For more than 30 years, when the hustle and bustle of the holidays fade, the real work for the Wilkinson family of southeast Colorado is just beginning.
Bill, Nancy and Sydney Wilkinson will load up bulls and heifers from their ranch in Las Animas County, between La Junta and Trinidad along U.S. 350, and head to Denver for the National Western Stock Show. This year’s show, the 120th anniversary, runs Jan. 10-25.
“With our cattle, this will be our 35th year” at the stock show, said Bill, who runs Wilkinson Gelbvieh Ranch with his wife, Nancy. Their daughter, Sydney, is a full-time Colorado State University extension agent who takes the lead on getting the animals ready for the event that attracts livestock producers and buyers from across the country and several different countries.
“When we drive into Denver I get a little bit of a tingle because we’re coming into the stock show,” Bill said. “It’s highly competitive. It attracts the best cattle from everywhere. It’s the difference between the Super Bowl and a regular season game.
“No matter wherever else you go to shows,” Bill said, “at the National Western, all the stakes are raised. This is the best of the best.”
The stock show and rodeo, held on a 250-acre complex in north Denver, is a tradition, Nancy said. “We just can’t imagine January not including the National Western.”
She’s looking forward to using the new facilities that are part of a multi-year, approximately $1 billion redevelopment of the city-owned site. One of the new buildings is the Sue Anschutz-Rodgers Livestock Center, which includes a 3,700-seat arena and will replace the “barns” and animal preparation space that were on the ground floor of the Exposition Hall.
Stock show officials asked livestock exhibitors what they wanted as they designed the changes, Nancy said. Unloading and loading is easy and the new stalls are nice, she said. “And they’ve done more than just make it a cattle show.”
The CSU Spur campus that sits near the middle of the complex and other buildings provide meeting rooms and space for different kinds of events.
The Wilkinsons will bring about 10 animals from their operation. In addition to a commercial herd they raise for beef, the family raises purebred Gelbvieh, which originated in Germany, and Balancer cattle for breeding stock. The Balancer are a hybrid of Gelbvieh, Angus and black Angus.
The Wilkinsons’ ranching tradition started with Bill’s great-grandfather, who moved to Menard County in the Texas Hill County around the time of the Civil War. Bill’s father, Charles Wilkinson, who graduated from Texas A&M, moved to Colorado after serving in World War II and bought the ranch that Bill and Nancy now run.
After graduating from Colorado State University, Bill worked on a ranch in the San Luis Valley and then moved to west Texas to manage a ranch for his father and uncles. He and Nancy met there. They and their daughter moved to Colorado in 1990.
“That’s how I ended up leaving an oilfield town and becoming a rancher,” said Nancy, who also taught school.
Sydney graduated from Texas A&M as her grandfather, uncles and mother did.
Both Bill and Nancy have served on the board of the American Gelbvieh Association, which holds its national show every other year in Denver. The two recently returned from the annual convention in Nashville, Tenn. Next up: the National Western.
“Denver has a tremendous amount of traffic, a lot of people who come in from other countries, looking for seed stock to import. It’s international. It’s just a whole different animal,” Bill said.
Like Nancy, Bill is eager to try out the stock show’s new facilities. He’s happy with the new livestock pens that replaced the labyrinth of wooden fences, which stood for decades farther south. The modern pens, equipped with plenty of power outlets and ready access to hot and cold water, can be removed once the stock show closes.
While he likes the improvements, Bill admits to some nostalgia for the historic pens, which had catwalks to give a bird’s eye view of the animals. The “yards,” as they’re called, were the scenes of deal-making and business transactions.
Wes Allison, named CEO and president of the National Western in May, said the large livestock yards set Denver apart from other stock shows. Allison, who grew up in the Texas Panhandle, attended the National Western with his family and later on his own.
“We’re the only one that does yard shows the way we do them,” Allison said.
Historically, Denver was the rail head for much of the West for shipping cattle, Allison added.
“It used to be that there was a tremendous amount of business done at the stock show in the yards, people buying bulls, heifers, whatnot,” Bill said. “That was before people had their own production sales.”
The Wilkinsons have their production sale on the last Saturday of every March. They use an online platform with live bidding.
“Nowadays a big part of the marketing is done with video and internet. There are a lot of platforms you can put cattle on,” Bill said.
But Bill believes people still want to see the cattle for themselves. The Wilkinsons make sales in March to people who saw their cattle at the stock show.
“We’ve picked up numerous buyers that way over the years,” Bill said. “There are a lot of things you can’t see in a video. That’s why people still like to see live cattle in the flesh, the way they walk and what their feet look like.”
The market is currently in a good spot for cattle ranchers, whose beef is fetching some of the highest prices in a while. Prices were up nearly 15% in September compared with September 2024.
“The market is at levels we’ve never seen. From three years ago, the price of a calf is double what it was,” Bill said.
Before prices increased, ranchers were operating on tighter margins because their costs — vehicles, fuel, feed — were rising. High costs and inflation are still a challenge, but the higher beef prices have helped.
However, higher gains for ranchers have meant pricier steaks and hamburgers for consumers. The Trump administration has promoted importing more ground beef from Argentina to try to lower prices for shoppers. Farm organizations criticized the plan, saying it will undercut U.S. ranchers.
The driver behind the high beef prices is low cattle numbers nationwide, Bill said. “There’s just not enough product. The nice thing is our demand is still very high.”
Colorado’s herd size of 2.5 million Jan. 1, 2025, tied with 2014 and 2015 for the state’s third-lowest total number over the past 50 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Factors behind the plummeting herd size include drought and high costs of supplies and equipment.
And there’s the issue of the changing demographics of farming and ranching. The current operators are getting older and fewer younger people are going into agriculture.
“A lot of people are my age. My wife and I are 66 and 68. There are a lot of guys that say, ‘We’re done.’ It’s hard to replace operators,” Bill said.
