At the Bell, they're ranching the old-fashioned way

New Mexico Business Journal, Dec, 1995 by Joy Waldron

It must work. The Bell is the largest privately held spread in New Mexico. How large? 292,000 acres.

Every year in June the cowboys of the Bell Ranch in eastern New Mexico ride out to brand the new calves. In the shadow of a bell-shaped mountain, they lope with coiled ropes at their saddlehorns, followed by a chuckwagon. Every day the bawl of an outraged calf and the pungent smell of singed flesh mingle with meadowlark song and sage in the rugged country. For three weeks they ride from pasture to pasture, cow camp to camp, until each new calf is marked with the Bell brand.

It's cowboying the old-fashioned way, the way it was done in the 1880s during the time of the great cattle drives. "That's kind of the mystique of the Bell - that they rope and drag to the branding fire," said Jed Elrod, a former rancher who works in the New Mexico Department of Agriculture at Las Cruces. "They go out to the cattle instead of herding them to pens."

But Bell Ranch manager Rusty Tinnin is above all things a practical man. "We don't do it this way for some romantic reason," he said. "We do it because it works. You don't fix things that's not broke. It's a lot faster to brand a calf on the ground than to run them through the chute. We can brand 300 head in two to three hours. It's easier and simpler. We take the wagon out and the men are all right there working." He explains the difference between "land on the flat" and land in the mountains, adding, "Some ranches use pickups, we ride horses. And if it were brushy we'd need a helicopter, but it's pretty open here."

Mix of Old and New

Tinnin reflects a new breed of cattleman, the educated and enlightened rancher of the late 20th Century who blends the best traditions from the past with modern innovations. He incorporates the latest scientific knowledge in cattle breeding and management to produce a topnotch herd on the largest family-owned ranch in the state.

Previously the manager of a three-ranch outfit near Amarillo, Tinnin was hired in 1987 to run the Bell Ranch for the Lane Family of Chicago. A tall gray-haired man with piercing light eyes and a reserved air, he holds a degree in animal science from West Texas State University. He speaks of the land with respect.

The ranch he manages once covered three-quarters of a million acres, as the Pablo Montoya land grant awarded by Mexico to a La Cienega farmer in 1824 and the overlapping Baca Location No. 2 of 1860. The Bell has been worked continuously as a cattle ranch from 1824 to the present day. The Montoya and Baca families held the adjacent grant lands for decades, then Wilson Waddingham in 1870 bought portions of both grants and combined them. The Red River Valley Co. in 1898 purchased the land under receivership and ran cattle profitably until 1947, when the ranch was broken up and sold.

Located mostly in San Miguel County with a little in Harding, the Bell now covers 455 sections, or 292,000 acres, only a third of the original size, yet is still a massive cattle operation. Conchas Dam has flooded a portion of the old ranch with waters from the Canadian River.

"We have no state or federal land - it's all private land. We're a cow-calf operation," Tinnin explains. "We raise calves and sell them to the feedlot as weaners (7 months old) or yearlings (18 months old). As the first cycle in beef production, a cow-calf ranch intends to produce as many healthy calves as possible.

"Ninety percent of our cows calf," he says. "Our ratio is six bulls to 100 cows. We mix them in for 75 to 90 days, then remove them." Gestation is nine months, or 282 days, and the calving period covers the end of February until the middle of May. The newborn calves weigh 70-90 pounds at birth, 480 pounds when weaned at seven months. If market prices are too low, Tinnin will hold the weaners over the winter and sell them the next year when they will weigh between 750 and 800 pounds.

The national economy and the cattle population determine the price Tinnin gets for his weaners. Right now, cattle are at a 10-year high in numbers - "the peak of cow numbers, a 1.5 percent rise in the population," he says - so the price is at a reciprocal 10-year low. "The feed-lots have been losing and the prices have dropped 25 percent. We were getting $1.02-1.06 on the hoof, but in 1994 it was 79-80 cents. So I'll hold the weaners over the winter and sell them next year to the feedlot."

Creating a New Breed

Tinnin raises Herefords to produce grade choice to low choice meat, or a 700-lb. carcass with less than 1/4-inch fat. But his training in animal husbandry and breeding inspired him to create a new breed, actually a tradition in the olden days of the Bell Ranch when earlier managers were also known for innovative techniques and breeding lines.

"We're creating a composite of four breeds," he says proudly, "called the Red Bell: Hereford, Gelbvieh, Red Angus and Brahma. It'll be ready in another seven or eight years and it'll add 50-70 pounds to a calf. Now they might weigh 480 pounds when we sell them as weaners; this'll make them 525-550. More of them will yield grade meat."