Wildorado ISD Leads the Herd with Cattle Company

The students carefully studied the seedstock catalog before heading to a sale 30 minutes down the road from Wildorado ISD with a list of six bulls they liked. Five of the breeding cattle were definitely not within their budget. But the students were patient — they had goals and genetic aspirations for the bull they wanted to buy that day. When senior Hollis Albracht’s bid on bull #22 was accepted, all the students cheered. 

The Wildorado Cattle Co. is a student-run seedstock operation in the 200-student Panhandle district west of Amarillo. This one-of-a-kind career and technology education program imparts a wide variety of skills to the students involved. 

“The cattle are simply the tool,” said Brody Russell, the Wildorado ISD agriculture teacher. “We could be raising anything. The key is getting kids the experience to learn those skills.” 

Some of those skills include learning how to communicate with people in the cattle community, marketing the company, and planning an auction held in March each year. Not to mention all the animal science, genetics, and math they are learning along the way. 

Russell, a certified teacher from Pampa, knew about the program from consigning his own bulls to be sold through the Wildorado Cattle Co. before joining the district three years ago. He is the second teacher to lead this unique program that started after the district built a high school in 2016. 

“The school board had a vision and a heart for the community,” Russell said. “Most small communities, you let the school go and it doesn’t take very long for the rest of it to go with it. It was very important to keep a school.” 

A High School Returns to Town 

Shannon Leavitt was the board president when Wildorado ISD passed a bond by two votes to build a new facility. Previous to that bond, the last class to graduate from Wildorado High School was in 1951.  

“I lived in this community my whole life,” said Leavitt. His family, like everyone else in the community, attended school in Wildorado through the fifth grade and then went to neighboring Vega ISD for middle and high school. 

Facing the challenges of declining enrollment and passing a deficit budget each year, Leavitt knew from his decades of service on the board that they needed to do something bold. He said the community was split down the middle about building a new school.  

“But from the minute we passed that bond, every single member of the community has supported this.” Three of the 1951 alumni attended the 2021 graduation ceremony, the first one in 70 years. 

An Idea Born in Ag Country 

The school board knew that just building a new 400-student facility would not be enough to attract students and increase enrollment. 

“We had to change the mindset of being a school board with students to being a business that is creating an educational product that customers wanted to come to,” Leavitt said. 

The product they decided to focus on was to find the best agriculture CTE teacher and do something no one else in Texas, let alone the nation, was doing — establish a cattle company run entirely by students. 

“We’re an ag community and the school sits in the middle of a wheat field,” he noted. 

The cattle company is structured into several student-led departments, including directors of communications, events, finance, and herd management. After an initial investment from the district, the company is now self-funded through the annual bull sale. They sold seven of their own bulls in March and sold an additional 41 consigned bulls. 

“The fact that we have consignors come back year after year — myself being one of them — is a testament to the work that these kids put in and how seriously they take it,” said Russell, referring to the stock of bulls owned by others but sold through the Wildorado Cattle Co. 

“We’ve invested in genetics this year, and the kids are putting in some embryos,” he said. “I’m really hopeful that we are walking to the end of the diving board to make a splash. They already made a splash everywhere they go.” 

Russell has 90 students in the grades 8-12 agricultural program, with about 65 of those students working directly with the cattle company. Some of the courses he teaches include the principals of agricultural, small animal management, equine science, agriculture mechanics, and livestock production with a variety of certifications. 

Out of the classroom, Russell and the students have an eye on the future of the company’s reputation in the seedstock community. The Wildorado Cattle Co. has earned industry respect and impressed customers with their dedication and attention to detail. But they want to be known for the quality of their product, not just the novelty of being a student-run operation. 

Leavitt and the board wholly support these efforts. “Anything of value, anything of real credibility can never be content where it is today,” he said. “It always has to have the vision of where it’s headed.”