Ladd Hitch of Guymon: Oklahoma Panhandle Feeder and Early Irrigator

Who Was Ladd Hitch?

Ladd Hitch is remembered in the cattle feeding world as the head of Hitch Enterprises, Inc., of Guymon, Oklahoma, and as a 2010 inductee of the Cattle Feeders Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame page is brief. It says he was an innovator in cattle feeding, one of the first feedyard owners to install large concrete silo pits, and the introducer of one of the first irrigation systems in Oklahoma.

The page gives no birth or death dates and no career timeline, so this profile leans on the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History entry on the Hitch family. That entry identifies Henry Hitch Jr., known as Ladd, who lived from 1918 to 1996 and led the family operation in its later years. The link between the two is an inference from the name, the place and the family business, and readers should treat it that way.

The Hitch Family Ranch in the Oklahoma Panhandle

The family's story starts with James Kerrick Hitch, a Tennessee native who lived from 1855 to 1921. He worked in the cattle business in southwestern Kansas with his father-in-law, Henry Westmoreland, beginning in 1876, and later established the ranch near what became Guymon.

From 1895 to 1910 he bought relinquishments from failed homesteaders and built up 12,080 acres south of present Guymon. By 1900 the ranch ran about 10,000 head on 40,000 to 50,000 acres. The family also invested in ranches in Hansford County, Texas, and Seward County, Kansas, and its OX brand appeared in three states.

The Cattle Feeders Hall of Fame entry places Hitch Enterprises in Guymon, in the Oklahoma Panhandle, and the encyclopedia adds that the family's holdings were headquartered there. That makes the Panhandle, rather than any single yard, the setting for his career.

Why the ranch matters: it is the asset base behind everything the later enterprise did. Land that began as relinquished homesteads supplied grass, then farmland, then a site for a feedlot, which is the same sequence that played out on many High Plains ranches.

From Open Range to Wheat and Feedlots

A 1902 herd law required cattlemen to fence their land, which changed how ranching worked in the Panhandle. The Hitches adapted by diversifying into hay and wheat farming, and Texas County became one of the nation's largest wheat growers during World War I.

Henry Hitch, who lived from 1884 to 1967, took over the family interests after his father died in 1921. In 1953 he built a feedlot on the ranch, a decision the encyclopedia calls momentous for the family and an economic boost for the Panhandle. That feedlot is the bridge between the ranch era and the work that Ladd later became known for.

Silo Pits and Irrigation: Hitch's Innovations

The Hall of Fame credits Hitch with installing large concrete silo pits early. A silo pit stores silage, the chopped and fermented feed that forms a large part of many feedlot rations, and a concrete pit lets a yard put up huge volumes of feed and hold it through the year.

The same page credits him with one of Oklahoma's first irrigation systems. On the dry High Plains, irrigation changes what a farm can grow, and cheap local feed grain is a reason feedlots cluster where water is available. The sources do not give dates or specifics for either project, so none are offered here.

The Panhandle Feedlot Boom

By the mid-1970s the encyclopedia says the Panhandle economy supported 29 high-capacity commercial feedlots, and the Hitch family had opened three of them. That context helps explain why a Guymon feeder was worth naming in a national hall of fame.

For more on cattle country and the families who built it, see farm.FM's ranching coverage, or a farm.FM story about Oklahoma cattle ranching.