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STOCKTON -- Gene Stockton, a lifelong Colfax County, New Mexico rancher and hay farmer who helped pioneer a new crossbreeding technique for beef cattle, died January 12 in Albuquerque. He was 87 and died of heart failure. Stockton and his wife, Margoree, who survives him, raised cattle and grew hay on a ranch alongside the Canadian River south of Raton. They began married life on the ranch in 1943 and worked together running it for the next 62 years, before moving to Albuquerque in 2005. During the 1950s, Stockton raised registered Hereford cattle. He sold the best animals to other registered Hereford breeders. The remainder, destined for the dinner table, went to cattle feeders. In the 1960s, meatpackers turned away from the small, blocky Hereford feeder calves and began paying a premium for larger calves produced by other breeds, like Charolais cattle, originally imported from France. Stockton recounted how he solved this cash flow dilemma in a video history produced by his older son in 1999. "It was 1968 and I had this bunch of Herefords, but nobody wanted Herefords any more. I read something about how some people were crossbreeding Charolais bulls with Hereford cows. One day I heard from a friend that his brother in Texas had bought this whole herd of Charolais cows and bulls and that he was selling the bulls. He said there were some really good bulls in the bunch. So I thought about it and called him and said I would take three of those bulls. The day they showed up, they were in one of those big open flatbed trailers with no roof and here were these giant bulls looking out over the stock racks. I said to myself, 'My God! What have I done?" "Boy, did I get criticized. 'You've lost your mind. You've gone crazy,' and all that. But the first calves those bulls produced weighed a hundred pounds more than the others when they were weaned". Stockton also raised both grass and alfalfa hay, most of which he fed to his cattle, but each year he set aside some of the choicest hay to sell to neighbors. Horse owners particularly sought his alfalfa. Bowing to age - he was 80 - and at his wife's insistence that he slow down, Stockton sold his cow herd in 1999. However, for sentimental reasons, he kept a few of the oldest cows, which his dubbed the "museum cows." With little fanfare, he also kept a bull. Six years later, when Stockton and his wife left the ranch to be nearer to family members in Albuquerque, the museum cows had become a sizeable "stealth herd." Stockton's grandfather and great uncle first settled alongside the Canadian in 1867. They raised cattle in Texas, and like other, more famous Texas ranchers and cowboys, they began trailing cattle to burgeoning markets that sprang up in the East after the Civil War. While many Texans trailed cattle north into Kansas, the Stocktons went west into the New Mexico territory to the Pecos River. From there, they proceeded north up the Pecos, jumped over to the Canadian and followed it to the Raton area, where they established themselves. Stockton's father, A. Claude Stockton, was born near Raton in 1873. He and his two younger brothers, Clarence and Frank, formed the Stockton Cattle Company, which raised cattle and also operated a butcher shop in Raton. The company split up in the 1930s, but at one point it had a herd of approximately 1,000 mother cows. Stockton is survived by his wife, Margoree, of Albuquerque; two sons, Bruce, of Albuquerque, and Bill of Milford, NJ; two grandchildren, Cinnamon Everheart of Los Lunas and Tomas Stockton of Albuquerque; and a great-grandchild, Greyson Everheart of Los Lunas. He was preceded in death by his parents, A. Claude Stockton and Nell Coates Stockton; by his older brother, Alvin; and a younger sister, Laura May; and by a grandchild, Kevin Stockton. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that a donation to a charity of choice be made. Daniels Family Funeral Services 7601 Wyoming Blvd NE Albuquerque, NM 87109 (505) 821-0010
        Published on: Tue January 16, 2007