--continued from pg. 54
“And they will eat just about anyto bring into my herd. So I just try to pick thing,” Lynette chimes in. “One of our what I perceive to be the top bloodlines properties is woods, and they keep the – and make my decisions on those.” underbrush cleared out. We have about “I also have a commercial herd I’m 20 acres of grass and 40 acres of woods; trying to develop; I’m selling some black the grass is mainly fescue.” calves at the sale barn to help supple“We try to pick big cows with twisty ment my registered Longhorn herd; it horns,” said James. “My little bull is a helps pay the feed bill.” son out of Tuff Chex, you know, that 90 In addition to bloodlines, Billingsley inch bull. I’m trying to get a comproevaluates potential brood cow purchases mise between the straight horns and the for udder, milking and reproduction potwisty horns and still get the length.” tential and a sturdy frame. Lynette pointed out that when they “Temperament is a consideration. I look at cows, they’ve got to have outget rid of my cows that give me problems. standing pedigrees. I don’t have much “We want to sell cows help when I work While climate can affect size cows, and I am not with the pedigree and the name, with size and horn growth, all agree that very tolerant of disand horns.” position probthe Texas Longhorn cow is “We’ve just got a lems.” small herd, 12 cows, “Fertility is a remarkably able to adapt. so we’re not going to real driver. My vet make a living and pay comes out twice a the feed bills selling beef. We’ve got to year – once in November and once in sell breeding stock, so we look for the May – if a cow is open, and she is open best pedigree.” again the next session, she is gone. No While color and size are important, questions asked. So fertility is extremely said James, “Disposition is just really, important.” really important to us. This month Although the Billingsleys had owned we’ve got like a hundred kindergarten their ranch several years, they bought and first graders coming out on a field their first Texas Longhorns in 2007. “It trip to hand-feed the Longhorns. Then was a joyous adventure,” said Tom. “We on the first, we’ve got about 50 4-H peohave made countless, wonderful friends ple coming out – and they come out that we cherish. We love going to the every year. And when the 4-H kids are sales, we like the people and we love the here, they are out fishing and playing animals.” and the cows are right there with them. We can’t have something that’s going to OREN O’DELL go after these kids.” OSAWATOMIE, KS TOM BILLINGSLEY LUFKIN, TX
“Coming out of the drought affects what we buy and what we keep,” observed Tom Billingsley. “The environment we have been in forced us to reduce the number of breeding cows we keep due to the available grass and the cost of feed.” “Our ranch is located in San Saba County, which is about an hour and a half northwest of Austin. Rainfall is below 20 inches a year, so it is a semi-arid area of the Hill Country. The grass is real strong when we have rain, a lot of mineral, a lot of protein for the animals.” “I make my purchase decisions mostly on pedigree and what I’m trying
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“My ideal cow will weigh 1100 to 1300 pounds,” said Oren. “She’ll have great conformation, she will have good horn and she will be a great mother and milker. Milking is the most important thing in a brood cow as far as I am concerned, because if she can’t raise a calf she can’t produce him.” “We do have bad weather at times and I like a big cow, I like big stock because that’s what I raise. And I won’t keep a cow that doesn’t have a good disposition. If she’s got a bad attitude she’s not going to stay at my place.” “I’m not just looking at horn – I want good horn, but I won’t just select my cows for horn. I want them to calve every 12 months and be easy keepers. I
won’t keep a cow that’s hard to keep – I don’t care how much horn she’s got or any of those things.” SHAWN M. PEQUIGNOT WELLSVILLE, PA
“To look for a cow for a keeper,” says Shawn, “we look for milking ability and pedigree. Horn and color are important. But if they have the pedigree to produce the horn, that’s not as important as if the cow has the horn.” “We are in the south central part of Pennsylvania. Our winters are hard, so we like our brood cows to be on the bigger side; we don’t really care for the smaller frame cattle. But spring and fall are beautiful, and we can go from April to October on pasture.” “Calving history is important – if you have a cow that has everything but she is a troubled breeder, she is not worth anything to us.” “We have children, an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old, who are very active with the cattle, so if I have any that are aggressive, we don’t keep them around either. My wife does the AI for us, so temperament is very important. We just have a small operation, so if we have one that lights the whole herd up, that doesn’t do well.” GLEN W. LEWIS LINCOLN, MO
Glen Lewis, a past president of the TLBAA, has been in the Texas Longhorn business since the middle 1970’s. He has always advocated that Texas Longhorn cattle should be part of the beef industry. “There had to be a base for the cattle,” he said, “so we didn’t have to give them away if they weren’t absolutely the top of the breed as far as structure and horns.” “We started the beef sales back in the ‘80s. I notice a lot of people are grinding them up and selling them that way now. We were doing that years and years ago.” “We took our Longhorns that we didn’t register and bred them to registered Black Angus bulls. About 60 to 65% you would have thought were --continued on pg. 71 Texas Longhorn Trails