The Oregon Story; Ranching

[Host] Funding for production of The Oregon Story was made possible through a generous grant from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. [Music] [Woman 1] Oh, and I have to go to Portland, to a meeting? And I look at these people, you know, and just [died?]. They all act like they know exactly where they're goin'. [Cattle sounds] And they're taking the chrome off my bumper here and there and honkin' their horn at me and I'm doing 60. [Cattle sounds] And I wonder, now what makes these people tick? I would not want to

have to do this every day. I don't even want to have to do it once a year. I don't know why they would want to live that way. They don't know why I would want to work 12, 16, 18 hours a day out here in the cold. [Metal sounds] [Man 1] I think a lot of the issues that affect us are decided by urban populations who really don't understand the way that things are in rural areas. [Woman 2] We are trying to take care of the land. It seems they think that we're too dumb. Hicks. [Host] Around most of Oregon, raising livestock is a familiar way of life, especially here in the big open spaces of Eastern Oregon, the heart of the ranching industry. But the majority of the States' people live in the non-ranching areas, mostly in the

cities. The feeling out here is that city people don't know how ranching works or who ranch people really are. [Man 1] I think that we're misunderstood and taken advantage of just because we don't have the votes or the loud enough voice or the money to put our message across. [Cattle sounds] [Host] Raising animals for food and clothing is one of the oldest industries in Oregon and it's rich with tradition. Many families have been doing the same work on the same land for more than 100 years. Several generations of a family often work side by side, every day. Today's ranchers use two-way radios and four-wheel drive pickups. Fax machines and computers are standard equipment and much of the livestock is sold through video auctions on satellite TV. Solar-powered

wells pump water into remote desert range land. And one ranch even uses a helicopter to keep an eye on its herd. But there's still no substitute for horses and dogs to work the stock. And the basic business of ranching continues to look a lot like it did back in the 1800s. [Waynette DeBraga] We just like it here, and if we're just left alone here, and can do the things that we'd like to do, why, we're perfectly happy. Very happy. [Host] But Oregon's ranchers are not being left alone. Critics accuse them of mismanaging natural resources to the detriment of native fish, plants, and wildlife. [Red-winged blackbird sound] Perhaps most troubling to ranchers are the efforts to curtail their grazing on public land, an integral part of the Western livestock business.

[Man 2] Without a grazing permit, this ranch that has run cattle on the public land for 130 years would be bankrupt, not a business. [Host] Many generations of hard work have created today's ranches. These families and those before them have overcome punishing winters, long droughts, and unstable markets. [Bob DeBraga] There are people that know how to deal with that. Not that they all survived. But most of them survive. The threats that are here today, they're so big, and they're so unreasonable, and in our people's mind, we're out of control or we feel a lot out of control. [Man 4] We feel we are very definitely under attack. [Man 5] That's going to be a fight. [Host] Oregon's first livestock came in the early 1800s by ship from California to the English settlements. Those first animals were Spanish longhorn cattle like these. Plus sheep, goats, and hogs. The cattle were milked and bred, but rarely used for meat. In fact,

until 1834, some authorities even banned the butchering of cattle, so the herds would increase at a maximum rate. The plentiful vegetation of the Willamette Valley offered excellent year-round grazing, but eventually the fertile soil became even more valuable for growing crops. So farming began to displace the larger sheep and cattle herds, which moved to more out-of-the-way areas. And few areas were more out-of-the-way than Eastern Oregon. For a while, livestock were actually ferried up the Columbia River, released to graze and grow, then later floated back downriver for sale. By the 1840s, American settlers were bringing new animals in on the Oregon Trail. And as towns sprung up along the trail, new herds grew with them. Other cattle were trailed up from California to Southeastern Oregon to mature. Then were herded back down to the booming gold towns.

But then, beginning in the late 1850s, gold began turning up in Oregon, too. [Man 6] First ranchers in this area, as in most other areas of the West, were people that came with the mines. [Host] Jordan Valley sits in the heart of the Owyhee River country near the Idaho border. Mike Handly, who still does ranch work in his great-uncle's horse drawn wagon, says gold was first mined from those hills in 1863. [Mike Handly] '63 was.. the discovery of gold here in the Owhyees, and in '64 sheep were being trailed in so they were the first, but right on their heels were cattle, too. [Host] All around Oregon, the new mining communities paid top dollar for fresh meat. Several Eastern Oregon towns grew larger than Portland. By now, the Indian populations had been decimated and the military had confined most of the remainder to reservations. And in 1862, Congress had enacted the Federal Homestead Act, offering 160 acres to

anyone who would live on and work the land. For the next 70 years, 'til the end of the homestead era, thousands of families poured into Eastern Oregon. But most eventually gave up and left. Leaving it once again to the people who had been there already. The ranchers. Life was tough for all the newcomers. And many would-be farmers found that the dry land was best suited to growing sagebrush. [Man 7] This was the original settlers' source of fuel here for, for years. And when I was a boy, that was our main source of fuel for the house, both for heating we did and also for cooking. [Host] With less than 10 inches of rain a year, countless farms and homesteads failed, and the jackrabbits were no help. [Man 7] They just come in droves. They undermine your haystacks, or they eat into them and tip them

over. They destroy everything in sight. [Host] But if any business was suited to this region, it was ranching, because many bunch grasses and other grazable plants thrived here. A lot of the sheep and cow outfits did very well. Even wild horses introduced by the Indians in the 1700s provided good money for the ranchers who could gather and sell them. The vegetation may not have been dense here but there were millions of acres of it, mostly unclaimed. And it was free for the using. Livestock will walk to market over the Cascade passes into Western Oregon and up to the Columbia River to towns like Arlington and The Dalles for boating downstream. South into California and sometimes even east into other states. In 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad connected Chicago to San Francisco.

Many Oregon sheep and cattle were delivered to the new rail yards in Winnemucca, Nevada. In 1883, the railroad came to Oregon too. First along the Columbia River, linking Portland to the Midwestern states. From there, tracks ran south, and previously unheard of towns like Heppner, Shaniko, and Ontario became major livestock shipping centers. Into the 20th century, railroads extended into what had been isolated grasslands in high desert. The Eastern Oregon livestock industry became ever more connected to the national markets and increasingly independent from the western part of the State. [Sheep baaing] [Man 8] They say behind every successful cattle ranch is a sheep outfit. And that's true. Most of them did have sheep. [Man 9] At one time here, there was 250,000 sheep in Lake County.

[Man 9] I've been told at one time it was over 300,000 sheep in Morrow county. Today we only got about 350,000 in the whole state of Oregon. [Host] At their peak in the early 1930s, about two and a half million commercial sheep grazed this state. Eastern Oregon was thick with the. The Hay Creek Ranch, still operating near Madras, was the largest sheep ranch in the country. It supplied purebred animals to breeders as far away as Russia and South Africa. In the early 1900s, the deepest railway penetration into central Oregon was here in Shaniko. The tracks were pulled up years ago but they once carried away as much as four million pounds of wool a year. A popular saying held that all roads lead to Shaniko. Those roads brought bales of sheared wool from every direction. [Man 10] The shearing crew was a contract crew. That

moved from sheep ranch to sheep ranch. The crew probably had 8, 10, or 12 individual sheep shearers. The contractor then would contract ahead with all the different sheep people to shear their sheep. [Music] [Music] [Host] From here in Heppner, in 1901, some five million pounds of wool were shipped to market. The railroad from Heppner passed through the little town of Cecil, where the Oregon Trail crosses Willow Creek. Cecil had a rail station of its own. Today, though those tracks are also gone, the Krebs Sheep Ranch is still going strong. [Man 11] When all the sheep were here in this country, they were targeting more the wool market then. They were raising the sheep for the wool.

The Krebs still shear their sheep every winter, selling the wool to Pendleton Mills. But wool is just a byproduct now. [Man 11] Now it's the land. We're targeting the meat market. [Man 12 - speaking to sheep?] You had no kind words this morning. Did nobody give you any kind words this morning? [Host] Henry Krebs recently turned the running of the ranch over to his two sons and their families. [Henry Krebs] And the 30 years that I ran sheep, we sold very close to 13 million pounds of lamb, for meat. And very close to a million and a half pounds of wool. That was produced off that raw ground from the natural renewable resource. [Host] Skye Krebs now manages about 4,500 ewes. [Skye Krebs] These old ewes are just nothin' but a simple factory. We've taken cheatgrass, and greasewood, and bunch grass, and we turn it into lamb chops and wool shirts. So basically they're just

converting forage into food and fiber. [Host] Today, most Oregon sheep are raised in farm flocks in Western Oregon. Open range sheep outfits like the Krebs' are very rare. [Skye Krebs] We've been in the sheep business a long time, and I guess we just like 'em because there's really no other reason to justify to go through the headaches of raisin' 'em. [Host] The sheep business declined in Oregon for many reasons. One big factor here in Morrow County was the coming of irrigation. Farm crops are the major industry today. [Skye Krebs?] At one time, this was all sheeped. That country is now into high-production farming. [Host] A few weeks ago in the peak of spring lambing season, these barns overflowed with thousands of sheep and their newborns. Now just a couple pens of pregnant ewes remain, and first thing every morning Skye stops in to gather the lambs born during the night. [Skye Krebs] You keep the

[Skye Krebs] I am close to the ground. You just go real slow. The mother will keep her head down and [fall?] it in. [Host] It's critical that each ewe bonds with her lamb. So every newborn and its mother are brought into their own 'get acquainted' pen for a day or two. [Skye Krebs] Fresh sheets. [Ewe and lamb baaing] [Host] Once they're released out onto the range, the animals must stick together as a band. The Krebs They create that group identity from the ground up. [Skye Krebs shouting] Sheep comin'! [Host] Joining the sheep into ever larger bunches. [Skye Krebs] They'll stay there with a pen of about eight sheep so they can still learn to identify one another, and then progressively as they get older, they'll come over here to this larger pen of about 40 head. [Sheep sounds] Then they'll get mixed with another bunch of sheep and then move to a bigger pen of about 120.

[Sheep sounds] We'll put them on a truck and haul 'em out and they'll progressively make a larger band of about 800 ewes and 1200 lambs. [Host] But it all starts right here. [Sheep sounds] Many of the first time mothers need a little help. [Skye Krebs] There's his feet. There's his nose. [Music] [Sheep sounds] [Music] I don't like to bring 'em too fast 'cause that will give the womb a chance to contract. If you

bring 'em too fast sometimes they'll prolapse on 'ya. Baby is born. Make sure his nose is clean. [Baby sheep sounds] There he is. [Host] Maureen, who's married to Skye's brother, and all of the other Krebs have morning chores. Penny is Skye's wife. [Penny Krebs] A bummer lamb is a baby lamb that its mother doesn't have enough milk for it. Or, maybe she had twins or three. If someone doesn't take 'em, they'll go bum milk off all the other mothers. So they call 'em a bummer. See here. Here's one that didn't make it yesterday. Maureen and I kind of call 'em the sick, the lame, and the sorry, 'cause they bring 'em to us and we either nurse them back to health or they die.

Live or die, is our motto, yeah. Because sometimes, you know, it doesn't matter what you do to 'em, you can nurse 'em along, you can feed 'em and you think they're eating, and you come in the next day and they're dead. For no reason. It's really frustrating. [Maureen Krebs] It's part of life. It's something that you see every day so it's nothing big. You don't get attached to these guys because there's so many of 'em, and even my steers I don't get attached to. [Penny Krebs] Ok, see that little one over there with the brown ears? He's another one that came off the range but he's looking like he will probably make it. He looks pretty healthy. [Host] Like many other young people in rural areas, these kids have a four day school week. That means longer days in class but a lot less driving, since school is 15 miles away. Kids here can drive to school when they're 14 and most begin driving around the ranch even earlier. The Krebs kids all raise show animals as 4-H projects. After the

competition and judging, Jessica's steer should fetch a good price at auction. [Maureen Krebs] 4-H money's put away for college. I don't know what kids in the city do, if they're constantly planning for college, if they're constantly putting money away, but our kids are. [Host] The kids learn quickly what the judges want to see. [Jessica Krebs] They like big hams and wide shoulders. And they don't like really tall pigs, just like a medium-size height pig. Every judge has a different preference. And in Showmanship, they like someone who they know has worked with their pigs and can control them. [Skye Krebs] These kids that grow up on these ranches are well-rounded. They know about Mother Nature and the circle of life, they've seen it all at a young age. They're mature beyond their years. [Unidentified man] Sheep comin'. [Sheep baaing] [Host] Skye brands each lamb and ewe with matching numbers. [Skye Krebs] 82

on the lamb, 82 on the ewe. [Host] The branding is done with a type of paint that will dissolve away when the wool is processed. [Sound of man rattling can and sheep baaing] All lambs get their tails docked as a hygiene measure. But this also provides a convenient headcount, so to speak, of the new additions. And finally, the newborn males are castrated to improve the quality and quantity of the meat. Skye still does this the old-fashioned way. [Sheep baaing] Every morning Henry, who lives in a nearby town, drives in with the newspaper, the

mail, and other supplies. He's supposedly retired. [Henry Krebs] Work is my hobby. I guess when all you know is sheep that's all you have to do. [Host] He's picked up some grocery orders for the sheepherders, too. Five herder's live and work out in those hills. They depend on the Krebs for information and supplies from the outside world. The Krebs, in turn, treasure their herders. [Skye Krebs] To find a good, experienced herder is hard, very hard. [Henry Krebs] It's a lot easier to go to town to find a cowboy than it is to find a sheep herder. Everybody's a cowboy. [Host] Many of the earliest herders in Oregon were Basques, a traditional sheep-raising people from Spain. In some of the most remote places in southeastern Oregon, old trees still display some of the Basque herders' elaborate graffiti. Evidence of long hours

passed alone. Other people that knew sheep found work in Oregon, too. And even today, Lake County is largely Irish. A lot of Morrow County is, like the Krebs, English and Scottish. The Krebs herders include a Peruvian, a Mexican, a man from Spain, and a Navajo Indian. Not to mention, Cathy, who is, well, a vegetarian. [Kathy Hadley] Does it bother me that people eat my sheep? Sometimes it does, yeah. It's just part of what I have to accept. But I don't choose to eat 'em myself. It's like I have a big garden and I'm tending it with this herd of sheep. I don't want to hurt the place. I want it to be better next year because this is my home. [Skye Krebs] A lot of this range in this part of the country doesn't have any water. Now, in our entire operation, there's two wells and one spring, and there's probably

25 locations where we haul water. [Host] The Krebs disperse their sheep to make full use of their land by trucking water to different parts of the range. [Skye Krebs] The wheels of the water truck are the riparian zone on this outfit. [Henry] The sheep have been here quite a while and we're going to move over where there's fresher grass. [Host] When you move the water and move the sheep, you've got to move the herder. Something Henry's done hundreds of times. One of the ranch hands is substituting this week for the regular herder. Henry says he's doing good work but his inexperience is showing. [Henry Krebs] Well, he was moving the wrong direction because we're moving to new ground and he should have been way over this way this morning. Those lambs aren't going to gain any weight today. [Host] And weight translates to money in this business.

[Sheep baaing and sheep bells ringing] A couple of miles away, Skye and another hand are already delivering water troughs to the new location. The herder and his band will arrive this afternoon to fresh grass and water plus a relocated trailer and new groceries. [Henry Krebs] Chili beans and Copenhagen. [Host] Livestock on the range are always in motion, always moving to fresh feed. In late spring when the grass is past its prime, the sheep must move to fresh grass at higher elevations. For the past 15 summers, the Krebs have trucked their sheep, their herders, and themselves up into the Wallowa mountains. In the old days, lambs might be kept for several years of wool production, but these fast-growing lambs will be trucked at six

months to a slaughterhouse in California and the ewes will return to Cecil, Oregon to wait out the winter and begin the cycle again. [Unidentified man] Hey, cattle! Hey, cattle! [Host] An hour from Cecil, in Hermiston, these young steers are boarding for their final move. They've been here at the feedlot all winter, putting on weight. Pounds that're about to be cashed in at the packing plant across the river in Washington. But these animals, too, began their lives on the out-of-the-way ranches of Eastern Oregon. [Tractor sound] Spring is calf branding time in Lake County, when the Withers family rounds up its cows to see what the calving season has produced. This morning the riders will fan out from this far end of the unit and push the cows towards a waterhole several miles away. There's a lot to do. Five generations of the Withers plus a couple of friends from out of town have gathered to do it.

Already at the [writer's?] destination, Dan Withers, who manages the ranch, and his great-uncle John, are building the branding pen. By the time John was born 86 years ago, the Withers ranch was already 40 years old. [John Withers] ...baby sittin' in my mother's lap, there, and that's my father. That's a picture of one of our hound dogs we used to have to chase coyotes here and run 'em down and kill them when they were bothering the sheep so bad. [Host] The Withers place started out a sheep ranch. And John himself raised sheep until 1962. About the time the corral is ready, cows, calves, dogs, and the Withers gang appear over the hills. [Music] [Herding sounds] Rounding them up may be a chore, but John says calves born out here on the desert have some

real advantages. [John Withers] They have a lot of open space, and lot of clean ground, and there's no disease or anything like that. They're always the healthiest calves we have. [Host] The job now will be to get the animals into the corral, weed out a few of the mother cows to make some room, and get down to the business of the day. The first contact with the new calves is a bit like a pit stop at an auto race. The crew will descend on each calf with vaccinations and growth hormones. The calf will have an identifying nick cut from its ear and the males will be castrated with tight rubber bands. The actual branding, the most stressful part, is saved for last. Then the calf is

released. All in all this is a most unpleasant experience for the animals. But it is over in just one or two minutes. [Dan Withers] It's rough on 'em, unfortunately nobody's come up with a substitute for hot iron brand for identification and it's really a necessity out here where you get mixed with your neighbors quite a bit. There's just no other way to identify 'em that's easily readable on a range cow. If you're gonna work with livestock, then you have to get over that kind of thing, a little blood and a few things like that. You have to be kind of tough and go right on with it. [Cows mooing] [Dana] Well, I started last Tuesday. Dad needed some help so he told me how to do it and then I just started doing it. [Cows mooing] It has

to be either in the shoulder or in the neck of the cow, or it can be in their rear end. But we don't do it in their rear end because that's where most of the meat is. [Betty Withers] Dana claims she wants to be a vet and come back here. So we have a vet here. I think it's a good way for 'em to learn responsibility and find out if they want to do this for their life or do somethin' else. [Cows mooing] [Cows mooing] [Unidentified woman] This [unintelligible] is a yellow color when you first put it on there and when it turns blue then you can take it off. [Betty Withers] We can work together a lot more. And the kids can be with us more than than they can in a lot of other jobs. [Cows mooing]

[Host] Two different brands are going on to the calves today. The Lazy J.W. and the [box?]. That's because, on paper at least, some of these cattle are owned by Dan and his wife and the others by his parents. For further identification, Dan also cuts wattles on some of the calves, flaps of skin that will heal to dangle from their necks. While most of the people raising cattle in Oregon have fewer than 50, 50 cattle by themselves are not enough to support a ranch. For that, a family needs at least three or four hundred. The Withers ranch, with about 1100 cows, is fairly large for a family ranch in Oregon. By the 1880s, just a couple of decades after livestock began moving into eastern Oregon, they were virtually everywhere out here. The era of the Oregon cattle kings was in full swing. Dominated by huge outfits. Like

Pete French's P Ranch, Miller and Lux, TodHunter and Devine. Because a single cow could need dozens of acres of this sparse forage, no 160-acre homestead could support a whole herd. So every ranch depended on the availability of free grass from the surrounding Federal land. [?John Withers?] There was really no, no management of the range at that time and all the stock just went where they pleased, and many stayed year-round. [Host] Originally, cattle would be turned out and basically left on their own, sometimes for several years, then rounded up for sale. [?John Withers?] This dry country does not lend itself to that kind of use. [Host] Several times during especially harsh winters, tens of thousands of cattle starved to death on the range. So eventually, most ranchers began to grow some grass for hay to cut and set aside for winter. A practice that continues today. But even so,

forage on the public land was quickly depleted. If one herd left any grass uneaten, another would move in and take it. Widespread overgrazing had been reported as early as 1870 and caused some ranchers to move their operations even farther east, into Idaho. [?John Withers?] It was definitely overgrazed, there's no question. [Host] Over time, many ranchers had informally divided up the public range lands with a neighboring rancher. Of course, these arrangements were often ignored by other cattlemen and especially the more nomadic sheep outfit. [?John Withers?] There were transient sheep when I was a youngster. Thousands went through here. They weren't here very long, but they took their toll as they went. [Host] Cattlemen often ran their animals illegally on reservation lands, causing some Indians to take up arms in 1878. Violent disputes also broke out between ranchers and homesteaders over land and water rights. Finally, in 1802, out-and-out range war erupted, only this

was among the ranchers themselves, between the sheepmen and the cattlemen. As more and more animals competed for water and grass, groups of cattlemen, calling themselves 'sheepshooters', set out to do just that. At Benjamin lake in northern Lake County, they tied up a sheepherder and slaughtered 2,400 of his sheep. Over 5,000 sheep were killed elsewhere in the county. Thousands more were shot and clubbed to death in Crook, and Baker counties. [?John Withers?] Yeah, it's kind of hard to imagine that we're such good buddies now after the Crook County Mutton Killer Society and all that. [Host] And not too far from Fort Rock, masked men drove hundreds of sheep over this cliff, while shooting hundreds more. 1,800 sheep were killed that day. And even now, nearly a century later, their scattered bones can still be found. [Bird sounds] Various efforts finally reduced the violence.

Ranchers agreed to a dividing line along the Bend to Burns road. Cattle only on the north side, sheep on the south. The newly formed U.S. Forest Service began to limit the numbers of animals that could graze on its lands. But what really resolved the territorial disputes, in fact the most important event in the history of the western livestock business, was an act of Congress in 1934, the Taylor Grazing Act. It ended homesteading and divided public lands into individual grazing allotments. Grazing rights went to the ranchers already using the land, who also owned land nearby. [?John Withers?] And that started phasing out the sheep business. Because the biggest part of people in the sheep business then didn't really own any deeded land. They just ran on the public land wherever they wanted to. [Host] Since so many of the sheep operators were unlanded, they did not qualify for grazing allotments, and the number of sheep plummeted in Oregon. [Sheep baaing] Some sheep outfits like the Krebs and the Withers fared well, because they did own

plenty of land. But by the 1950s, other factors had wiped out even many of those. [?John Withers?] The economics of the sheep business were that bad lambs were, weren't a good price at all, and the coyotes were so bad they were beating everybody...sheep up. [Skye Krebs] The wool market crashed after the Korean War. Put a lot of people under. [John Withers] And herders were so hard to get, why, we just decided that...thought we could make an easier living out of cattle. But.... [Host] Today, the Withers ranch, now a cattle operation, is fifty-five hundred acres of private land, with grazing permits for another 130,000 acres, including this land right here. And the branding is finished and as the calves are let loose to mother up, Dan counts them for the first time. [Dan Withers] That's a good good deal, we're happy about that. [Music]

[Host] And even more quickly than it went up, the corral comes back down. [Dan Withers] Small family ranches is what agriculture's all about, that's what founded the West, it's families working together for a common cause. [Host] Gary Nolan manages a ranch out of Paisley, just down the road from the Withers. Small family ranches may have founded the West, but outfits like the ZX could be where ranching is headed. The ZX ranch, owned by Idaho's J.R. Simplot Company, is 1.4 million acres, counting the 900,000 acres of public land grazing rights. It's nearly twice the size of the State of Rhode Island. This may be the largest contiguous cattle ranch in the country. The ZX transformed the Chewaucan Valley, which had been one big marsh.

The marsh stretched from here in Paisley, to Abert Lake, 20 miles away. [?Gary Nolan?] The ZX, in about 1903, undertook the job of digging the center canal, which is a continuation of the Chewaucan. And we collected the waters out of the marsh back into the river, and then established an irrigation system to reuse it. [Host] The one-time marshland is now a system of flood-irrigated hay fields growing twenty 25,000 acres of grass hay in what look like rice paddies. Like most Oregon cattle ranches, the ZX is primarily a cow-calf operation: a base herd of cows which each produce a calf every year. After the calves are weaned, they leave to fatten at the feedlot and the cows are bred again. The ZX has its own system of feedlots, but most small-to- medium ranches ready their cattle in a commercial lot like this, C&B in Hermiston. As many as 20,000 cattle at a time grow to market size here.

Like many other feedlots, C&B sits in heavily agricultural country, close to grain fields and vegetable packing plants. At the lot, barley and ground corn are mixed with packing plant byproducts into a well-balanced and apparently good tasting diet. Each rancher's cattle are tracked throughout their stay, and after they're slaughtered, the packer will report back on the quality of the meat; data that help the ranchers improve their livestock in the future. As with sheep, the process of raising cattle is fairly basic: breeding, feeding, moving, and more feeding. What sets the ZX apart from the other ranches is that it must move and feed 11,000 cows, all of their calves, and several hundred bulls. [Unidentified man] This is our bull herd. [?], Angus, Brangus,

Beefmaster. You buy good bulls. You've gotta buy as good a bulls as you can afford. [Host] The number of smaller family ranches is declining, and most Oregon cattle are being raised on the very large ranches, many of which, like the ZX, are owned by out-of-state corporations. One reason for this trend is that the livestock business runs on a narrow margin of profit, highly susceptible to outside forces such as up and down beef prices and recurring years of drought. [Bob DeBraga] It doesn't take a very big bump in the road to, to eliminate that profit. [Host] Island Ranch manager Bob DeBraga used to run the ZX. And he's worked on various big ranches most of his life. [Bob DeBraga] I guess what the corporate ranches have is a kind of a dirty phrase to me but they have a little deeper pocket.

[Gary Nolan] We have a tremendous flexibility. If the market's in the tank, we can go to one of our own feedlots. We can stay here. That's a flexibility a lot of people don't have the option of; they have to take that price that's offered that day. [Host] When recent flooding actually rerouted the Chewaucan River, the ZX had the heavy equipment and the 100,000 dollars to put the river back. [Gary Nolan] If there came some hardships, a severe drought, for instance, we can put wheels under these cows and go someplace else until things get better. The normal rancher can't do that. [Host] The word corporate has negative connotations for some people. But while the ZX may not be a family ranch in the usual sense, its 40 employees support their families by working here. And the company offers benefits that many smaller ranches can't. [Gary Nolan] Housing, utilities, a generous beef program, a terrific health insurance program, a company retirement program.

[Host] The larger corporate operations may have an easier time responding to the public's environmental concerns, too. [?Bob deBraga?] I think, environmentally, they can be as good, and in some cases, due to their financial situation, they can be a little kinder to the land. [Host] And these days, the big company ranches may be the last bastion of one of the most visible Old West traditions. The full time cowboy. The first professional cowboys in Oregon were highly skilled Mexican vaqueros. The name evolved into buckaroos, which they still call themselves out here. [Gary Nolan] We have enough cattle that we can have full time buckaroos. A lot of the smaller families, you have to quit riding and go make hay, or build fence, or work on a pickup, but we've got enough cattle that allows our men to just buckaroo,

each and every day of the week. [Host] Each buckaroo has a string of seven or eight horses. He rides a different one each day, and must feed, shoe, and care for them all. [Sound of horse-shoeing] Out on the ZX desert range, a place called Poverty Basin, this cow and her calf have strayed miles from the rest of the herd. The easiest way to return them should be to truck them back in the horse trailer. [Dogs barking, cows bawling] [Sound of cows being herded into a trailer] [Bob DeBraga] It isn't all pretty girls, and guitar music, and roaring fires,

and a cold keg beer, wash-tub full of Miller Light there, when we get in every night. [Man] You've got H-O-. [Unidentified man] Yeah, I think that's [?R?] now? Another hip shot, huh? [Host] All that awaits these guys, when they get in there to camp, is a friendly game of Horse. Cowboy style. The ZX has other crews to farm the hay and do other ranch work. The buckaroos ride horses and work cattle, period. And for all its hard work, buckarooing still retains a lot of the romance of the Old West. But in all of Oregon, there's just a handful of people that get to live this life. [Alvin Withers] Yeah, there's nothing better than to get on a good 'ol horse and get out and work some cow. I'd whole lot rather be out on a saddle horse somewhere.

[Host] Alvin Withers is Dan's father. [Alvin Withers] I suppose 75 percent of our time is used up in producing the feed and keeping the equipment going. We don't spend a lot of whole time on the range. [Host] Even a lot of the time spent with the animals is away from the range. This morning Dan and Betty are making a trip to the vet and that's no small production out here. Betty is taking two mares in to see why, after several tries at breeding them, neither has gotten pregnant. That's an especially big concern for this horse, already permanently lame from a leg injury. A horse that's unrideable and unbreedable would be too expensive to keep as a pet.

And depending on the vet's diagnosis, Betty says they may have to 'chicken feed' this mare. That is, sell her to a horsemeat buyer. Two of the males are going in to be neutered, a prospect that does not seem to appeal to the younger, wilder one. [Alvin Withers] We're going to get you fixed here, fella. [Host] And finally, Betty's favorite dog has been hurt. Skeeter is a great cow dog, as he showed at last week's branding. But he's run through some old barbed wire, mangled his leg, and is looking pretty bad. The nearest vet is in Lakeview, some 55 miles away. The neutering goes smoothly, and the vet takes advantage of the sedation to remove a couple teeth

that could cause problems later. [Vet] It's sad when you try to put them in a bridle. It really hurts. And they just keep throwing their head. [Host] The other male needs some extra attention, too. Barbed-wire changed the face of the West. But more than 100 years of use have left countless pieces of barbed wire on the ground, injuring an untold number of animals, wild and domestic, every year. The doctor says the mares appear to be fertile, and recommends hormone treatments before resorting to more drastic measures. And the word on Skeeter is that some disinfecting and a few more stitches should have him back at work in a week or two. That's good news, except for the 110 mile round-trip tomorrow for Betty to pick him up. [?Alvin Withers?] We're a 24-hour a day, 365-day out of the year, occupation. We don't work by the hour. There's no such thing as overtime. [Host] Alan Withers has passed on the running of the ranch to Dan and Betty. But that doesn't mean

that he's taken up golf. [Bob DeBraga] Retirement is not in our vocabulary. [?Alvin Withers?] You see guys that'll just work when they are 70-, 80-years old, they're out there taking care of them cows. And gettin' the meadows irrigated and fixed and fenced like they're going to be there for another hundred years. [Host] And if ranch men are hardworking and resilient, the same has always been true for ranch women, too. [Waynette DeBraga] They were feminists way before there was a feminist movement. She was riding when they needed help. She was branding calves. You know, doing everything. With the men. [Horse neighing] It was a partnership. Here ya go... [Host] On the Krebs ranch, Penny and Maureen do the accounting, manage the kids and the chores, and buck the occasional 100-pound bale of hay. [Penny Krebs] You know, 100-pound bales, that's a

lot. It's hard, it's not easy, but we can do that too when we have to. And we have. And we do it, too, during lambing. But we still have our earrings on and our makeup on. [Music] [Host] The Eastern Oregon range lands were changed, maybe permanently, by the intense overgrazing of the past. Hillsides eroded, and so did the diversity of plant and animal life. Many healthy streams became washed-out, fish-less gullies. But by and large, since the passing of the Taylor Grazing Act, these lands have been improving. [Bob Skinner] You're trying to improve your range all the time as you go along. And in most cases we're able to do that. It's not a fast process under Mother Nature's system, and in this dry, arid country things don't change that fast. These plants didn't disappear overnight and they won't come back overnight.

[Host] Range management is now taught in colleges and most ranchers have studied it. They pay fees to graze the public lands and each allotment has a government-enforced plan, saying how many cows can graze how long and at what time of year. [Henry Krebs] We're running a factory out there, we're converting that grass to this food and fiber, and if we take care of it, it's going to be there next year. We'd be cutting our own throat if we didn't. [Kathy Hadley] Catch him. Catch him. Catch. Catch. Catch. Don't hurt 'im. Quit. Quit. Ok, good dogs. Stay back now, you're done. Stay back. Overgrazing is very destructive on the land. Somebody needs to watch the grazing and make sure it's done right. If it's set up in such a way that it's gone over lightly, it makes it better. If it's done

right, it's really good. It's, it's the best thing that can happen to the land. [Host] Some ranchers may still abuse their public land grazing privileges. This creek, for instance, should be lined with brush and full of fish. [Alan Withers] I think peer pressure is going to do a lot towards straightenin' that out. We can go on our range and find sore spots but we know where they are and we're working on 'em. [Host] And there are plenty of managed grazing success stories. This is a nature preserve owned by an environmental group. The ZX ranch runs cattle here every summer. And the native plants and wildlife are thriving, as well as the cattle. Cattle graze on this public land in what was a barren desert canyon. The stream-side vegetation is now lush and the once threatened fish population has bounced back to excellent condition. But whether overall public lands have recovered enough and whether cattle are helping or

hurting is still hotly debated. [Gary Nolan] I think the whole thing comes down to priorities. For us the priority is livestock grazing, that's how we earn our money. The person that challenges that is the person that sees a different value in the land. [Mike Handly] You know people who do this are an endangered species too, but we don't get special federal recognition. [Host] Most ranchers continue to feel their access to public land is under attack. Mike Handly, for one, has seen his ranch shrink. [Mike Handly] 25 years ago we were reduced in our livestock grazing in the Owyhees and on our ranch 55 percent. They come back now, they want to take 65 percent of what I have left. And I've talked to my banker and he tells me that's the end. I mean I'm out of business and so are all my neighbors. [Host] Mike's great-uncle, the original owner of this wagon, was Bill Handly, one of the

best known Old Oregon cattle barons. John Withers learned his three Rs in this one room schoolhouse right here on the family ranch, and Henry Krebs can stand on the spot, just behind Skye and Penny's house, where his mother met his father, a young draftee on his way to war. [Henry Krebs] That was 1914, I think. [Host] And a stone's throw from his home, Bob Skinner shows visitors the 14 mile marker on the old Skinner Toll Road, set there by his great-grandfather 130 years ago. [Sound of horse wagon] [Mike Handly?] [?Farley?], ho. [?potlicker? [Host] Many ranch families are linked with the past and tied to the land in ways not shared by other Oregonians. [John Withers] You take these families that've been here a hundred years or more, you know, why, her roots run pretty

deep here. You'd hate to have to get up and move. [Host] But that's exactly what many of the smaller ranchers have done. [Bob Skinner] There's far fewer ranchers than there were only 20 years ago. They're being squeezed out, but they're being taken out by larger firms. [Gary Nolan] It's just tough for a small family to make it. [Music] [Host] But though the work is hard and survival is a challenge, there's still a lot to like about the ranching lifestyle. And the people who live it keep holding on. And even with a troubled present and uncertain future, Oregon's ranch people still show plenty of that hope that has sustained them and those before them for so long. [Mike Handly] The people of Portland, if they could come out here and spend some time on a working ranch, I think they'd be

surprised. [Alan Withers] I suspect they don't realize that, really, we're stewards of the land and have done a great job of taking care of the land and the water of this State. [Man 2] We need to really put out our best effort to educate people about who we really are and what we do. I think there's a good chance that we can kind of turn things around. [Unidentified man] You've got to go get in the pickup. Get in. [Music] [Music] Funding for production of The Oregon Story was made possible through a generous grant from the United States

Department of Agriculture Rural Development