Beilue: 'This is just who I am'

WT benefactor to enter third hall of fame, this for cattle feeders

Photo: Johnny Trotter, right, speaks at the September 2018 ribbon-cutting for the Paul Engler College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences complex. Also pictured are wife Jana Trotter and WT President Dr. Walter Wendler.

Johnny Trotter of Hereford is already in the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame and the Texas Horse Racing Hall of Fame. In August, he’ll be inducted into another – which can mean only one thing.

“I guess I’m getting old,” said Trotter, who turns 70 in April. “It’s a sure sign you’re getting over the hill when you’re getting awards like these.”

The latest seems the most fitting. Trotter will be inducted Aug. 9 into the Cattle Feeder Hall of Fame at the annual Cattle Industry Convention and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association trade show in Nashville. In one way, it’s a lifetime achievement award. In another, it recognizes his significant imprint on the industry in that lifetime.

“It’s pretty flattering, but really it’s just what I do,” Trotter said. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful or take it lightly because I don’t, but this is just who I am.”

As the president and general manager of Bar-G Feedyards Inc. in Hereford, the cattle feeding industry is a huge part of who Trotter is, but not all. Carved around that — as well as his quarter horse and horseracing involvement, his water hauling and car dealership businesses, his work on different banking boards and local civic groups — is his commitment to West Texas A&M University.

Trotter attended WT for just one semester in 1969 while also juggling the care of more than 600 head of wheat cattle. Cattle won out. But now, Trotter serves on the Buffalo Council and has endowed more than $1 million in scholarships for WT students.

“Johnny Trotter represents the grit that is a central characteristic of people of the Panhandle and that has been key to shaping WT as a leading regional institution,” said WT President Dr. Walter Wendler. “Johnny and his wife, Jena, have used that grit plus an unusual dedication to the entrepreneurial spirit—getting things done—that is a kind of toughness shared by partners in a marriage that sets an example for all.”

The son of a Methodist minister, Trotter’s parents bought him his first horse the summer before he entered second grade. By age 10, he had earned his first paycheck driving a tractor. By age 11, he was delivering a paper route by 4:30 a.m.

At about the same age, he helped a Dumas rancher brand and vaccinate cattle, feed them out of 100-pound sacks and do whatever a young boy not yet in junior high could do for a cattle operation.

“When I was a kid, all I ever cared about was being around horses and cattle,” he said. “I always wanted to be a cowboy.”

When Clifford Trotter moved to pastor a church in Hereford in 1966, his son was in cowboy and cattle heaven. Hereford was the epicenter in the Panhandle of the burgeoning cattle feedlot industry. As he got into high school, he worked at nearby feedlots and began to learn the business.

When Trotter was a junior in high school, a man named Shirley Garrison approached him after a Sunday night church service with an offer he couldn’t refuse. Garrison, whom Trotter described as a “tough but fair businessman,” wanted him to care for 600 head of wheat pasture cattle that fall.

By the following summer Trotter was also working cattle for Garrison on a ranch he leased east of Dumas. Doing that and entering WT was a pretty big bite. Cattle won out, but Trotter would show later the value he puts on a college education.

“Caring for cattle on wheat was really my first love,” he said.

The mentor relationship with Garrison led the two and one other to eventually start a preconditioning yard.  Then in 1983, at age 32, came the transaction that shaped Trotter’s cattle feeding career.

A feedyard extreme makeover

Trotter, along with Garrison, Stanley and David Schaeffer, Roy Bryan and J.W. and Eddie Sutton bought United Beef feedyard, originally the Alpha Cattle Co., established in the 1960s. But the yard was dormant for four years. It was dilapidated. The mill was in bad shape. It took six months of repair before it   reopened as the Bar-G Feedyard.

The facility at one time in the 1970s held 40,000 head of cattle, but Trotter had a goal of 100,000 cattle at some point.

“I guess I was oblivious as to what I could lose,” he said, “but I was never really afraid of what could happen. I had been involved in other things with my back to the wall, so backed into the corner was a comfortable feeling.”

Within about seven years, the Bar-G reached 100,000 head.  With an adjacent yard, maximum capacity is now at 125,000. In recent years, the Bar-G has marketed more than 200,000 head of cattle annually. The Bar-G often finds others who own the cattle, and then Trotter partners with many of his customers.

“Any business is all about relationships,” he said. “My dad always said to treat people like you want to be treated. Do what you say you’re going to do even if it takes the hide off. We always try to do that in all our businesses.”

With an operation that size, Bar-G owns about 20 sections of farmland primarily for water rights, but also for wheat and corn for forage. The feedyard’s location just a few miles southwest of Hereford places it within a few miles of three unit train terminals.

Bar-G employs around 25 cowboys – four crews – who work between the two feedyards, growing yard and preconditioning facility. More than 60 employees have five-year service buckles and several have 35-year buckles.

Trotter continues to do the marketing and negotiates each pen of cattle. Bar-G sells to four major beef packers.

“The game is what keeps me going,” he said. “There’s always another deal.”

Horses are in his blood as well – and not just riding them or team roping off them. About 20 years ago, he wanted to impress girlfriend Jana, now his wife, and bought a race horse. Trotter has gone on to be part of quarter horse ownership groups whose horses success has made them highly sought breeding stock.

Trotter has been part of four American Quarter Horse Association champion horses, led by the incomparable One Famous Eagle. The former 3-year-old champion colt has sired 19 All-Americans and two world champions. Trotter races and sells 25 colts a year.

Trotter, the AQHA president in 2014-2015, became managing partner of a group that purchased All American Ruidoso Downs LLC in 2018. The purchase also included the horse sale company and the casino.

“I’ve told Dr. Wendler and (former president) Pat O’Brien before him, that I travel quite a bit, especially when I was AQHA president, and it seemed like I never went somewhere in the U.S. that someone didn’t mention WT when they found out where I was from,” Trotter said. “It’s like so many times when you’re next to something, you take it for granted. You don’t realize how big a deal it is.”

At the behest of Don Powell, Trotter joined the Buffalo Council. Powell, a 1963 WT graduate, is the former president/CEO of First National Bank of Amarillo and former chairman of the FDIC. He created the Buffalo Council to promote scholarships, university advancement and influence policy to benefit WT.

In addition, Trotter has endowed $1.2 million in scholarships to the University that include multiple Presidential scholarships, the Dee Anne Trotter Scholarship in memory of his late wife, the Spicer Gripp Scholarship and the Bob Givens Scholarship.

“The Trotters have generously shared their success built from the Panhandle to serve the region,” Wendler said. “WT has been fortunate to be the beneficiary of Johnny’s time, talent and gifts.”

One of Trotter’s scholarships, for agricultural sciences students in particular, is a “succession plan.” Awarded students receive a check after graduation that repays their four-year investment in tuition.

“When they walk across that stage and get the diploma and that scholarship, it’s nothing that Johnny Trotter did, and everything that student did,” said Trotter, who has received an honorary doctorate from WT.

It took a work ethic to earn that scholarship, and that’s a drive that has long been part of Trotter.

“That’s kind of been my management style in my career – do all you can do, and then do a little bit more,” he said.

Do you know of a student, faculty member, project, an alumnus or any other story idea for “WT: The Heart and Soul of the Texas Panhandle?” If so, email Jon Mark Beilue at jbeilue@wtamu.edu.