Joe Stookey isn’t following the NHL playoffs but his television got a workout in March during the biggest U.S. college basketball tournament of the year.
Basketball is in his blood, the result of growing up on a grain and livestock farm near Lebanon, Illinois, a state that is crazy about college hoops.
When Stookey took a job at the University of Saskatchewan in 1991, he and his wife Gayle were thrilled to learn the school had a competitive basketball team.
Their joy turned to shock when they attended their first game and sat among hundreds of fans instead of the thousands they were used to at Fighting Illini games.
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That was one of the many differences the Stookeys had to get used to with their adopted home.
Eighteen years later, during a chat around the kitchen table at the couple’s heavily treed acreage near Sask-atoon, Stookey can’t fathom living anywhere else.
The couple once contemplated a return south of the border to pursue a job opportunity at Purdue University. When recruiters told Stookey the state was losing the equivalent of a county a year to urban sprawl, he knew Saskatchewan was the right choice.
“I just get country oozing out of me. This is where I’m at home – out in the country. I’m not a city dweller,” he said.
Stookey earned a masters degree in ruminant nutrition at the University of Illinois. After his graduate studies, he worked for five years managing one of the university’s sheep units in Dixon Springs, where there were more deer than people.
He met his wife while attending a small church in the community. Gayle, who is from southern California, was attending Southern Illinois University on a sports scholarship.
“It was pretty hard not to see each other. You’re the only two single people in the whole community,” said Stookey.
The couple now has four children ranging in age from 16 to 25.
While working on the sheep farm, Stookey crossed paths with Harold Gonyou, a University of Saskatchewan PhD graduate who had been hired by the University of Illinois as an animal behaviourist.
The two devised a system that kept lambs from straying from their mothers, reducing the workload of barn workers. Stookey immediately knew he had found his calling.
“It was so fascinating. I realized I’ve been a behaviourist all my life. That is really what I was. That was the stuff that turned me on and fascinated me more than any other science I’ve ever been involved in.”
Animal handling
After completing his PhD in animal behaviour, Stookey landed what was supposed to be a three-year temporary position at the University of Saskatchewan. Eighteen years later, he is a tenured professor at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine where he teaches students the basic principles of animal behaviour and appropriate methods of restraint and handling.
His research program focuses on the maternal and social behaviour of cattle, swine and sheep.
When the couple first arrived in Saskatoon, they bought a house in the city, close to the school where Gayle was teaching.
By 2000, it became obvious that the temporary position was turning permanent and the couple started looking for an acreage.
Joe surprised Gayle with a stay at a country bed and breakfast near Pike Lake on her 40th birthday. A few years later, the Stookeys purchased the property.
The only thing missing on the 40-acre spread was a herd of cattle. Shortly after they moved to the country, Joe drove by a herd of Speckle Park cattle on the way to a camping trip in Meadow Lake, Sask. He discovered they are one of just two breeds of cattle ever developed in Canada. That was a big selling feature along with their temperament and great carcass traits.
“They didn’t just spread and scatter. We could walk in amongst them,” he said.
Stookey gets his fill of gatecrashers, kickers and bug-eyed, dangerous and flighty cattle in his work. At home, he was looking to raise more docile creatures.
He practices what he preaches on his small ranch.
Stookey inserts plastic paddles in the noses of calves to wean them off their mothers. The calves get no milk but are allowed to be in close proximity to their mothers for the next five days, easing what is a stressful time.
He tries to castrate his males within a week of birth to minimize the pain and promote rapid healing.
He selected a naturally polled breed, allowing genetics to do the dehorning work.
Stookey also allows his calves to take milk from their mothers for up to 11 months, which is far longer than the industry standard of six to seven months.
“I’m going just the opposite. We should have cows that can keep the calves on longer,” said Stookey.
His cows don’t put everything they have into milk production, so they can feed their young longer. When his calves come off of the teat, they are ready for adult food.
Stookey will provide some supplemental feed to his cows during calving season but the rest of the time it is a steady diet of pasture and hay.
“They stay pretty darn fat on that. I love that trait about them,” he said.
The only disappointment with his beloved herd is that they are only producing one heifer a year.
“We have the slowest growing herd of cattle in the province because all we have is bull calves,” said Stookey.
