This morning I am going to post a bit of a rambling story that is intended to show how much Brahman Breeders treat each other like family than to point out any one breeder or animal in history. I can’t remember for sure but I think it was in 1974 when ABBA held their National show and sale in Tampa. We had consigned a bull to that sale, (the only animal we ever put in a big sale). We had bought a herd of cows from Northern Virginia and he was a calf in that group when we bought them. He was however, right at 24 months when we put him in the sale. He was old enough that a semen test was required on him before we could sale him. There was only one vet within 100 miles of us that even had the equipment to do semen test at the time. He was in Monroe which was about 40 miles. I set up an appointment and carried the bull over there. He had a chute there and we put the bull in. That vet tried for 90 minutes and never was able to collect the bull. All his experience was with short eared cattle and he knew nothing of Brahmans. So I brought the bull back home with no test. The next day dad was talking to Jerry Simon who was still in Cocoa at the time, and told him we were going to have to scratch our bull because of no test. Jerry said there was a man there in Florida who worked out of Jacksonville, Don Schlesher, (I know I really messed up that spelling), he worked all over Florida, and maybe we could meet him somewhere on the way down and get the test done. We decided on Jerry’s advice to give it a try. We called Don who said that, at the time we were coming through he was going to be in the Bartow area and would be glad to do it if we could find someone there with a chute. We then called Mr. IW Waters, we had bought a bull from him earlier but the bull was at Jerry’s, I had never met him. He said set up with Don anytime and just meet there he would be glad to help so we did set up to meet Don there. I don’t know how we did it, we came all the way from North Carolina, but we all met there within 5 minutes of each other. I led the bull off the trailer and into the chute and in 5 minutes Don had collected him. In 10 minutes I had him back on the trailer and a certificate in hand. Don charged me $20 and left (the vet in NC wanted $100 but wasn’t able to do the job). Mr. Waters and his son Fred insisted we come up to the house and eat before going on. They were extremely nice folks and we developed a friendship that day that lasted a long time. Don was the go to man if you needed semen collected in Florida or South Georgia, he had a truck with portable equipment in it and he could go anywhere to do the job. A short while later though, a semen tank blew up on him and killed him, I never knew what caused it to blow up. If anyone else has stories of Don or of Mr. Waters I sure would love to hear them. The point of this story today though is to show and say that cattle people in general but Brahman people in particular, will go out of their way to help out each other any way they possibly can. Of course there are a very few exceptions but they tend to weed themselves out very quickly. I think it’s the Brahman blood, once it gets in you it makes you like that, Brahmans want to stick together. One more quick case in point. We were leaving a sale in Cocoa, FL one year, about 20 miles up the road I blew a trailer tire. Richard Hale came by, stopped and helped with the tire and then followed us 20 miles up the road past his turn to make sure we got it fixed. How can you not love a breed that is full of folks like that? I know there are thousands of stories like this out there, we might argue and disagree on things, even get down to name calling but when the chips are down, breeders stick together. Pretty much like siblings, they will claw and pull each others hair out but you mess with one and you got the whole group to deal with. Now what more could anyone ask?
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 13:30:43 +0000
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