Just off U.S. Highway 491 in Lewis, cattle and horses can be seen in pens waiting to be sold at Montezuma County’s new sale barn.
Friday, Oct. 13, marks Yellow Jacket Livestock Auction’s grand opening, the new sale barn in Southwest Colorado that will, for now, host cattle and equine auctions.
Last week, walking through the concrete and yet pleasantly decorated sale barn, Zane Odell’s son, Bronco O’Dell, and his friend worked on the bidding area where seven rows of yellow stadium seats exist. The large room smelled of fresh paint. Electronics were put in place, and country-western décor, designed by Zane ODell’s wife, Bjarne Odell, donned the interior building that included cowboy products she made for her store, Sorrel Top Cowboy Supply.
Yellow Jacket Livestock Auction
Location: 19245 County Road X in Lewis, Colorado.
Grand opening: Friday, Oct. 13
As the others scrambled to complete the two-year project from the ground up, Zane Odell, 61, spoke in detail about his visions for it while walking through the property.
“Most people retire at this age, and I’m starting a brand-new chapter,” he said. “It’s a good reason to get out.”
The auction ring has an indoor scale to weigh livestock in front of the buyers, and tech-savvy electronic machines that bring together in-person and online participants at cattleusa.com. Odell believes that the modern sale barn, with its concrete floors, will benefit the cattle while they’re in the hands of the sale barn’s employees and ranchers.
“As we built the sale barn, we took in consideration the comfort and care of cattle,” he said. “My background on the ground floor has prepared me for the care of cattle and the safety of employees.”
One example of how he strives to look after the cattle is the elaborate water system he designed. With the numerous pipes, he feels confident that if something went wrong with one pipe, water to the cattle would not be stalled.
To ensure employees’ safety, Zane installed catwalks for the outdoor pens so they’re not in contact with the animals and there’s minimal risk of injury.
With intention and care, he also designed the cow alley – a complex alleyway of metal gates that help guide the flow of the livestock from the pens and crowding area to the sale barn.
“We could open these gates and push snow out of these alleys if we need to,” he said, referring to the multiple options to clear the paths for everyone involved in the business. “The whole thing has been planned out with care of the Earth and the least amount of stress on the animal as possible.”
Along with the pen’s “metal maze,” the complex is up to code for inspections. Mailboxes and metal tubes were placed at the holding spaces for brand inspection, leaving a paper trail to inform whose cattle is whose.
“The purpose of the mailbox is for the brand inspections,” Odell said. “Let’s say the brand inspector hasn’t seen them (the cattle). We put them in that alley to make it easy on (the inspector). I put the mail in that mailbox with the pin number written on it. I put the flag up so if he comes out here he sees a flag up. He could walk straight to them, brand-inspect them, leave the paperwork with the cattle, and the flag is back down.”
On the other side of the cow alley, a hydraulic chute stands for vaccinating and pregnancy-testing the cattle. He said that the hydraulic chute is safe for the employees because of the catwalk and for the cattle because they can’t thrash around and hurt themselves.
As someone who’s worked his whole life in agriculture – first running sheep and goats, then cattle – and made a living visiting sale barns along the Western Slope, New Mexico and Arizona, Odell has had the idea to open up his own for five years. That idea evolved to become a modernized sale barn.
“There’s opportunity for a modern sale barn all over. I’ve seen what does and doesn’t work in other places and tried to incorporate all of the good into this one,” he said. “Ag needs some new businesses. It’s been a tough world for the past 50 years.”
He said he’s received many positive comments from the agricultural community to open up Yellow Jacket Livestock Auction.
His goal was to create a business built on trust for the livestock, consignors and buyers, and to serve ranchers in the Four Corners.
An article in The Mountain Mail dates local livestock sales to the late 1880s, when livestock was shipped by train to terminal markets in Denver, Omaha, Chicago and Kansas City.
When the truck entered the automobile market in 1934, local livestock markets surfaced and producers transported the animals via roads rather than rails.
Yellow Jacket Livestock Auctions is the 16th sale barn in Colorado and the fifth on the Western Slope – from Grand Junction to Cortez.
As Odell is fourth generation in this area, and takes pride in it, he plans for his family-owned business to carry on with descendants. His website shows his grandson’s footprints in the concrete with the sentence, “There may even be little Odells running about!”
“It’s a good business for the whole family to work at, make a living and raise kids with work ethics,” he said.
Odell’s ancestor, Trenzo Gai, immigrated from Italy in Yellow Jacket by 1913, as previously mentioned in The Journal, farmed on the land and operated a warehouse and trucking business. His daughter married an Odell.
His family acquired land from the Homestead Act in 1862. His father’s maternal side of the family homesteaded on Ute Mountain before the U.S. government officially considered it tribal land and his mother’s family homesteaded at Arriola and Cherry Creek near Mancos.
His great-grandfather owned the property that the sale barn stands on, but it was previously sold out of the family. Odell, however, bought it back two years ago to keep it in the family’s name. He said there’s only been two owners since he bought it, including his great-grandfather.
He expects that the opening day’s buyers will come from 5,000 miles away collectively.
A couple hundred cattle were consigned for opening day, which isn’t a huge number, as opposed to 1,000 at other sale barns. With all the new computer equipment and a few experts scattered in the work crew, he believes the first sale’s lower number will help everyone become comfortable with the learning process.
He also expects a couple hundred “looky-loos” will be in the stands – that is, those who want to see how the sale barn will perform before they bet their whole year’s work on showing up.
For now, the sale barn will auction horses and cattle on Fridays, except for holidays. Once a month, it will auction horses only.
Plans to open a cafe are in the works. The kitchen is all set up with water and gas, and an engraved, wooden antique counter stands alone with two bar chairs in the dining room. The only thing is that Odell doesn’t want just any chef to run the kitchen. He wants to know that the chef will satisfy his and everyone’s appetites with “good home-cooked food.”
Some of the food he’s thinking of being served are biscuits and gravy, hamburgers and ice cream.
“I want an ice cream machine, soft-serve,” he said. “I’d be their biggest customer.”
He’s worked around the clock as a rancher, and with more than 200 semitrailer loads to construct the sale barn, Zane hasn’t had much free time.
“The building came on two trucks, and there’s over 150 loads of gravel here. I’ve hauled all this pipe in from Farmington to Wyoming,” he said when explaining how much work and effort it’s taken him and his family to make the sale barn a reality. “Right now, there’s 15 miles of pipe and 15 boxes of welding rod. All day every day.”
