My Red Angus Cow Development

At a Gerald Fry Bovine Engineering conference in Gainesville, Texas several years ago, I met a dedicated Red Angus breeder, Kevin F. Now, Kevin was and is fixated on line-breeding the Choctaw Chief 373 Red Angus line; sort of the Holy Grail of Red Angus beef cattle. Kevin had heard of my line breeding of miniature Herefords which has become an  international success. He had Red Angus genetics with a need of a partnership for the development of his small herd of collected “Chief” genetics. We struck a bargain and he trailer’ed his cows into Wood County Texas.

After his personal inspection of Falster Farm’s herds and environment, and with our growing mutual admiration, he introduced Rick M who had a need to do the same with his small herd of Red Angus as Kevin and I were enjoying. A month or so later, Rick (and a world- class horse breeder lady friend) came to interview Nancy and I; to make a bargain for the management of his herd of 20 Line Bred Red Angus of the PCC HOBO line. This arrangement brought the cows here on a management and pasture lease contract that would give him some breathing room from the result of his divorce decree. It appears the man got the short end and was only able to retain 20 head of that marvelous herd.

Now, on our Falster Farm marketing tract: after a year or so of working from the inside and out, Nancy and I hosted the Executive Chef staff and Executive from the  Human Resources Department of the nations largest resort, THE GAYLORD TEXAN, with the idea of creating an Executive Retreat to be built on our Certified Naturally Grown farm and ranch. It was a wonderful visit that included the General Manager and his assistant making a personal review of our mid-size Red Angus herd. Head Executive Chef Juan was elated at what I showed him: the environment, the Red Angus herd,  and his ability to walk freely amongst the whole herd and the hearing of our breeding and low stress practice. For the first time in his life, he touched a cow in the field, got up close to see first-hand their depth of caucus merits, the calves, the heifers, the steers, and meet the actual producer. He had been to 44 Farms and on places from coast to coast to find what we are doing here only 100 miles away from his restaurants. On the spot he wanted to get us in their purchasing system (which would take me some 6 months of negotiating the red tape of the Marriott International Purchasing System.)

Providentially, I got a call from Rick explaining he wanted to sell his cows and pursue the equestrian (woman) show world. So, these cows were purchased by me as a small cut out of a herd of 300+ head, bred and born and developed on the Sand Hills of Nebraska. So they know all about snow and tough winter snow-covered grazing (my last duty station was in Lincoln, NB). The photo of PCC KAYCEE HOBO (sire of about ½ the herd) reflects that sand hill environment in the background.

These Red Angus were desirable to me because they were from an organic beef production program, not a commercial feed lot high input cattle; they are a low input registered seed stock, well bred to produce both beef and foundation progeny.

During the tenure of the management phase I grew to have great respect for the sisterhood of this herd, their mutual support of calves, herd security is important to us because over the years we’ve lost about 12,500 in cattle flesh to a long tailed cat. I sincerely their docile nature, their lack of butting each other and selfishness I have experienced most of my life with the beautiful Herefords I enjoy so much.

My granny Morgan used to chide my grandpa with a “there’s proof in the puddin.” Well, the summer of 2018 gave us a drought here resulting in nobody having any more than a smidgen of the number of round bales usually put up each Summer. As Nancy will tell you, I recognized the prospects of that drought in early May.

She arranged for me to attended a grazers conference in Kentucky featuring an old friend (or rival), Joel Saladin. I rented a space ship like car so I could drive up there and canvass the drought edges which were spread over into Louisiana and Mississippi. On the way back out of Tennessee, I started looking to rent fenced land that was empty of livestock. I stopped in with friends from Monroe back to here.

It was in September that by putting flyers in mail boxes I found two properties that were a fit for us (we have to honor our certification as “Certified Naturally Grown“.) One property had been a hay grower but not so in the previous 3 years (Mark), and the other was fallow land for many years. It was a former terraced row crop farm that had mostly rough dry Bahia, some dry Bermuda, Dove Weed, and small trees in it; very rough. (Larry).

Larry’s place was 60 acres poorly fenced and surrounded by other rough and fallow places but had a small spring fed pond on it. Mark’s place was lush Bermuda grass over 10 acres and an artesian-fed pool – gorgeous and hard fenced on all sides.

So I picked out 7 head of short bred Red Angus cows and 3 recip cows with embryos in um and placed them there. Located some 20 miles distant, Mark looked after them.

On Larry’s place, located 1 mile away, I set up a single strand of hot wire down one entire side and across the road frontage. This one strand was never breached. I moved the rest of the Red Angus mama cows, calves, 1^st time heifers and weanling age bull calves. For them it must have been like going home –  back to the sand hills, it was so bleak. After a day or two roaming the place they settled in and started gnawing that tough standing grass and brush. They didn’t get a tub of boiled molasses till some 2 months later when the weather was in the freezing ranges at night and browsing was more brush than grass, or so it seemed to me.

My intern’s family came to visit from Washington state and I figured we’d give them some Texas fun, so we set up a cattle drive to bring the Red Angus Cows home utilizing her people as road guards and beaters. It was a lot of fun for us all. Of course we trailered the lot from Mark’s Place back home with their calves.

What this Red Angus Herd taught me – I learned from this 2018 experience was that while like in the drought of 2011, my neighbors sold out at a loss: most of them have quit, but not me.

The Red Angus Cows on Larry’s never got a single round bale of hay, they foraged it out supplemented with 5 tubes of molasses, salt, and minerals alone. This was astounding to me and I told my wife and intern this was so. The cattle at Mark’s place had no better condition or calving success than the girls on Larry’s Place. Both lots came home and reunited as if they had never separated, and were their indistinguishable selves.

While we don’t have much snow, it does get wet and cold – occasionally real cold what with the humidity.

I can certainly understand risk management as that’s the very nature of dry land farming and doing it without government strings can make you draw up at times.