Gateway Copper Corridor Winter 2024 E-edition

RANCH from page 9
or sell it and go?’”
Not all was lost, though: Firefighters
were able to save the Ptaks’ house,
barn, other buildings and, importantly,
the cattle.
“So we decided to rebuild, and
it’s taken our life savings to do that.
Unfortunately, we didn’t know the
floods were coming,” Carol said.
“We took 22 floods for the summer
of 2021, starting on July 3. The
last big one came through Christmas
Eve, and it tore out all of our internal
fencing, all of our water lines, and all
of our cattle handling facilities. So on
top of losing all of our fences to the
fires, then we lost all of our internal
stuff and our topsoil to the floods. It’s
been a very difficult, long trek back –
from being totally dysfunctional and
wondering what we were going to do
with all these animals. Now we’re
pretty functional and are trying to get
back to full operations, but the ranch
still has not recovered the forage. We
lost about 90% of our forage, so that’s
been especially difficult. We’ve had
to augment with more hay than what
we did previously.”
She added that the plants that have
grown back are toxic to cattle. Compounding
their troubles, she said,
is that insurance does not cover the
flood damage.
Range tech
On the Ptaks’ dining room table sat
a bit of more modern technology, a
GPS tracker ear tag with a solar panel.
“It keeps track of where the animal
is, so I have an app on my phone that
tells me by number – the tag number
is assigned to the cow or steer, and
so I know where they’re at, I know
where they’ve been traveling and I
know where to go find them,” Carol
said.
“The ranchers who have tens of
thousands of acres, the cowboys
spend days and days riding horses
looking for cows. So we’ve been trying
to use the more modern technology
of GPS tags on the cattle.”
The tag, she added, was “not quite
ready for prime time yet, because
with that single hole they tend to tear
out of their ears.”
The Ptaks are also seeking to improve
their stock – “take our cattle
to the next level,” as Carol put it –
through artificial insemination, using
semen from a Highland bull in the
home country of Scotland.
“We’re going to be breeding 10 of
our cows,” she added. Helping them
with the project, she said, was fellow
Gila County rancher Tyler DalMolin.
She said they use as much of an
animal as possible, adding that hides
and heads are donated to the Apache
tribe, who use the hides for latigos,
drums or moccasins. As for the
heads, she said, “We’ve got friends
who are missionaries out in San Carlos.
They clean the heads up, then the
Apaches help decorate them and they
sell them. The proceeds go to their
feeding ministry out on the San Carlos
reservation.”
In mid-January, Carol flew to Denver
for the National Western Stock
Show, where two Gryphon Ranch
bulls were being exhibited.
“We’re coming out of little Globe
and we’re now going to show up on
the national scene and see what the
national breeders think,” she said.
“The initial feedback has been very
positive, so we hope the boys do a
good job up in Denver and win. The
National Western is the most prestigious
Highland event in the country,
so we’re excited.”
Emerald
Gryphon Ranch, a grass-fed,
grass-finished beef operation, spreads
over 1,000 acres.
“As we drove in, we probably
passed 45 head of cattle that you
didn’t see because they’re hiding in
all those canyons and little draws,”
said Carol.
The Ptaks own 469 of those acres
and lease the rest.
“That makes us a very large ranch
and a very small ranch at the same
time. A typical Arizona ranch is tens
of thousands of acres, but typically
the rancher only owns deeded 40 or
80 acres. So it gives us freedom that
a typical rancher doesn’t have,” she
said.
“Ranchers are your best ecological
care people. They’re going to
take care of the environment better;
they’re the original environmentalists.
At the same time, if we didn’t
ranch and if we didn’t eat the animal,
they would be extinct. You can’t afford
to feed 62 head of cattle; at least
I know I can’t. By them fulfilling the
mission of why God put them on the
face of this Earth, we get to enjoy
these beautiful animals.
“The oldest cow that we retired
was 19, which is very unusual for
cattle. That was Emerald, who we
brought down from Washington.”
The fold – a group of Highland cattle
is called a fold, not a herd – usually
comes in to feed around 4 o’clock.
“It’s like if you knew somebody
was going to bake you warm chocolate
chip cookies at 4 o’clock every
day, where would you be at 4? Also,
our ranch is the only water in the
canyon, so they have to come in for
that,” Carol said. “My husband and I
enjoy a really high quality of life, because
we look at the beauty of these
animals every day.”
10 Gateway to the Copper Corridor Winter 2024