“The Ranch That Runs by Itself”
Western Livestock Reporter, May 4, 1949

  “So, I drove up to Roundup,” the bull buyer said, and went out to see Bill Spidel. Bill met me at the door and we went in and chatted a bit shile Bill smoked a few matches through his pipe. Then he shucked into his bib overalls and tied a kerchief around his neck, and we lit out to look at the polled bulls. Down in the corrals, bill pointed out a bunch and said, “Those are the herd sires I’ve selected for my customers.” And he pointed again: “The ones over there—they’re the mill run.” Then he sat down on a feed box and re-lit his pipe.

  “Ain’t you going to help me look?” I asked. Bill just took his pipe out of his mouth and said, “you’re a grown man. There’s some 500 in here—some rattling good, and some not so good. You’re paying for the enjoyment of picking ‘em out and I’m not going to spoil your fun.” “I saw what he meant,” the buyer said. “I really had a good time picking out my carload.”

Second Largest in Nation-
  Today, Bill Spidel’s Roberts Loan and Cattle Company is the second largest Polled Hereford breeding establishment in the United States. There is a larger establishment in Texas some place but it is a long dry hop from the sun-abused Texas lowlands to the Musselshell country in central Montana, and there is room enough for everybody. Spidel-bred Polled Herefords are marketed in that not-so-narrow corner of America west of the Mississippi, and few indeed are the western states where Spidel cattle haven’t left their mark.

 To the breeder or user of Polled Herefords, Bill Spidel’s establishment is the Macy’s of the west. When a prospective buyer turns off the Harlowton-Roundup road and heads up Goulding Creek he can be sure he is on his way to seeing the kind of cattle he came to look at. If he is seeking a herd sire, it is quite likely he will go home with a full trailer and be a few thousand dollars lighter. Or if he wants a quick buy in the way of something that can knock the horns off his milk cows he’s likely to find that too. Geared to full production, the Roberts Loan and Cattle Company deals in Polled foundation stock by the head or carload. Shopping at Spidel’s is an unhurried process marked by leisureliness. There is goods on the counter and take-down goods on the shelves. If that doesn’t please the buyer—there is something put away in the basement that might.

  “Raise ‘em cheap to sell ‘em cheap,” Bill Spidel is fond of saying, thereby leaving much unsaid about a breeding operation on 45,000 acres of rangeland where some of the finest Polled Herefords in the country live out their lives without tasting pre-cooked rations, feeling a scotch comb, or seeing the inside of a barn. There is nothing cheap about the establishment or the cattle, and Spidel’s fond remark can be reduced to one of those masterpieces of understatement for which he is known. Spidel-breeding is of the best and the Roundup cattleman’s presence at the better of the Polled sales is a good omen. Usually he will be listed in the top of the bidding order.

  Production Based on Numbers-
The production theory at the Roberts Loan and Cattle Company is based on numbers. The Ranch supports a basic female herd of 850 registered Polled Herefords. The calf crop is annually reckoned between 500 and 600 head. The Mendelian law of inheritance being what it is Bill Spidel is in the favorable position of being able to acknowledge that if you are going to have a top you are certain to have a bottom. The Roberts Loan and Cattle Company’s 16 herd sires are a uniform lot great for heads and quarters, but Spidel doesn’t call on them to operate like so many vending machines. Even champions have their off days. The aim is toward a full output coupled with constant improvement, an all-too-natural process over which man has only limited control.

The element of “raise ‘em cheap to sell ‘em chea;” is introduced with the grass factor. The Roberts Loan and Cattle Company in its three units, covers some of the finest western wheatgrass and blue gramma range in the country, and with the exception of some winter wheat and crop land, all the land is still under the natural vegetation. The ranch hasn’t put up or fed an appreciable amount of hay in hay in years—some stacks on the place have remained unmolested for twelve to sixteen years. And the element of labor and management has its degree of cheapness. The entire ranch operation is handled by only six men!

Obviously this is an impossibility. Anybody with a lick of sense will tell you can’t runa a registered, mind you, cattle operation in which approximately 800 matrons, 50 replacement females, sixteen herd sires, and an annual calf crop of 500 to 600 head range on 45,000 acres divided into three units and measuring 24 horseback0miles across the extremities and held together by 225 miles of fence with only six men. No, by dad, it can’t be done, either on Montana’s Musselshell range or in the piney woods of Slagel, Louisiana.

  Make It “Look Easy”-
But it is being done. The Roberts Loan and Cattle Company is producing registered Polled Hereford foundation stock in numbers comparable to the production of the largest horned Hereford establishment in the nation and is making it look easy.

  Bill Spidel explains it:
“This is the only ranch in the world that runs by itself without knowing which way it’s going. It runs loose and easy and everybody does as they please.”

  Another understatement, but it fits. The design is to get as much done with the lease possible effort. Undismayed by the impossible, Bill Spidel daily continues his strides toward harnessing perpetual motion.

  “Running a ranch like this is like baking homemade bread,” Spidel explained. “-it’s getting to be a lost art. Nowadays people
Runamuk has also been featured in Yoga Journal, March 2007, Trail Rider Magazine, Western Horseman and a multitude of others