Size Matters: The Last of the Longhorn Trilogy

Those who raise Herefords, Angus or one of many breeds of cattle think size matters. Longhorns tend to be as much as twenty-five percent smaller than Herefords or Angus. Since cattle are raised to produce beef and sold by the pound to the packing plant, assuming you start off by paying the same amount per head for Longhorns as you do the other breeds, it just makes sense to raise the heavier animals. Right?

Wrongo. What some ranchers overlook is that they are not selling beef. They are selling grass. They just ship it to market in a beef container. And how efficiently a bovine converts grass to beef is very important. So the question isn’t how many head of cattle you put on any given pasture, it’s how many pounds you put on that pasture and how many pounds you have at market time.

I submit that if you put the same number of pounds of Longhorns on a given pasture they will return the same amount, or more, beef as their bigger cousins. They graze more efficiently because nature taught them to survive on marginal forage. They are more heat tolerant so they will continue to graze through many a hot day. You drive through cattle country when the thermometer is topping eighty degrees and you’ll see cattle resting under shade trees or on the shady side of buildings and down in shady draws. They’ll stay there until it cools off. But not Longhorns. They’ll be on their feet, grazing the grass or browsing the brush. Oh, and by the way, most Herefords and Angus don’t browse. They’re too persnickety. They only use the brush for shade.

Longhorns also handle going without water better than most other breeds.

I Ain’t No Lady Gaga

Nathan Bransford, a writer and former editor who now works for CNET, writes one of the most-read blogs in the publishing business. He visited the Pikes Peak WritersConference in Colorado Springs a couple years ago. That’s where I met him.

 Earlier this week he wrote about Self Promotion, how hard it is and why we have to do it anyhow. It’s like eating spinach. You hate it but it’s good for you. It’s a great article. You can find it at http://blog.nathanbransford.com/

 He’s right. Every time I sit at my computer to write my blog I cringe. I know I’m going to have to send emails to all my friends and acquaintances. I’m sure many haven’t bothered to read my ramblings. They might not even open my emails. I know I feel uncomfortable sending them. I hate to bother them by promoting myself. I ain’t no Lady Gaga.

 But Nathan’s article got me to thinking about one of the Characters I knew as a kid.

How To Properly Eat Rocky Mountain Oysters

In a previous blog I talked about how lucky I was to grow up in a community full of Characters. That’s Characters with a capital C. The benefit has been a long list that I can mine when creating characters in my writing.

Take Pat for instance. Pat was foreman on a local ranch. By the time I knew him he was probably in his early fifties. What you could see of his face under a crumpled and sweat-stained grey Stetson looked like he’d borrowed it from a well worn saddle - brown and creased and scuffed. His gnarly hands always protruded from a blue denim, snap-front shirt. Stubby legs bowed down to dusty boots with run down heels. I don’t know how he wore those boots out. He rarely walked. After all, he was a cowboy.

A hand rolled cigarette generally hung from the corner of his mouth. It would bounce as he talked. The string of a Bull Durham pouch hung out of his shirt pocket. He was gruff with that special Irish knack of creative cursing. His blue eyes always carried a twinkle.

Late spring was the roundup. Time to brand and castrate the new calves. From when I was about six until my mid teens I got to attend. First to keep out of the way and fetch anything I was told. Later to work with the friends, neighbors and cowboys who gathered for the event. Twelve years old was the magic number when I graduated to working in the pen.