Hats off to lifetime rancher Gene Walker,
L.I.F.E.'s Rancher of the Year

By María Eugenia Guerra

For most of a century and all of his life, Gene Walker has been a rancher, a sun-up to sun-down steward of the brushlands. Some in business have called his enterprise a land and cattle empire that sprawls across Webb and Zapata counties in South Texas; Culberson, Jeff Davis, and Presidio counties in West Texas; and Chihuahua in Northern Mexico.
Spare of words, Gene Walker calls it home and sees that enterprise as one that has afforded him the opportunity to continue and expand what his father J.O. Walker, Sr., started when he first purchased ranchland in Webb County in 1929.
The Walker Piedra Parada Ranch, which was acquired from Eusebio and Amador García when Gene was three, has been the foundation for all future Walker ranching endeavors that eventually included the acquisition of the adjoining Reynolds Ranch and the Shipp Ranch in Webb and Zapata counties.
"I wouldn't want to do anything else but ranch. If I had my life to live all over again, I wouldn't change anything," Gene Walker said of the family business that allowed him to work side by side with his parents, his brother J.O., and his sister Bess, and later Bess' husband, Evan Quiros, Sr.
The pattern for working alongside siblings is repeated in the family Gene Walker raised with his beloved partner of 47 years, Mary Katherine Haynes. Their children James Patrick, Gene, Jr., Elizabeth, and Kathleen all work in the family business he and Mary Kay formed, Huisache Cattle Company, and in the Walker family holdings that include Vaquillas LLC, Vaquillas Cattle Co., Vaquillas Development, Vaquillas Energy, Border Title Group, West Wind Homes, Proviron, and Walker Plaza.
A much admired matriarch and an innovative rancher herself, a photographer and an astute participant in the hardscrabble proposition of making a life and a family on this edge of the Chihuahuan desert, Mary Kay Walker succumbed to illness in 1997, leaving all who loved her an immeasurable legacy of courage, determination, and the ability to find meaning and beauty in the smallest of nature's offerings.
On a recent visit occasioned by being named Rancher of the Year by the Laredo International Fair and Exposition association, Gene Walker recalled his childhood days on the family farm, the old Nye Farm, which is where May and J.O. Walker, Sr., raised J.O., Gene, and Bess. "My brother and I always preferred the ranch to farming, though we all worked at farming. I've always had a love of the land and cattle, and the life you get to have taking care of cattle," he said, adding, "At the Piedra Parada we concentrated on Herefords and developed a very good commercial herd of Hereford crosses. We started putting in Brahma bulls and then Beefmasters," Walker said.
"We pretty much do today what we started out doing, which is to develop a very hardy commercial herd," Walker said of his Husiache Cattle operation and the Vaquillas Cattle operations in Webb County, West Texas, and Chihuahua, Mexico.
"The beef industry has changed in many respects, Walker said, adding, "Especially as to technology and marketing, but beef commands almost the same price it always has. The price of beef has not kept up with the cost of producing it."
"We took stock from here for the West Texas operation, and we also bring up cattle from La Selva Ranch in Chihuahua," Walker said of the Vaquillas Barrel Springs and Wild Horse ranches. Asked how he manages ranches in so many locales, he said, "I have good help and I use airplanes. My son Rick is a pilot exclusively for us. My son Primo tends strictly to the cattle, doing all the trading and the buying and marketing," he explained, adding, "We sell by satellite. We film the herd, put it on a screen that you can access to buy and bid on it. It's the same as bidding at an auction barn, but you have more potential buyers. A lot of our cattle go to Kansas, Colorado, and Missourri."
Of the Vaquillas Cattle operations, Walker said, "We precondition the calf. He is weaned and knows how to eat out of a bunker. He's quit bawling, and he's ready to be sold. He can go to the butcher or he can go to the feedlot to get another 300 pounds put on him or he can go to grass. We get a premium for our cattle because we raised them tough and because the buyer isn't going to lose any of them."
"There are no tanks on those West Texas ranches," he said. "The rainfall is about the same as it is here, but the terrain is different. Most of the grass is side oats gramma. It takes constant patrolling to make sure the lines from the wells are working. Cattle shouldn't walk over a mile to get to water," he continued, adding that "a beautiful small river called the San Lorenzo runs through the Chihuahua La Selva Ranch."
Asked how he best keeps apprised of market trends, Walker said, "I do an enormous amount of reading and attend stock raisers and agricultural meetings."
Gene Walker is a graduate of Schreiner High School in Kerrville, and he also attended Texas Tech for two years where he says he "loaded up on agricultural classes."
Gene Walker has received numerous awards and accolades in recognition of his conservation efforts and good land stewardship. He has been recognized by Rotary, Junior Achievement, and the Webb Soil and Water Conservation District. He is an honorary member of LULAC, which he said was "a tremendous honor."
He has served as member, director, and honorary director of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and the TSCRA Wildlife Committee. He is a director of the Federal Land Bank, and has served over 20 years as president of the Mirando City I.S.D. Board. He serves on the board of Camino Columbia Toll Road and has served as a Deacon for many years at the First Baptist Church in Laredo.
While the offices for most of the Walker interests are ensconced midtown in Walker Plaza which fronts Mann Road and Interstate-35, the main offices for Vaquillas Cattle and Huisache Cattle companies are located in Aguilares in a brick building that was once a school house. A handful of docile Barbados sheep (borregos Paraguay) keep the old school yard mowed. "I am well pleased to have this office exclusively for the cattle end of the business. It's very handy because the ranch is just a few miles away, and it's a very sturdy building," Walker said of the modest structure.
Of the enterprise of land and cattle, Walker said, "You have to work pretty hard to keep it. You have to love it and the work that goes with it. I get huge satisfaction from the work, and the reputation we have in the market."
Of his ties to his Webb County ranchland, Walker said, "This is home. I'd keep it to the last."
Of his children, he said, "We're a team. I'm happy they will be carrying on with what we built, and I am confident they will exceed what I've been able to do.
I give most of the credit to Mary Kay for their morals and their kindness. Maybe they picked up their business skills from me, but most of the credit goes to their mother who was in her own right a very astute business woman."