Food for Thought
By Jeff Mannix
The Texas Longhorn is a tough and hardy breed. In fact, there is not now nor has there ever been a breed of domestic animal that has the survivability of the venerable Texas Longhorn. Those who own and raise Texas Longhorns have a special interest as well as a special responsibility in carrying on what Mother Nature and natural selection has so extraordinarily wrought.
Among Texas Longhorn breeders, one does not find the absentee rancher who pencils hard on the bottom line, or the agricorp managing a profit center. Texas Longhorn breeders don't need numbered ear tags, or calf-pulling chains or hormone implants or specially formulated feed supplements. The Texas Longhorn breeder loves his animals and knows each and every one from a half mile away. He counts a calf for every cow every year, and makes ready for calving season by checking the battery on his camera. And in some areas of the country he continues to marvel at what little and poor feed the Texas Longhorn survives on, raising a strong and healthy calf every year well into a second decade.
The Texas Longhorn breeder carries photographs of his cows, like grandmothers carry pictures of their grandchildren. He is proud to be a breeder of Texas Longhorns, proud to be carrying on the history of one of nature's most successful creations. And while he maintains his Texas Longhorn herd as a source of income, he looks forward to the day when the bottom-line ranchers realize what a significant contribution the Texas Longhorn can once again make to the cattle industry.
During the days of Western expansion after the Civil War, an excess of ten million Texas Longhorns walked out of Texas, drawing the railroads west and establishing centers of commerce and population on the prairies and plains. Cross breeding the hardy longhorn with imported fat cattle prospered in the 1870s and 80s, permanently establishing the western United States as a cattle kingdom.
Yet during those days of open range and unquenchable markets, there were a handful of stockmen who saw the importance of retaining the Texas Longhorn genetics untainted by outside blood. These men saved the true-to-type Texas Longhorns and established small herds, certain that the genetic pool would be needed in the future, and were willing to forego immediate profits for future generations to benefit by this rich deposit. Men like Cap Yates, Emil Marks, and Graves Peeler were men of vision. Others followed, only a few others. Then came the Wichita Wildlife Refuge, set up specifically to save and breed America's original cattle. And now the Texas Longhorn numbers in the hundreds of thousands, with a bright future in a cattle industry that is fraught with inbred dysfunction, genetic limitations and a fat-laced product that is being passed up by consumers.
Once again in the history of the Texas Longhorn the torch of preservation is being rekindled, and not too surprisingly the names Yates and Marks and Wichita Refuge again play prominent roles. The Cattlemen's Texas Longhorn Registry, formed in 1990 to safeguard the purity of Texas Longhorn genetics, is attracting the preservationists in the breed, and is positioned to assure that the Texas Longhorn will survive in the most original genetic form possible and continue to contribute to the industry it founded.
The CTLR is not an association of Texas Longhorn breeders like the TLBAA and ITLA. It is simply a registry of seed-stock Texas Longhorns, animals that have been blood tested and visually inspected and found to have no evidence of impurity. Dr. Jerry Caldwell of ImmGen, Inc. in College Station, Texas developed for the CTLR a blood typing system to foretell purity of the Texas Longhorn by identifying genes from other, more widely typed breeds. ImmGen was the laboratory of parentage testing for the American Quarter Horse Association and dozens of purebred cattle, goat and dog registries. Their margin of error was an acceptable 15 percent. Visual inspections by CTLR inspectors have a margin of error of 1 percent.
With the untimely death of Dr. Caldwell, ImmGen has shut its doors and the CTLR has, since 2006, been working with cutting-edge geneticists to establish a DNA database for Texas Longhorns, something never attempted before and now showing promise.
Cross breeding Texas Longhorns has been and will continue to be a secondary contribution of the breed. In the final analysis, cattle must produce beef to survive. And the cross-bred Texas Longhorn competes successfully with any of the beef breeds, only much more economically. The fullblood Longhorn, while not competitive with the major beef breeds in bulk and ribeye size, consistently produces choice and prime grades of steaks, yields better, and commands premium prices for its taste, low fat, low cholesterol, and tenderness. Where Longhorn breeders are bringing their beef to farmers’ markets and specialty restaurants and supermarkets, the smaller size portions are preferred by health-conscious consumers and are developing fiercely loyal followings.
Without assurance that the seed stock is genetically pure, no purebred operation will sustain. And simply inspecting pedigrees, filled out and filed by individuals with no verification process, puts in question integrity and assures nothing. CTLR registration is insurance that what breeders think they are breeding is in fact what they are breeding. Every purebred breeder, whether of Texas Longhorns, horses, dogs, or other cattle, knows of someone (usually himself) who started over again after finding that he wasn't breeding what he thought he was. The CTLR can save breeders valuable time and resources if they intend to breed pure Texas Longhorns, or if they are building cross-bred performance on the balanced platform of predictable Texas Longhorn traits.
Composite genetics make excellent beef, but they do not make Texas Longhorn seed stock, and it’s the seed stock that assure the sustainability of the characteristics of this unique breed and will perpetuate the traits of health and durability that producers of other breeds of cattle can only wish for and never achieve.
Times have never been better for the producer of Texas Longhorn beef. The movement by consumers toward healthier lifestyles and concern for environmental sustainability are no longer interests of a fringe group; they are mainstream pursuits evidenced by the proliferation of farmers’ markets, health food stores and “all natural” and “organic” labels showing up even in chain supermarkets.
The corporate food industry has been found wanting of ethics and accountability, and consumers are seeking real food grown and processed by real people who stand behind what they sell, use sustainable range and pasture management, treat their animals humanely, and lessen the carbon footprint with lower chemical inputs and the development of local markets. Supermarket food travels an average of 1,200 miles from the farm or ranch to your table, and the consumer is now distrustful of that and the adulteration necessary to preserve the look of freshness and the promise of wholesomeness. North Americans, of all Western countries, spend the smallest percentage of their annual income on food. But that’s changing, for no other reason than the cost of fuel to manufacture and deliver food, so the local food producer is now able to compete in price and has always trumped in freshness, wholesomeness and taste. As Texas Longhorn stockmen, you have the best tasting and most healthful beef standing in your pastures right now. It is incumbent upon you to preserve the purebred Texas Longhorn for any number of reasons, and add to those reasons the demand by consumers for healthful, sourced and unadulterated beef.