Here at the Red Reflet Ranch, there is always a lot of ranch work underway - from raising the herd to putting up their winter feed of grass and alfalfa. We invite our guests to meet the ranch crew, work with them and experience ranch life first-hand. Guests are even welcome to "cowboy" the herd - riding with the cowhands to look over the herd, moving them as needed, and checking our mountain springs and some of our 65 miles of fences.
Our purebred Angus herd is a "mother-cow" operation. We use both artificial insemination and pasture breeding by bulls, and the crop of about 400 calves is born in February and March. When calves are shipped off the Ranch in October, they weigh 550 lbs, having gained about 2 1/2 lbs a day on good mountain grass and their mother's milk. The most select heifers are kept as replacement breeders while a few of our steers are kept another nine months to fatten and grow to their prime weight of about 1150 lbs. The young steers are then processed in our butcher shop, where they are dry-aged 21 days, trimmed, and served with pride ... the culmination of all the hard work of the entire ranch crew.
The herd is on the high mountain pastures in late June, July, August, and September and on the lower ranch the rest of the year.
The Ranch has nine artesian wells, between 900' and 3000' deep, that provide all the water needed for our 700 irrigated acres to grow cattle and horse feed. Our farming equipment is dedicated to this production.
