A few years ago our local FFA chapter hosted an American Boer Goat Association show in Poteau, Oklahoma. ABGA shows are for registered goats. Adults can show as well as children at the ABGA shows. Our show attracted people from all over the United States. One person that came was Tana Brinkman from Ericson, Nebraska. That weekend my wife and Tana became friends. They both love their goats.
Tana and her husband, Jim Brinkman own the the famed Pitzer ranch. Jim’s grandfather was Howard Pitzer. Jim and Tana both are easy going, country type people. They’ve always tried to answer our questions and help anytime we needed it. Tana even tells our son to fish in their ponds and the river behind the house.
The Pitzer ranch is where Two Eyed Jack came from. Two Eyed Jack is the American Quarter Horse Association all time leading sire of world champion horses. Needless to say, it’s a huge ranch and it’s world famous.
The Pitzer ranch lies in what’s called the Sandhills of Nebraska. The Sandhills are just that, miles and miles of sandy hills with prairie grasses and a few short Juniper trees scattered about. The Sandhills act as a recharge site for the massive Ogallala aquifer. Whenever it rains in the Sandhills the rain water goes straight through the sand into the aquifer. Jim said there’s static water pressure about six feet down.
Tana jokingly says her goats get the swampy land down by the river no one else on the ranch wants. She has goats in pens all the way down to the Cedar River that runs just behind the Ranch headquarters.
My family and I stopped by the ranch on our way to Yellowstone National Park a few years ago. We watched in awe as they worked about three hundred mares and colts. They have a sale in September and sell the weanling colts. We made notes of the ones we liked. When September came we bought two colts.
This past weekend we took our filly back to the Pitzer ranch. We had her consigned to the spring sale. We drove up a couple of days early to ride the filly around and let her kind of get used to all the noise around the ranch. I took another young colt along just so he could get rode and see some new country. It was kind of fun riding him in the sandy country. I spotted several mule deer, turkeys and even some prairie chickens.
The day before the sale my wife came to tell me Tana was coming to pick her up and they were going to look at the goats. Sure enough my wife bought a goat. We came home with a Pitzer ranch colt and a Pitzer ranch goat, I think we were the only people to do that!
The salebarn in Ericson is the only place open for breakfast. Our last day there we were eating and Jim Brinkman walked in. I got to teasing him about a picture of him in the ranch office where he was riding a camel. I told him we bought a goat from his wife. He laughed and said Tana hates letting go of her goats.
As we left out in our truck and trailer loaded with Pitzer horses and the Pitzer goat I spotted Jim and another man walking through a pen of horses. The Sandhills were behind them and I thought it was a fitting way to begin our journey home.
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
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