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By: Jay Nixon
Some of you will recall that a couple of years ago, I wrote
an article about attending a field day at Cherokee Hills Ranch near
Paris Landing, Tennessee where I saw my first Romagnola cattle.
My reaction then, and my opinion now is that this is a breed of cattle
made for today’s market. They have the long body, the distinct
muscling, the size and scale to produce Choice and Number One feeder
cattle out of just about any herd of native cows I’ve ever seen. And
at a time when every cattleman I know is scrambling for extra dollars
when he sells his calves, this is terribly important.
I would like you to know that in the interim, I have proven
my opinion about these cattle. I got so excited about them that I
attended the Houston Romagnola show and sale in 1998, where my wife Lou
Eda, a cattleperson in her own right, and I got to see super Romagnolas
from all over the country.
During the sale, we got so excited that some of the
yearling bulls were not bringing near what they should have, that we
just rared back and bid on some of them. Damned if we didn’t end up
buying two for what we considered modest prices.
It was only after the excitement of the moment wore off that we realized
we didn’t have any place to put them. Lou Eda has quite a bit of
country here in Karnes County, but all of it is leased. So here we had
these two bulls, good ones, one from California and
the other from Oklahoma, and no home for them.
We ended up with a short term lease on a little patch of
ground near the ranch where we live, to be paid for by letting the owner
breed four cows to these young bulls. Then, one of the men that leases
our home place saw them, and after some little discussion, we leased
them to him for our pick of three calves out of his 50 cows.
Admittedly, this was sort of a desperation move, so we could have a home
for the bulls, but it turned out pretty well for all concerned. We were
able to keep an eye on the progress of the bulls, and were able to see
the first calves as they began to drop.
But let me tell you what, this fellow’s cows were not
what you’d call a super herd. They were, in fact, kind of a group of
auction market specials, just plain South Texas cows. Up to that time,
he’d been using whatever bulls came along, and his calves just
weren’t anything to brag about.
He was a little nervous using bulls with such large frames on his herd,
and I could tell he was expecting all kinds of calving problems, because
he was in the pastures morning and evening when the time came for calves
to start dropping.
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...those two bulls tower
over the cows like a couple of switch engines in a used car lot. |
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The young bulls thrived. Both of
them are weighing close to a ton now, and they haven’t been pampered.
When you see the herd together, there is no doubt in your mind which
ones are the bulls, because those two bulls tower over the cows like a
couple of switch engines in a used car lot.
When the calves started falling, the owner of the cows came
by the house to report his disappointment. All of them were little
things, born weighing 60 to 70 pounds and long bodied. “Kind of
scrawny, really,” was his description. And he was right. When the
calves hit the ground, they weren’t much to look at, little and kind
of a red color. He was disappointed in their appearance, but he didn’t
have a single problem in calving.
Then, about when the calves reached three or four weeks of
age, they muscled up like you’d put a tube in them and had blown them
up. They shed the red color and most of them turned white. The rest were
a lighter shade of brown or red than their mothers. They have black
noses and hooves and black pigment around the eyes. And man, did they
come on.
Most of these crossbred cows milk fairly well, and those
calves really turned the crank. Some of the bull calves weighed more
than 500 pounds at five months of age. They are long and straight, big
framed, with well defined muscling, and the owner of the cows has been
amazed. He never had calves that grew like these.
He is so excited that I’ve about got him convinced that
we should put a pen of them together for the ranch to rail program so we
can see what they’ll do on feed and in the packing plant.
He’s talking about buying the bulls from us, but I think
we are going to want to lease them to him one more year. We’ll see.
Now, if that herd of cows had been one of those production
tested F1 herds or a good solid herd of Brangus cows, I wouldn’t have
been surprised at the quality of the calves. You’d expect pretty good
babies out of mothers like that. But to see calves of this quality out
of this set of cows is truly amazing.
The renter is talking about saving some of the heifers, and
I’m trying to discourage that. Those heifers are just super looking
feeder heifers, and all of them should go with their steer mates. As
most of you know if you read this column regularly, I don’t believe in
saving heifers. It costs too much to get them into production, and the
practice is a money loser, especially when you have heifers like the
ones by these Romagnola bulls that will bring top feeder prices
anywhere.
As for the Romagnola bulls in a commercial program, I
can’t recommend them highly enough. They are every bit as good as I
thought they’d be. Maybe better.
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Lean and tender
meat 
ROMAGNOLA
STANDARDS
OF EXCELLENCE 
