No Man’s Land, it was called, that 34-mile-wide strip of Oklahoma Territory that separated Kansas and the Texas Panhandle. But while the original nickname referred to its place on a map, No Man’s Land could — at times — also have aptly described the harsh elements encountered by the men and women who ventured there seeking opportunity.
James K. Hitch was among the first to recognize the opportunities in the Oklahoma Panhandle, and when he began running cattle and building a ranch in the area in 1884 the grazing was open range. By the early 1920s, Hitch had acquired more than 30,000 acres. Subsequent generations of Hitch family members have built on J.K.’s original holdings, and today the Hitch name is synonymous with ranching, cattle feeding and business entrepreneurship in the Oklahoma Panhandle.
Yet, without the vision of H.C. “Ladd” Hitch Jr. the family might never have ventured into cattle feeding. Ladd is generally credited with launching the family feeding business and, in fact, had to convince his father, Henry C. Hitch, that feeding cattle could be done successfully on the High Plains.
“His father made him put the feedlot on some crummy ground,” says Ladd’s grandson, Chris Hitch, now president of Hitch Enterprises. “He didn’t want it to eat up their good grazing grass. That was a blessing because it is on a caliche knob so the drainage is really good, and you don’t have a lot of soil, so you don’t have a lot of mud. You can clean up the pens when it rains and snows like it did last winter.”
Former Texas Cattle Feeders Association CEO Charlie Ball wrote about Ladd Hitch’s cattle feeding beginnings in his book, The Finishing Touch.
“In 1952, the Hitches sent some of their own ranch cattle to a custom feedyard in Arizona and later observed that the feedyard was purchasing its grain from the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles. ‘They bought our cattle and they bought our grain,’ Ladd said, ‘and the only asset they had was a little better winter weather for feeding cattle.’ ”
According to The Finishing Touch, the Hitches constructed their first four feeding pens the very next year. “This was the beginning of Henry C. Hitch Feedlot, which expanded to 1,000-head capacity in 1955, and to 5,000 by 1958.” Henry C. Hitch Feedlot is now 50,000-head capacity.
Ball wrote that Ladd Hitch “led a company of nine investors to build Texas County Feedyard at Guymon. Two years later a Hitch-led group built Master Feeders (now called Hitch Feeders I).” Master Feeders had an original capacity of 16,000 but was expanded in 1974 to its present capacity of 60,000.
Hitch’s venture into cattle feeding 57 years ago at a remote location on the High Plains far from available packing facilities has blossomed into an efficient, three-yard operation with a total one-time capacity of 160,000-head.
For his vision, leadership and entrepreneurial spirit, the late H.C. “Ladd” Hitch (1918–1996) was inducted into the Cattle Feeders Hall of Fame during a ceremony in Denver earlier this month. The Cattle Feeders Hall of Fame was established to honor the exceptional, visionary men and women who made lasting contributions to the cattle-feeding industry.
Born in Guymon, Okla., in 1918, Ladd Hitch grew up on the family ranch during the height of the Dust Bowl era. In 1939, he graduated from Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University) with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture. After serving in the Navy from June 1944 to April 1945, Ladd returned to the family ranch to work with his father.
By encouraging the development of a cattle-feeding operation, Hitch helped put his family on the leading edge of a trend that was destined to reshape America’s cattle and beef industries.
“The packing industry was still in Kansas City, and the feedlots were developing out here in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas,” Chris Hitch says. “They shipped cattle on rail cars to Kansas City where they were harvested. Eventually, somebody had the bright idea of building a packing house next to the feedlots so you didn’t have to ship live cattle. As that packing industry moved closer to the feedyards, the feedyards grew in size.”
But cattle feeding was just one of Ladd Hitch’s new business ventures. He was among the first to drill irrigation wells and introduced one of the first irrigation systems in the Oklahoma Panhandle. In The Finishing Touch, Ball wrote that Hitch drilled his first irrigation well in 1947, “several more during the drought of the early 1950s, and by 1958 had 19 wells irrigating about 4,000 acres of grain sorghum, alfalfa and wheat.”
Hitch Enterprises now farms 30,000 acres in the area, and additional Hitch-owned family entities include Hitch Commodities, Hitch Mills, Hitch Cattle Co., Hitch AgriBusiness, Hitch Ranch, Hitch Farms and Hitch Consult-ing Service.
Ladd Hitch passed on his entrepreneurial spirit to his son Paul Hitch, who led the company into the pork business in 1997 with the launch of Hitch Pork Producers, Inc., to further diversify the family operations. Hitch currently markets 280,000 hogs per year from a 15,000-sow farrow-to-finish operation.
Paul was also a respected industry and community leader who helped usher Hitch Enterprises into the 21st century. After his passing in 2008, Hitch Enterprises is now operating under the leadership of Paul’s sons, Chris and Jason, both graduates of Oklahoma State University. Jason serves as chairman of the board/co-CEO, and Chris serves as president/co-CEO.
Ladd Hitch served as a director of the Texas Cattle Feeders Association, a trustee and executive committee member of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, president and advisory council member of the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association, past director of the National Cattlemen’s Association and a member of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. He was also recognized as the National Cattlemen’s Foundation Cattle Businessman of the year in 1989, inducted into the Oklahoma State University Hall of Fame in 1979 and named OSU Distinguished Alumnus in 1987.
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