of it, but
(11:09):
New Mexicans, we there'scowboys, the cowboyist of
cowboys.
Like we are the wild west in alot of ways.
SPEAKER_00 (11:16):
It's it's all together, you know.
The whole I I'm um of course,you know, for the last 30 years
I'm dealing with United Statesand Canada and Brazil and and uh
I even have ropings in DominicanRepublican.
I did I we did ropings for awhile in the Czech Republic, a
little uh in Italy.
(11:38):
My man that was in Italy thatwas putting on the events in
Europe has retired and startedgrowing almonds now, so I don't
have that over there anymore.
But when you start thinking interms of national and
international, um I just don'tthink in terms of New Mexico any
longer.
You know, I mean it's part ofthe But yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (11:59):
Yeah, gone beyond.
It's gone beyond.
Yeah, yeah, no doubt.
Um well, so for for folks ifthere's listeners or um or
viewers watching that um maybedon't understand team rubbing,
so I just want to kind of goback to team rubbing from from
the very base of it is a skillor a or a tool, or can be a
(12:20):
skill or a tool used on a ranch,right?
When you're in a pasture,especially in New Mexico, you
can't get an animal to a horsetrailer or you know, a cow
trailer, you can't get them to atrailer necessarily, you can't
get them to a small pen todoctor.
But what you do have is a horseand a rope.
And that's still a pretty commonway of doctoring um and managing
herds.
And then like like anything, wegot it we got a little
(12:44):
competitive back in the day,right?
And so um so so team roping isnow a competition, right?
It's now an equine competitionand a very large equine
competition thanks to a lot ofthe work you do.
SPEAKER_00 (12:55):
Well, I've I've been pitching the same pitch for
three decades and it's startingto catch on now.
I'm starting to see it in a lotof crit and everything because
they always would try to go,well, you've got working cow
horse and you've got cutting andraining, and team roping is a
discipline.
It's one of the rodeodisciplines and everything.
Well, the drum I've beat allalong is no, no, no, no.
(13:15):
This is cowboy golf.
We are cowboy golf.
We are not a discipline.
And now everybody's starting tocatch on and going, because
we've got all the cutters andthe reiners and the racetrack
guys and the ranchers and thefarmers, and anybody else that
watched Yellowstone that wantsto compete.
SPEAKER_01 (13:32):
Yeah, they come to team roping.
Well, and it has such a greatentry-level uh thing, not not to
go too far into it, but it'sit's set up that that uh we can,
that beginners can be winners insome ways.
SPEAKER_00 (13:43):
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01 (13:43):
Yeah, yeah.
Um so how else would you say theindustries are connected, team
roping and ranching?
SPEAKER_00 (13:51):
Um you know, I think there was a time I've talked to
you two or three times, andyou're kind of thinking in terms
of beef, beef, beef.
But I've never looked at that inin that paradigm.
Um To me, it's cattle and horsesand cowboys and the whole realm
(14:14):
of it.
How you can't separate it.
I mean you can't separate thehorse breeding and it's another
side of it and no more than youcan with water and minerals and
every other thing that goesalong with living in the sixteen
western states and now beyondthat, you know.
So it's I don't view beef as aseparate entity.
(14:35):
And in fact, you know, I guessthat's had a guy tell me here a
while back, he said, Well, youyou don't know that much about
the beef industry.
And I said, Well, I know alittle.
And he said, Well, what do youknow?
And I said, Well, I know thatthere's 40,000 members in our
organization, there's 20,000that come and go, there's sixty
thousand, and if you take thatsixty thousand, cut it in half
(14:56):
to about thirty thousand, andfigure out that they buy two
sets of cattle to practice on ayear from six to twelve head.
Um we're handling about aquarter of a million head of
steers a year that are gonnawind up in slaughter at some
point.
And he kind of looked at me,what are you talking?
I said, Well, we're in the beefbusiness.
SPEAKER_01 (15:16):
Oh, but yeah, absolutely.
I think uh the yeah, the cattlethat are used for roping might
not be the same cattle that arefor the stakes and the the you
know, high quality cuts, butthey're still a high quality
meat and it's still a greatanimal that's gonna go into the
beef supply.
SPEAKER_00 (15:34):
I mean, with this grass-fed thing going on, I mean
you're you're seeing a lot, alot of marketing and packing
going on on these coriantes andand or the native um rope and
cattle.
And it's happening more andmore, and people are moving to a
thing.
I mean, that's that's what theysee.
(15:54):
What's what y'all areadvertising, lean beef, and so
they know where to find it, andthat's usually us first.
SPEAKER_01 (15:59):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think uh yeah, I mean, that'sI always tease uh I don't have a
lot of cattle myself, but I dohave seven head of core innies.
SPEAKER_00 (16:08):
I kind of nailed you, didn't we?
SPEAKER_01 (16:10):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
How many times do you buy those?
Well, we actually uh we've heldon to these ones for quite some
time.
Yeah.
We don't practice very much.
SPEAKER_00 (16:19):
Of course, this market right now, we'll never
see this again.
And a lot of people are hangingon.
SPEAKER_01 (16:24):
Yes, yeah, yeah.
We are we are those.
And uh for whatever reason we'vebeen really lucky with uh some
of our cattle.
We can keep them about twoyears, but we we are also
weekend warriors, so we when werope, we're roping in the tiny
bit of daylight we have afterwork and and before the kids
gotta get to bed.
SPEAKER_00 (16:42):
There you go.
SPEAKER_01 (16:43):
And uh so they they stay fresher longer at our
house.
SPEAKER_00 (16:47):
No dally, none of that stuff.
SPEAKER_01 (16:49):
Yeah, yeah.
We take really good care ofthem.
They're they live the high life.
They're they we usually don'tget rid of them until they don't
fit in the shoot.
SPEAKER_00 (16:55):
There you go.
SPEAKER_01 (16:57):
Uh so well, um what is something that you are proud
of that you've worked onrecently?
SPEAKER_00 (17:05):
Oh gosh.
Um we're the the last frontierfor team roping is to get the
earnings on.
We've s spent a good part ofthree decades creating this
cowboy golf deal that's that'sproducing over a hundred million
dollars a year in earnings.
It's a billion dollar a yearindustry.
(17:25):
Um within the horse industry,though, um we never tracked
earnings or any of those type ofthings.
And so when we started the Riataum Stallion Incentive a few
years ago, we had 180 stallionscome on board to promote their
stallions.
Uh kind of a way I I candescribe it is um a country
(17:49):
club, and we put a we've got anevent coming up in three weeks
where we've got a million eightadded money.
That's never occurred in thecowboy world ever.
And that's all stallion moneythat we're using.
But the only way you get in isif you're riding a horse that's
out of one of those that's aprogeny from one of those
stallions.
(18:10):
Um recently the um uh my partnerthat I had in Riyadh sold uh
their part of Riotta to EquineNetwork, who has global
handicaps, which has got all ofthe earnings records for every
cowboy in the world.
So now we're working with AQHAand Equine Network, and we're
(18:32):
gonna marry those earnings tothose um uh to those horses.
So potentially, and I'll giveyou a picture of that, um the
top three would be uh cuttingproduces about sixty million a
year in earnings for stallions,barrel racing sixty-seven
million, and horse racing 150million.
(18:54):
Um since um Riota uh stallionincentive came along, us and the
fraturities, we're laying downabout fifteen million in
earnings on those horses.
But in the very near future,we're gonna try to pass the
barrel racers and the and thecutters, and then at that point,
(19:16):
the whole breeding aspect, uhwhether they are ranch bread,
cutting bread, working cow horsebread, whatever, we're gonna
find out what the true market isfor the horse, because we've
known all along that the cowboygolf world actually controls the
horse market.
Nobody wants to admit it, butit's the truth.
(19:38):
Stevie Ray Bon in there lastyear, year before last, he was
one of our he was our topstallion last year.
And uh Alvin uh told me thestory.
He said, Um we had 200 Colts inthe NCHA fraterturity, and so he
said I said to my trainer, youknow, I'm not quite sure why we
(19:58):
need to get involved in the teamroping deal, and he said,
Because these 200 Colts, byMarch, 90% of them are gonna be
team roping horses.
So th that's catching on.
You know, a lot of these theseguys that have been
traditionally reigning cuttingreiners are going, you know, we
recognize this is is our marketalso.
SPEAKER_01 (20:19):
Yeah, that's that's that's always been the thing
since I was a kid.
Everybody wanted a a cuttingreject, or you know, that that
phrase or whatever.
But the truth of the matter isis they didn't have to be a
reject.
SPEAKER_00 (20:29):
They had they could have been a prospect or that's
what the security people aredoing right now.
They're saying these are notrejects.
We start them at three yearsold.
They're being trained for onepurpose and one purpose only.
SPEAKER_01 (20:39):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think uh that's that's uh agreat thing that they've seen.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Uh so um so you've got thatcoming up soon, which by the
time the podcast releases, itmight have just happened.
Um and and uh but that'll be aninteresting thing to follow.
What uh um so we talked aboutcattle and the roping industry.
(21:05):
Of course, those those cattle uhare really important to the U.S.
cattle herd, especially rightnow because we have low herd
numbers.
Um so those cattle are probablycoming into the beef supply
maybe, maybe more often in someways, or we're holding on to
them.
Um what would you say is themost rewarding part of uh so I,
you know, typically we often areinterviewing ranchers, but of
(21:27):
owning cattle or of being inthis cattle, uh cattle and
equine-focused uh industry.
What what do you find the mostrewarding?
SPEAKER_00 (21:35):
Well, yeah, you know, of course, when I got out
of college and I took this jobhere, it was supposed to be a
temporary job.
They had lost their executive,and they said, Yeah, you're
gonna come in here and you'regonna do this for three or four
months until we have a chance tofind somebody that's qualified
to do it.
And uh and uh and I took to theassociation business pretty well
(21:59):
and and that became myoccupation and something that
I've done and I've enjoyed thatpart of it for a long, long
time.
But um if you take the hundredsand hundreds of events and these
big events take uh like thefinale there, which last uh year
was at nineteen point sevenmillion, which is the richest
(22:22):
quarter horse event, and thelargest performance horse event
in the in the world now.
Um the planning and all of thatto see this stuff come off, um
you're in the entertainmentbusiness.
You're dealing with lots ofpeople and you're making lots of
people happy, maybe a few ofthem mad, but most of them
(22:43):
happy.
And so looking back throughthose 30 years, I think the most
rewarding part of this was isthat we were able to be in the
association business and in theentertainment aspect of the
business at the same time.
And I would have never dreamedwhen I came to Albuquerque for
the very first time over herethat this is the way it would
(23:07):
have gone, but it took its ownlife and when it's owned, took
took me where it was going.
And my now my family is all overmy my wife Connie runs the uh
Equine Network events division.
She's running seven companiesover there.
Both my daughters are in it, myson is my partner in uh in the
Riata uh Stalin and Center.
(23:28):
So we've got our whole claninvolved, and they all grew up
in it.
SPEAKER_01 (23:32):
I think that's a really special part.
We often talk about it inranching and in the industry for
something to be generational isa really special thing that
doesn't happen in allindustries, but it does in the
Western industry.
It does.
Yeah, yeah, that's really neat.
Um so uh Okay, so you've talkedabout your family now.
Hold on, let me think.
What what inspires you to keepgoing and to keep coming up with
(23:56):
uh the next great idea?
SPEAKER_00 (24:31):
Um you know, I I guess I would um have been asked
that a lot, and I I wish therewas an easy answer, but to me it
it's kind of a um these thingstake their course and you know
one thing leads to another, yousolve a problem, you create a
new, and it just transpires overtime and everything.
(24:52):
And and the creativity part,there's been a few things that
I've invented through the yearsthat there's patents on and uh
very unique things that theother organizations have
borrowed and everything, andthose were unique.
And the only way I can tellpeople that we came up with
those is I said, Well, I don'tknow.
It was kind of like I hear theseguys talk about these songs they
(25:15):
write and they don't know wherethe songs came from.
Well, you know, a lot of timesI'd go to bed thinking about
this problem and I'd wake up thenext morning and here's the
solution, you know.
I mean, it's the divineintervention or whatever you
want to you want to call it.
But uh in a lot of them, youknow, that that have come up
were by accident.
(25:35):
I did a an interview for amagazine one time, and they
asked me the question uh what'sbetter, the uh uh a electronic
barrier or a rope barrier?
And you know, that's always beena good argument for rodeo
cowboys to argue about thatbecause because team roping,
everybody was going toelectronics, and in the early
(25:56):
years there were a lot ofproblems with it.
And my comment was real simple.
I said, um, neither, they'reboth crappy.
And well, what do you mean?
And I said, Well, they they, youknow, I mean, they're predicated
off the same theory that theanimal starts and you give him a
head start, and then the horsegoes, and then you've got to
learn to judge all this and allthis rigomrow, and we are in the
(26:20):
uh now that we deal with alldifferent classes of cowboys, we
need a better system than that.
And so the very next day I hadmaybe five phone calls of guys
that had thought up new systemsand everything, and and they
weren't um none of them werevery viable.
And that's when we came up withthe uh uh the World Series
(26:45):
system, and we started out withPrefort Manufacturing and and
Farm Tech was doing ourelectronics for us, and the
first one we did was not verygood, but it led to the second
one, and now you can't find ateam rope in this country that's
not using that World Seriesbarrier.
And so that one thing there ledto that whole deal.
(27:06):
And the first one that I did,Preford Manufacturing gave me
the patent on it, so you'reabsolutely worthless because we
threw it in the trash after thefirst year, but I've got that I
got that patent anyway.
SPEAKER_01 (27:17):
That's neat.
SPEAKER_00 (27:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:19):
That's neat.
Uh well I I think uh findingfinding solutions to problems is
is always a that's the answer.
Great way.
Great way to live.
SPEAKER_00 (27:28):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:29):
Uh what about um you've you've mentioned lots of
connections in New Mexico, and Iprobably couldn't name a a
cowboy or a or even a rancher inin the U.S.
that you didn't know or youdidn't know somebody that knew.
SPEAKER_00 (27:43):
Uh what's that like making those connections and and
uh those building thoserelationships with within the I
we had a good start though,because the in the early years
of classifications, uh we didn'thave any of this computer
technology we've got now.
So we had to first uh identifywho all the ropers were and then
(28:05):
try to get them classified onthe system that we had.
And to do that, I built um in1990, I got on the road and
lived.
I in fact, I lived in a on theroad for two years, and we had
uh 1,800 committee members inthe United States, and we were
doing two votes a year on100,000 ropers.
(28:27):
So that was two million, twomillion key punches twice a
year.
And then I would go to thosestates and I'd get the committee
members there, and then I wouldshow them how I saw the
different handicaps as we wentthrough.
So all of those networks werebuilt right then on year one,
(28:47):
because they were the leaders ofthe industry in their area, and
a lot of them were well-knownranchers and rodeo cowboys and
everything.
And that was my six degrees ofseparation from every cowboy in
the United States.
If and in fact, when we got thedatabase up, even before the
handicap deal started, we'd havesomebody whose daughter had
(29:10):
broke down in the middle ofbetween blank blank Oregon and
blank blank Austria, and we'reout here at mile mark or
so-and-so, and we'd go in andpull the zip code up and say,
these are the two phone numbers,call these people, they'll come
help you.
And it might be a ranch that wasfive miles away.
So before the triple A gotgoing, we were providing triple
(29:32):
A to our people when they weregoing all over because we had
that network built and it wasall coming off of that database.
SPEAKER_01 (29:39):
Yeah, and that association mindset that when
you're part of our group, we'regonna take care of you.
Yeah.
That's really neat.
That's great.
Um, so maybe maybe uh if youhave anything else to add, and
then I like to ask the lastquestion is uh your favorite way
to eat beef, but any anythingelse you'd like to add about uh
ranching or or uh the horse andcattle businesses?
SPEAKER_00 (30:01):
No, you know, the only thing the only uh you're
you're in here marketing beefand and uh and the one thing
that I want to tell you is isthat I'm the the greater
greatest marketer of beef in thehistory of New Mexico.
And uh because every associationexecutive that ever came along
was supposed to promote beef,whatever that meant.
(30:25):
And if you were from New Mexicoor Idaho or some other state
that didn't have a packingplant.
It was pretty hard to say we'regoing to promote New Mexico beef
when we knew they were all goingto the Panhandle of Texas over
there.
So I had this friend at thelegislature who was a lobbyist
for public service company inNew Mexico.
And back in the 80s, publicservice company in New Mexico
(30:47):
was uh diversifying.
They had a lot of otherbusinesses going.
And one Friday afternoon afterthe session, we stopped by the
bull ring for a refreshment.
And um he said, What are yougonna do this weekend?
I told him, What are you doing?
He said, Well, I've got to go uphere to uh Four Corners area,
Mitsubishi Trading Company,which was the um largest trading
(31:08):
company in the world at thattime, is coming in and we're
gonna meet with them and theywant to buy some um uh coal from
us.
We've got huge coal deposits onour our land up here.
Well, I knew that they were thetop trader in beef.
And so I just made a smartremark and I said, Um, well,
(31:29):
while you're at it, get us abeef contract while you're up
there.
Get in Mexico some beefcontract.
So about two months later, uh,Don Hoffman, who ran the Bell
Ranch, called me up on the phoneand he said, Hey, he said, Mac
Baldridge, who's a Secretary ofCommerce, is coming into town,
and he said, He's a neighbor,he's got a ranch next to me down
at Clunch.
(31:50):
And he said, Mac wants to tomeet you.
And I thought, Me?
Well, but he said, he wants tomeet you, come to lunch and go.
So I went in and Mac stood upand shook my hand, introduced
himself, and he said, Um, you'rekind of famous in our office
right now.
And I said, I am.
What did I do?
And he said, Well, uh uh MitchBC carved off uh 200,000 metric
(32:13):
tons of beef for the state ofNew Mexico when I'm here to meet
with Carter Packing Company tosee, because that's the only
packing company we can find thatcan handle this this bid.
So I'd always beat my chest allthe time and I'd say, you know,
I'm worth a fortune because I'mI'm the only one that's ever
sold any beef in the New Mexicobeef.
SPEAKER_01 (32:32):
Oh man, that's that's quite the legacy to
follow.
What a deal.
What a deal and what a funstory.
Um, well, thank you for forselling New Mexico beef.
Um long before they hired me,because that's that's uh what a
great great thing.
Uh well, uh again, I just uh welove to we love to l leave this
(32:53):
question for last, but what'syour favorite way to eat beef?
SPEAKER_00 (32:56):
Often.
Often that's probably the bestanswer.
It is time changes a lot.
And you know, when this beefcouncil first came in and right
near here, Paul Freed used tohave his office right here, and
Paul and I are good buddies.
And and we talked about this alot, how times were gonna
change, and he was alwaysdefending against the the um
(33:19):
PETA and the the anti-beefgroups and all of that.
At that time, you know, theywere beating the drum, and
you're not supposed to eat morethan six ounces of beef, uh, and
you don't eat it more than everythree days, and they had all of
these things going on.
Now, 30 years later, here youguys are, and um you you've got
(33:41):
these diets that have beenscientifically put together, you
know, and and the carnivore dietand all that.
I mean, everybody's you're onthe other side of that now.
I mean, you're not over heredefending yourself.
They're trying to figure out anew strategy to stop the
science.
Because basically yournutrition's the nutritionalists
(34:01):
that you've got right now, theirguns are loaded.
Our nutritionists were were werejust defending themselves with
shields was all they were doingat the beginning.
So so that's the that's the thethick of it.
There's been a huge change.
SPEAKER_01 (34:15):
Huge, huge.
We have a dietitian that worksfor us, and we talk about the
the plethora of resources andand uh things that are to our
advantage or to our uh benefitthat yeah, people are seeing.
And we've been taught for awhile now to stay on the edge of
the grocery store.
That's good for beef.
That's that's everything tellsus that beef is healthy and beef
(34:37):
can and should be a part of ahealthy diet.
And uh so yeah, we do get toride the wave of the the battles
won.
SPEAKER_00 (34:43):
Well, and in talking front of the front of the cow to
the back of the cow, you know,when when uh Paul and I were
here visiting about it, he said,you know, I spend a lot of time
just talking about cow farts.
And he said, and I was thinkingabout the other the other day,
you know, I was listening tosomeone talk about it, and and
we've moved from that end to theother end, and they figured out
(35:05):
now that cows don't fart.
So we're talking about cow burpsnow.
SPEAKER_01 (35:07):
Right.
At least we've gotten thecorrect.
Well, at least we have theanatomy correct now.
Uh and the good news is we havea lot of research and a lot of
studies now.
I know uh the Colorado StateUniversity Agnext program has
studied more cattle um in thelike four years that they've
been in existence than were everstudied before on these cow
(35:30):
farts and cow burps.
And now we've got a lot of newinformation that's telling the
truth that cattle aren't aren'tbad.
SPEAKER_00 (35:37):
I mean, that's still a defensive posture.
You have to you have to defendthe ridiculous, but that's just
part of the Yep.
That's part of the game, youknow.
SPEAKER_01 (35:45):
Absolutely.
Well, we're we're reallyexcited, uh, or really grateful
that you were willing to tellyour side of the story and uh
and even talk about a uniquething that a lot of uh a lot of
uh you know, especially me thatI'm kind of agriculture
adjacent.
Uh what we do on the weekends isteam roping.
And so um thank you for for uhtalking beef and talking roping
(36:07):
with us.
And yeah, again, thank you.
Thank you for everything.
SPEAKER_00 (36:10):
Thank you for asking me over.
SPEAKER_01 (36:12):
Behind the burger is a podcast produced by the New
Mexico Beef Council with thegoal of telling the stories of
the cattlemen and cattle womenof the New Mexico beef industry.
Thank you for joining us fortoday's episode.
If you would like moreinformation, please visit
nmbeef.com.
Whether it be a burger, a steak,or another beef dish, we hope
you are enjoying beef at yournext meal.
Host
Carollann Romo
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