Great Falls Area Chamber of Commerce

40 Great Falls Area Chamber of Commerce www.greatfallschamber.org B U S I N E S S F E AT U R E MCKAMEY WEST RANCH CHAMBER MEMBER FEATURE McKamey West Inc. is a family-owned ranch that produces beef, lamb, and wool. Our family has been involved with sheep ranching since the late 1800s. The original ranch was Colby Sheep Company, which was started in 1883. My great-grandfather worked for George Colby and became his ranch manager, and later the Colby family sold shares to the McKamey family in the mid-1900s. McKamey West was started in 1981 by my grandpa, dad, and uncle when they separated from McKamey Ranch. We conduct the majority of our year-round day-to-day tasks with our family. My dad, Les, and my wife, Jeanne, help me with the majority, but our children are capable and have become excellent help when they are old enough to safely operate farm equipment and work livestock. My siblings and their kids like to help whenever they can. During our busiest times of the year, we hire seasonal employees for a month or two at a time. I was in agricultural lending for ten years and absolutely enjoyed the people I worked with. I have always enjoyed ranching and especially being raised working along side my family members. I wanted to instill those same values with my own family. Our company values are stewardship for the land, livestock, and relationships with people we interact with. Our priorities are Faith, Family, Farm, and Fun, in that order. The family started running cattle in the 1950s and currently our animal units are two-thirds cattle and one-third sheep. There aren't many places that run sheep anymore, that's probably what we are most known for. The sheep provide a safe way to allow almost any family member, regardless of their age, to safely learn how to tend to the livestock. We also do some direct-to-consumer marketing of beef and lamb locally. Our customers buy feeder cattle, bred heifers, feeder lambs, wool, as well as finished beef and lamb. We are very diverse, given our size. Successfully navigating and transitioning a multi-generational family operation is always a win. Even though we have a lot of traditional values, our products have to constantly evolve, from improving the quality of our beef and lamb to the quality of our wool. We also take advantage of whatever advances there are in technology. There are a lot of tools out there that can help accomplish the work that needs to be done. The challenges we face vary from product to product and the environment we work in. Most recently, the lamb market was really hurt by an influx of imports from Australia and New Zealand. American sheep producers only provide 25-30% of the lamb consumed domestically. Combine that with there being only a handful of large-scale lamb processors nationally and you end up with a lot of price volatility. With the recent national and local attention on the shortage of meat processors, there has been increased investment in facilities across the state. Through Jeanne's hard work and referrals from happy customers, we are continuously working to get our meat in front of a new demographic.

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