First let me say thank you all so very much for being patient with me. I truly do feel better after a little break. I guess we all need one occasionally but I really don’t know why with me, my life is pretty much a break. Anyway, thank you all again, I see likes on the page have actually grown even when I was not posting. In the summer of 1974 there was an ad in The Brahman Journal for a group of cattle in Northern Virginia that were for sale. Dad called the man, I cannot remember what his name was, he lived just across the State line from DC and worked in DC. He had purchased his seed stock from Texas, had had them for 5 or 6 years and so had several of his own animals that he had raised. His herd Bull was a JD Hudgins bull and this was the second bull he had bought from them so, while there were daughters of the bull ready to breed, there had been no inbreeding. He had purchased 5 cows, Hudgins didn’t have females for sale so he had bought 3 females from Mr. DH Walker who I did a post on earlier and 2 cows from Joe Mettauer. I don’t know if he knew cattle or not but he selected some really good cattle. He told us he originally had Herford cattle on the place and wanted to breed some F1’s but when he got his first calves he sold the Herfords. He called his place Thorn Hill Farm and I doubt anyone outside of that Northern Virginia area would remember him. Dad bought the herd, I think there were 26 head total including a 15 month old and 12 month old bull and a couple of calves. Most of the cows were bred as were the females that were not sired by the Herd Bull. We brought the cattle home, one of the few groups of cows we ever bought that we didn’t worry about adjusting because we moved them to a warmer climate. The bull had a PH No. of 455 so I loved him immediately and while not haltered he was extremely gentle. He along with the cattle were extremely thick and beefy, the cows had a little more frame size than the bull. At that time we had a few Florida Ranch type indu heifers there and we bred them to the bull while we bred the cows and heifers to a ½ indu bull we had leased from Tom Chaires that first year. Pretty awesome set of calves all around with those crosses. The 16 month old bull I halter broken after we got them and we put him in the National Sale in Tampa where he sold very well. Those old cows and they young heifers produced very well for us for many years. We later started using the Sugarland’s Suville bull on them mostly and he worked very well also. I will never forget though the day we went up and picked the cattle up to bring them home. We had hired someone with a pot to haul them for us. We went up and loaded the cattle. As we were leaving with them, I looked out the window at the guy who owned them and he was crying. I will always have that picture in my mind. Just more proof of how these old Brahman cattle get into your blood and once they do forget it, you can’t get them out. Also of just how attached you can get to these old hump backed cattle.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 12:17:22 +0000
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