LIMOUSIN TODAY Limtoday-March 2018-Web | Page 18

Feature Gates Limousin: Back to the country for the Gates family By Rebecca Colnar When Gary Gates graduated from high school, he swore he didn’t want to ranch for a living having grown up on his parent’s ranch in the 1970s and 1980s. An engineering degree led to a career that took him to Washington state, Idaho and Colorado. In that time, Gary got married and started a family. During trips to take the kids to see the grandparents something interesting happened. The Gates kids decided that life on the ranch had more appeal than life in the Denver suburbs. “Our children (now 23 and 12) wanted to stay in Montana more than back home, and my parents could use a little more help, so in 2007 we moved back to Montana,” said Gates who now runs Gates Limousin Ranch with his mother. Gates wife, Brandi, explains that since neither she nor Gary were city kids, moving back to Montana didn’t take much convincing. “It was something we wanted to do. What’s in your blood is tough to get away from and our kids loved it. As the next generation you want to carry on that tradition. In the city everything seems convenient and you think it’s easier. But 16 | MARCH 2018 when we moved back to Montana, we realized how stressful life had been in Denver.” Ranching is certainly in Gary’s blood as his parents started ranching around 1960. He and his five siblings all helped on the ranch, which originally had Hereford cattle. In the early 1970s one of their neighbors had some Limousin cattle which were first introduced into the United States in 1969. “He bragged about the Limousin breed so the parents decided to try a bull and liked the results,” Gary said. “At that time my parents were still strictly a commercial cow-calf operation and every 3-5 years they had to rotate bulls. We had also used Simmental, Angus and Herefords, working to get a good crossbred cow. I think they tried about every combination there was. About 20 years ago they started using almost exclusively Limousin bulls on their commercial herd and were pleased with the results.” The Roscoe-area rancher says that although their ranch still primarily raises commercial cattle, they also are seedstock breeders with a registered Limousin herd. They find their