Red Doc Farms Builds Legacy with Faith and Efficiency

Chaos reigns on a summer Friday evening at Elia Sanchez’s Bosque, New Mexico, home. The hub of the Sanchez family and Red Doc farm radiates with a warmth not wrought by the blazing desert sun, but amassed from bearing witness to decades of family, faith, tradition, Santa Gertrudis cattle, hard work, and lives well lived. 

In the final minutes before dinner, a gaggle of children churn about between the kitchen counter and a massive table shouting answers to livestock and breed trivia questions. They’re preparing for the looming 2024 National Junior Santa Gertrudis Show Brain Bowl. There’s a competitor the oldest grandchild Lucia (10) is keen to beat. If she brings home the win, she’ll have to find space for it at her own house.

The walls at her Grandma Elia’s home are full up with accolades for the cattle the family has meticulously developed to thrive not only in their pastures belly-deep in grass irrigated from the Rio Grande, but in the New Mexico high desert where they chase bites of short grama grass miles from water.

“You’ll notice we keep our first awards on display because they mean the most to us,” Elia says.

They’re reminders of the early years when she and her husband, Dr. Roland Sanchez, were assembling the framework to support a long-held dream of raising cattle and creating opportunity for their children. Though the loss of Roland and their daughter, Dr. Jessica Sanchez, in 2020 will always be felt deeply by the family, their spirits can rejoice for the potential futures they helped construct for the current and coming generations.

The Bricks
When faced with the sprawling structure of Sanchez family business ventures, it’s hard to envision it being assembled from scratch. Even harder to fathom is the strength of the mortar needed to hold the many pieces together.

Elia and Roland had six children. Dr. Jessica Sanchez, MD, pursued medicine and faith, finding her calling as a spiritual healer.  Alicia Sanchez owns a multi-state independent insurance agency. Dr. Roland II ‘Scooter’ Sanchez, DDS, is a dentist with his own practice in Belen, New Mexico, and is father to Lucia (10), Roland III (9), Viviana (7), and Inez (5).

Dr. Adolfo Sanchez, MD, also followed his father in medicine, operating a full-time rural family medicine clinic. He and his wife, Christina, have two daughters Catarina (4) and Eliana (2). Dr. Florian Sanchez, DVM, and his wife Stephanie run their own veterinary practice and have three children, Elsie Jane (5), Florian II (2), and the youngest grandchild by just days, newborn Jessica Malia.

Emilio Sanchez shoulders the role of general manager of Red Doc Farm handling day-to-day operations. General being a key term as the ventures underneath the Red Doc Farm umbrella keep expanding and changing. He and his wife Ronda have four children, Emilio II (9), Celia (6), Elena (4), and newborn Luisa.

While Emilio is ever-present on the farm, everyone chips in to help build, maintain, and support a farm entity that has diversified significantly over the course of the last decade. What started as a handful of acres on the Rio Grande supporting cattle, sheep, and then hay, has grown to a livestock and farming operation that runs cattle in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Florida on 60,000 acres and crops and intensive grazing on 4,000 irrigated acres. It’s critical to note that a significant hunk of pasture acres are comprised of New Mexico desert where stocking rates are calculated by the section (640 acres) rather than the acre.

“The number of cattle per section is equal to the inches of precipitation we received that year,” Scooter says. That usually ranges from 6-10 inches of rain—or cattle per section, depending on how you want to look at it.

The world-class Santa Gertrudis purebred and composite herd sits at 2,200 mother cows. They sell around 130 bulls and a selection of premium females at their annual Red Hot Bull Sale, an event that attracts 400-600 guests per year with 2024 marking their 20th sale. Semen and embryos from their purebred and composite cattle sell worldwide, including Kazakhstan, Paraguay, Uruguay, Honduras, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. They maintain 400-1,600 feeder calves from their herd and those purchased from bull customers. A portion of those cattle are used for their natural meat business.

Additionally, they’ve advanced their 4,000 farming acres beyond premium grass and alfalfa hay to include corn, New Mexico green chile, cantaloupe, watermelon, specialty honeyloupe melons, pumpkins, and pinto beans they clean and sell as branded Red Doc Beans. Orchards are the most recent addition. Once the trees mature, they’ll add apples, pears, and peaches to their offerings.

The trend is constant building, diversification, and advancement. On paper their schedules border on manic as they balance careers with businesses local and spanning the nation—agricultural and otherwise. And they aren’t passive on any front. 

When not seeing patients, Adolfo works on research and development, partnering with universities and using programs like GrowSafe systems to define and advance herd performance and genetics. Everyone crosses over and helps where they’re needed and where their passions and expertise intersect.

“It’s just the way we were raised,” Scooter says. Elia and Roland ensured their children had excellent work ethic and diverse experience, pushing them to get out into the world before coming home. “Our main goal [with business diversification] is to make sure our children have the opportunity to live the same [agricultural] lifestyle we were able to and be successful at it.” 

Driven To Efficiency
Sustainability of their lifestyle and farm is the goal; efficiency and diversification paves the path to success. Efficiency means making the most of valuable resources—time, equipment, livestock, and land alike—to expand margins without eroding future potential. They can’t, for instance, overstock their pastures or mine nutrients from their fields to profit now at the cost of those to come.

“The reality of our world is that, by and large, we don’t get to set the price of our product. The only thing we can control are inputs,” Florian says. 

Their cattle genetics have continually pushed efficiency barriers. Feed efficiency of their top producers beat the national average by around 30%, Scooter says.

Efficiency is also prioritized in their farming endeavors and equipment purchases. New Holland has long fit the bill with equipment that ideally balance size, power, and functionality. Though Elia and Roland may have pushed a little too far on getting the smallest tractor capable of the job with their first New Holland purchase.

“Our first tractor was a 2-wheel-drive New Holland 8340 purchased in 1995. We used it to pull a 4-bottom plow and it would pop wheelies sometimes in the hard clay ground, but it got the job done. We would run it 16 hours a day plowing and discing. Back in those days, we were small baling and swathing with a New Holland 2450 sickle bar swather” Alicia says.

They’ve since opted for higher power tractors that work just as hard but keep all their wheels fully engaged. There was no compromise in efficiency to gain that power, though.

“The engineering and efficiency of the New Holland engines is really incredible,” Emilio says in explanation for why New Holland tractors and equipment dominate their equipment fleet. When they compared similar horsepower tractors of other brands, fuel efficiency made New Holland the clear winner. “It was a difference of 14 to 15 gallons of fuel per hour with other brands compared to 11 to 12 gallons per hour with New Holland. That means saving a huge amount of money.”   

New Holland power shuttle, full powershifts, and CVT transmissions have made for efficient, flexible equipment that made life easier for operators by eliminating clutching. 

“SuperSteer™ was a big advancement for us. It allowed us to do high horsepower tasks in tight spaces such as small flood irrigated fields or for operations like transplanting vegetables, loader work, and in the orchards,” Scooter says.

Even more impressive savings were found in their move to a 30-foot New Holland P2080 air drill, resulting in operation costs on some acres dropping 50 to 60 percent. 

“We’re able to no-till with this drill eliminating primary tillage, secondary tillage and land leveling. Plus, it’s twice the size of our previous drill cutting manhours for planting in half,” Emilio says.

They had tried no-till before, but much like their range is a challenge for cattle, their flood-irrigated, cattle-grazed fields presented a significant hurdle to reduced tillage.

“Our heavy clay soil can be hard, crusted and compacted. We hadn’t found a drill that could provide enough down pressure to break through it and plant a crop until we got the New Holland. Then we were able to truly no-till,” Florian says.

While flood irrigation is standard in the region, the Sanchezes have ventured into pivot and drip tape irrigation. Water and time spent irrigating is reduced as a result, and the impact on the soil is reduced. It’s not the first equipment they’ve pioneered. Red Doc Farm was the first in the valley to convert to self-propelled New Holland swathers and rotary headers and the first to get a 15-foot header, again improving efficiency.

“They told us we would never get our swathers through the gates, we said we’d cut the gates,” Elia says, noting that it was more important to get more work done with one person and one implement than maintaining small gates. The rotary heads also cut the amount of time spent swapping out broken sickles.

“We were professionals at fixing broken sickles by the end of the season, I’m glad we made the switch to rotary heads,” Emilio says.

New Holland financing opportunities helped as they built their fleet and farm. 

“They really took a risk on us when we were financing equipment in the beginning,” Elia says.

Sizing Up
As farming needs increased, so did the need for more powerful tractors and larger implements. A TM165 was purchased, then a TM 175. Needing larger and larger tractors soon became an issue as the region is dominated by small-acreage farms and orchards and the local dealerships are understandably geared to supply those markets. Expanding their search led to an unlikely partnership with another multi-generation family-owned business more than 600 miles away in Plainville, Kansas.

Todd and Ron Gilliland, owners of Farm Implement and Supply Co. Inc., could get them the high horsepower, large implements, and service needed to keep the Sanchezes farming at maximum efficiency despite the distance.

“I can call Todd and say I need a part or a tractor tomorrow and he’ll get us what we need to keep us moving,” Emilio says. They’ve worked out a custom agreement where a service technician travels to their farm at regular intervals to perform maintenance and troubleshoot. 

Reliable service is a critical part of their continued expansion. Time is in short supply, so they need to keep moving in the field at all costs. The future of their family and community is on the line.

“There’s tremendous value in what we’re doing here, in the businesses we’re building and the niches we’re exploring. They’ll allow our children to stay in this community with their families. It’s sad that so many talented people leave our rural communities,” Adolfo says. 

They’re building opportunity that will support the rural community and provide their children and their grandchildren with the rural lifestyle they value. 

“In this household our priorities are faith, family and farming,” Elia says. The intention is for those priorities to endure.