From Baker City to Texas — and back: Durkee’s Kylie Siddoway reflects on her degree from Texas A&M University

Published 7:45 am Thursday, July 31, 2025

Kylie Siddoway grew up on a Baker County ranch more than 20 miles from a stoplight so naturally she chose to study at a university with more students than her high school.

About 150 times more.

Siddoway didn’t settle on Texas A&M University, with an enrollment of 75,000, until she was more than halfway through her four years at Baker High School, where about 500 students study.

Actually, she didn’t even consider the campus in College Station, Texas, until she had walked its tree-lined sidewalks and toured some of its mission-style buildings.

She was a junior at BHS and active in the school’s Future Farmers of America chapter.

Siddoway, whose parents, Bert and Terri Siddoway, own a cattle ranch in the Durkee Valley about 25 miles southeast of Baker City, was invited to job shadow Wes Klett, COO and CFO for Anipro Xtraformance Nutrition, which sells nutritional supplements for cattle.

The trip included a private tour of campus from Klett, himself a Texas A&M alumnus.

“I really got to see how incredible the campus is,” said Siddoway, a 2021 Baker High School graduate.

Her introduction to “Aggieland” — Aggies is the school’s mascot — was a life-changing experience.

Five years later, Siddoway, 22, has a bachelor’s degree in agriculture leadership and development, with a minor in marketing, from Texas A&M.

She earned the degree in a little more than three years by taking summer classes — online courses for her business minor — when she was home in Durkee.

“I just like to be busy,” Siddoway said with a chuckle.

Besides which, she didn’t relish spending summers sweating in southeast Texas, where tropical-level humidity is so different from dry Eastern Oregon (College Station is about 90 miles northwest of Houston).

“Texas heat was too much for me,” she said.

After earning her degree in August 2024, Siddoway enrolled in an online master’s degree program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

Siddoway accomplished that with her customary efficiency, achieving her master’s in marketing research and analytics, in May 2025.

Throughout her college years, she stayed with Anipro, which has customers in 37 states, including Oregon.

Siddoway worked as an intern for Anipro most of her time studying at Texas A&M, starting in her second semester.

And now she works full-time for the company as a marketing specialist, helping clients both in Oregon and across the nation.

During an interview on July 15, Siddoway was preparing to leave the next day for a work trip to Alabama.

Rodeo leads to a college visit

It was in one sense a natural progression for Siddoway — her parents are longtime Anipro customers.

But she also can credit her own skill riding a horse with forging the connection with Anipro.

She met Klett when she was a sophomore in high school. He awarded her an Anipro belt buckle when she won the cutting competition at the Oregon state high school rodeo finals (a feat she repeated as a senior).

That meeting led to Siddoway’s first visit to Texas A&M and, ultimately, to her current job.

She believes her background, growing up immersed in the life of a rural cattle ranching family, affords her a perspective that not only helps her relate to her clients, but also to market Anipro’s products to ranchers nationwide.

“I have the same perspective as our clientele,” Siddoway said. “I know how to appeal to ranchers in an ad.”

The job also allows Siddoway to exercise her creativity.

“I’ve always really enjoyed English and writing, and marketing is about telling a story,” she said. “There are so many great narratives that need to be told in agriculture. I hope I can expose those stories to people outside the industry so they can see the ag that I know. I like to tell people what it’s like to live on a ranch.”

Back to Baker County

Although Siddoway enjoyed her years as a student in College Station, she said she realized, relatively soon after starting college, that she wanted to return to the rural county where she grew up.

“My time in Texas gave me such an appreciation for Baker County,” Siddoway said. “It’s just such a beautiful place. The ag community here is so close-knit and supporting. I always knew I wanted to come back home eventually.”

The flexibility that her job with Anipro offers was a “huge factor” in her decision to take the position.

Siddoway not only works with ranchers — she is one.

She has a herd of about 50 head of Wagyu cattle pastured on her family’s land in the Baker Valley.

Siddoway also helps her parents with their operation based in Durkee, which includes about 200 head of Wagyu cattle as well as a commercial cattle herd.

Since she returned to Baker County in 2024 after earning her bachelor’s degree, Siddoway has strived to strengthen her ties to the community.

“This county was so great to me when I was a kid, and I want to give back,” she said.

Siddoway has rejoined the Baker County Cattlewomen, serving as co-chair of the education committee.

Her family has been a fixture at the Baker County Fair for many years.

Siddoway appreciates the opportunities her job gives her — to travel, to meet people who can relate to her background, and she to theirs.

But always she anticipates coming home, to the familiar green pastures of Durkee Valley, the sparkling of sunlight off the Burnt River, the distinctive pyramid of Lookout Mountain, its colors shifting with the seasons, from winter white to spring green to the tan of summer and fall.

“It’s just the best place to live,” Siddoway said. “It’s where I hope to be forever.”