Rick Reeves Rick owns Happy Valley Ranch out in Hallsville, TX. I think we met for the first time in about 1985 when I was stationed at Barksdale AFB. At that time he had a lot of McKellar breeding including the McKellar Negro 2/165 bull which was rumored to be a Comandante son. I don’t know who his daddy was but he was a very good bull all around. Had more of the yellow color to him than the dark red that a lot of breeders like but he was good. Rick was also using some of the bulls that McKellar had from the Importations like Jumbo, Sugestivo, and Belmonte, and bulls like the 5P 757 and 417 bulls. He had a couple old Garcia cows there but most of his cow herd was Mckellar bred. He had some really good cows there carrying his brand out of the McKellar cows and the above bulls and he had bred some really good bulls like Samson, Stick, 109 which was a polled 757 son, and a bull that we bought from him, Number 267/2 which was a 757 son. We bought that bull out of the show barn when he was 2 ½, carried him home and turned him out with the cows and he would not breed a single one, out of 28 cows we had 28 open. Rick, like almost everyone else I have known in the Brahman business has always been just totally straight up and honest and he didn’t ask any questions, just took the bull back. He had him semen tested and the bull was good so he turned him in with a couple cows and sure enough he paid them no mind. Anyway, he offered to give us our money back but we choose to just take credit and buy some cows. During this time Rick was having production sales once or twice a years and some of those sales averaged as high as $10,000.We picked out some cows in the place of the bull, I remember they were mostly bred heifers out of Jumbo and Sugestivo. Most were ET females. There was one older cow in the bunch though, I think she was 7 and out of 1/289. She was bred to the HV 109 bull. She had a polled heifer calf that year that was one of the best red calves we ever raised. Man we got an education with those Jumbo and Sugestivo cows though. It wasn’t just us, Rick and everyone who used those bulls as well as Jardim, Jalipur, and most of the others got the same education. I don’t think from what folks said that Belmonte was as bad, but not many folks bred him. When those daughters would calve though you may as well have the chute ready because you were going to milk. More dummy calves than I’ve ever seen that didn’t even know where to nurse, and some of those teats were almost as big as my arm. I am convinced that the Brazilians were ready when the Americans went down to buy cattle and import. We also bought a scur horned cow from Rick that was bred by Cleon Almond and out of Arete that was a good cow, she had to be milked but she wasn’t too bad and she raised a pretty awesome polled heifer out of the 109 bull that was polled. Ricks 165 calves tended to have pretty good udders but I think pretty much everyone grew to hate the blood from the imported bulls of the 80’s except the few Nellore bulls that were imported. Later Rick got away from the imported cattle and bought some semen from Miss Emily on the 3X 55 and 57 bulls and he had some awesome calves there with some of the old Mckellar blood that was from Cherokee before it was diluted with imported stuff. I liked Dr. McKellar a lot, he was a nice man, and I know his intentions were pure, but he took an awesome herd of cattle with those old Cherokee and Clifford cows and in just a couple generations with bulls like Turipana, Navagante, Sugestivo, Belmonte, Jumbo, Jardim, and Jalipur, those cattle were not even a shadow of their former selves. I haven’t seen Rick in almost 20 years now. I know he is still breeding Red Brahman cattle and I think doing pretty well, I certainly hope he is, he was another of the breeders who I really liked and respected through the years. He had a pretty awesome set of cattle, he stumbled like many breeders with the hype of the imports of the 80’s but he recovered better than most and moved on.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 10:38:50 +0000
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