Working Ranch Magazine Summer 2025

Faithful, Available, and Trainable

BY ADDIE BROWN

This student-run seedstock cattle company is still going strong.

Wildorado High School’s

Seedstock operation.

BRODY RUSSELL

less common and practically unheard of is a high school seedstock cattle company with a consignment sale. The business is run entirely by high school students, involves nine differ ent sectors ranging from records to research and has a board of student directors that manage those sectors. In 2015 the small Texas Panhandle community of Wildorado reached a crossroads. At that time WISD was only serving kindergarten through sixth grade students and reached a point where they might have to close the school. With WISD being the only school in the immediate small com munity, the members knew that if the

Be faithful, available, and trainable. This is what Brody Russell, the Agricultural Sciences

school closed the town would soon dis solve. The school board would have to pass a bond to keep the doors open, but the families knew that they still needed students to support expanding WISD. These students would have to be trans fers, but what would draw them into the school to support the addition of seventh through 12th grade? From this, Wildorado Cattle Company was born. A group of passionate students approached the WISD school board about the addition of the cattle com pany to draw in new students from sur rounding communities. Their attitude was “build it and they will come.” The board approved their lofty goal and

teacher at Wildorado ISD tells his students. To make any kind of pro gram, event or business succeed you need to be faithful, avail able, and trainable. Since 2018, teachers and students at Wildorado ISD located in Wildorado, Texas have been committed to build ing a legacy that will outlast us all. Many community colleges around the country have a cattle program such as a stocker business, but what is

60 I SUMMER 2025 WORKING RANCH audited readers run 21 million head of beef cattle.