“This is not a novelty for me… we want as much meat on that carcass as possible.” - Kenton Murray, Wyoming Lowline Angus producer
on fences, handled daily by children and even penned and fed a diet of forage or finished on grass. And they made lots of good beef on a small frame. “With the Lowline,” says the younger Murray, “We are going forward but we are also getting back to our roots. People want the quality.” Murray is breeding in the shadow of larger animals and putting up with some teasing around the barn about his “lowlife” cows. Confident in himself and in his third year of the venture, he rises to the call of quality quite comfortably in an operation that already ships quality beef.
ninety-eight percent choice. Those all grade choice and some grade prime.”
the farm. “We got to test our product, and he’s eatin’ wonderful,” he says, grinning.
Lowlines and Lowline hybrids are for the patient producer who sees a future market and is content to live within a niche for the time being, says Murray.
At six-foot-seven, the younger Murray towers over his hybrids. Dressed for cold weather in a hooded sweatshirt and canvas duck pants, he moves easily through the bull herd, pointing out the white ear tags on the Lowlines.
He uses natural service these days and will have 15 half-blood or quarter-blood lowlines calving in February. He has a couple of percentage bulls he kept back. His first choice as a herd sire, “Chunky Monkey,” broke his leg in a fight after being brought in from pasture. He had to be put down.
He really doesn’t have to point them out. Their short stature would be obvious in the herd, even to an uneducated eye, and that means the breeding is working. Maybe.
“It’snothing not as simple asmore picking the smallest “They have to have a calf that gets up and grows on than “My wife cried. We loved that bull,” Mur- ones from your crop,” Murray says. “You his mother’s milk and theraygreen and stock, he’sthegotneedtoto be have thatto built says. But,grass, being of farming really careful avoid the dwarf“We pride ourselves that DeBruycker everything we Murrays driedTheir their tearsfamily and put “Chunky gene. And you needCharolais to look for the best into him, ” Brett says. runs ism about 2,200 ship is hand-picked,” says the elder Mur- Monkey” in the freezer. Murray packs quality animal overall. I don’t necessarmother cows in north-central Montana. ray, “and that’s why we ship ninety-five to around a zip-loc bag of jerkey made from ily hold back the smallest heifer. She has to that harvest as he makes his rounds around
have that beautiful feminine Angus head, a
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