When it comes to kids and ranching there are four distinct species we should be concerned about:
#1- The queasy tattooed urchin- These are kids who grew up on a ranch and can’t wait to vamoose. When they are informed by their parents that, “Someday all this ranch will be yours,” they get a nauseous look on their face and run away screaming, “No, no, no.”
They escape to the big city where they’ll have ready access to tattoos that don’t wash off in the shower, earrings and nostril rings, and tongue studs. They want no part of drouths, calving season or stringing barbed wire. They have seen their parents get up at three a.m to check heifers, stress out over if the banker will renew their loan one more year, worry themselves sick about wolves and whether the BLM will cut their numbers again. They are sick and tired of riding the school bus an hour each day and don’t like having to drive 50 miles to the mall or to COSTCO. This species was born on third base and doesn’t even realize it.
This species has also been referred to as “Killers of their parent’s dreams.”
#2- The sad-faced second sibling- These are ranch-raised offspring who love everything about the ranching lifestyle and want desperately to come home to raise their kids the way they were brought up. But they can’t because the ranch can only support one more family and the antiquated law of primogeniture states that the exalted oldest son shall inherit everything. (You’d think we lived in England for gosh sakes where William becomes King and Harry is disinherited and sent to California as punishment.) So the younger offspring are forced to find work in the city living a life they hate and dreaming of the good old days when they rode horses, fed cows, and hit the high school rodeo road almost every weekend. They return annually to the ranch to help brand which only makes it worse when they have to go back to their home in the city.
#3- The western bug eyed dreamer- These are kids who live in town, join FFA or 4-H and show animals at the county fair every year. They love everything about animals and the romance of ranching and dream of one day going to college in Kansas, Texas, Colorado or Oklahoma and majoring in animal science. They would gladly trade their sister or brother for the opportunity to grow up on a ranch. I happen to belong to this species and would have willingly thrown my brother in with the deal.
As youngsters we were encouraged by ag teachers and college professors to pursue our dreams of one day becoming a rancher. Turns out, this bordered on child abuse because there is no way the child can become a rancher unless he or she inherits a 20 million dollar windfall and buys a ranch, or marries into a ranching family which often is too high a price to pay. Besides, the ranching family is on the lookout for such freeloaders.
In my case I’ve never owned more than one acre of ground and had to have seven other jobs just to support my ranching hobby. I started acquiring cattle in the early 1970’s which coincided with one of the biggest wrecks in the history of the cattle business. Financially I’d have been waaaay better off buying stock that didn’t have four legs.
#4- The traitorous sibling- Sadly, this is a very prominent species of ranch kids today. Usually the grandparents worked their butts off to acquire ranch land which they then pass on to a father or a mother who built up the ranch into a thriving business with multiple income streams worth many millions. Usually the parents of this endangered species have three or four children and all but one of the kids wants to come home to the build on the ranch’s legacy but there’s always one child who wants his inheritance right now. So the dreams of the three other siblings are dashed when the ranch has to be sold to pay off the greedy traitorous brother or sister. Which reminds me of the old proverb, “The father buys, the son builds, the grandchild sells and his son begs.”
