industry. I started training professionally pedigree and see if the mother and father in the reining horse industry 47 or 48 and great grandmothers and grandfayears ago, and I have been lucky enough thers were producers. I think production to have some fantastic people work for is a very hereditary quality.” me in those years. A lot of young trainers “If somebody showed me a great cow worked for me and then went on to be or great bull, I’m not going to try to buy tremendously successful themselves. And that great cow or great bull’s brother or a lot of those people who worked for me sister – I’m going to try to buy its mother. over the years are still friends.” “I think it is important to have people around you that have the same passion you do. You know, you get all of these ideas, Farlap Chex and if you can BL Patchit bounce them off of BL Rio Catchit’s Dam BL Catchit’s Sire somebody else who is as serious as you are, I think you make healthier decisions.” And that’s in the horse business as well “In the cattle, you have to have a pasas the cow business. You show me a great sion. You can breed cattle and raise nice one and I would rather have its mother cattle, but if you want to take your cattle than anything on its pedigree.” to another level, you have to have that “To me, one thing the Longhorn passion to spend the extra time studying; breed has lacked has been predictability to spend the extra time in the pasture in production, and I think we have fistudying your cattle and figuring out nally reached a plateau where we have fiwhat qualities your herd needs, and nally reached that predictability. It is where to go get those qualities.” unbelievable how the Longhorn breed “When I first got in the industry, that has improved in the past ten years. In the first ten years, I bought a lot of cattle and last ten years, it has been incredible and brought them home and bred them. A in the last 25 years, it’s off the charts!” great horseman told me years ago to “When I first got into this breed -never evaluate how good a broodmare 1985 is about when I really got serious – was until you see three colts out of her. I there was an article in the Longhorn Jouruse an awful lot of the same idea with the nal called ‘The Magnificent Seven,’ and cattle as I do with the horses. I’ll raise the biggest-horned cow in the breed was three calves out of a cow, and after you a cow named Twist 21. I believe she was see three calves you can get a good idea of 58 inches. Today the biggest-horned cow what quality of producer she is. I use difin the breed is 92-5/8 inches. That is ferent bulls on them. You take a cow that wild! And today, we have so much more crosses on every bull and every calf is regreat genetics than we had then. We have ally marketable, now that’s a top cow! If so much more predictability than we had you have a cow that just crosses on one in 1985. I’m not saying we are going to bull and doesn’t cross on the next two, increase horn growth as much in the next that’s an OK cow; just keep her on that 25 years – I don’t know how we’d haul one bull. But to me she is not a great cow. them if we did – but what I think you And then there are a lot of cows that are will see in the next 25 years is a larger big, beautiful and have tons of horn – number of these high-quality animals.” but they don’t produce. You don’t need “You are going to start seeing a larger them. And every now and then you will number and more predictability in the see a cow – she’s not a bad cow, but she’s breed, more predictability in everything.” not a great cow – but she’s a producing “I have been in the horse business 45 sonofagun! You want to keep her.” years, and we AI everything. We ship a lot “You can’t look at a cow and tell if she of cooled semen all over the United is a producer, but you can look at the States; we sell a lot of frozen semen in
other countries. In the horse business, I have seven employees and it gets very high-tech and very complicated, but I want to keep my cattle simple. The cattle are mine and my wife Pam’s enjoyment. I have seven employees that work for me in the horse business, where with the cattle, Pam and I do it all ourselves. If we
Cowboy Chex
Cowboy Tuff Chex’s Sire
“The beauty of it is, this is a family of cows that I’ve raised for years and I’ve been trying to reach these goals…
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need help working cattle, we’ll have our two grandsons help us. We do all the branding and weaning, and I haven’t AI’d BL PATCHIT since the early 90’s. Last year I did two flushes, and they were the first flushes I did since 1995. The only reason I did those two flushes is that I had two cows I’m very proud of for outcrosses on this family, and I outcrossed them to a couple of complete outcross bulls that I didn’t own, and I was looking for a bull calf for an outcross I will possibly need two years from now.” “My theory is, I’ve got to figure out what I am going to need in two years, and I need to start breeding for it now, so when I need an outcross, I will have it.” “I do a lot of embryo transfers in the horse business, and one thing I am very particular about is my recip mares; I keep my own recip mares; I don’t rent them, because I think a colt gets a lot of its personality and disposition from its mother. I make sure that all of my recip mares in the horse business are very quiet, are very gentle mares. That’s very important to me. If I was going to do a lot of embryo transfer in the cattle, I would do the same thing. I would make sure that I had a set of recip cows that were very gentle, very nice to handle, and big, big milkers. I really think that, in embryo transfers, if you are not particular about the caliber of the recip, your embryo babies might not be as good.” “If you pick those recip mares that are good milkers, are gentle, quiet and nice Texas Longhorn Trails