Buying Cattle

"You can now tell people you're a cattleman," Ozzie told me as we drove back to Goldthwaite from Comanche.

It was Saturday and we had just left the Comanche Livestock Exchange after loading Ozzie's purchase into his trailor. My parents own 100 acres in the Hill Country and the rain has been so generous this year that the grass is plentiful. At dinner one night Ozzie mentioned that we could run a few more head on our place and later that evening I told my Dad I'd like to buy a cow. So with Ozzie's help we set out to buy some cattle.

Ozzie and his wife Maurine moved to Goldthwaite in 1991 and purchased 500 acres for $425 an acre. That same property now is likely worth $3000 an acre. The story is the same all over the Hill Country. Ranchers who until 5 years ago had little monetarliy to show for their lifetime of labor on the land, are now finding themselves holding properties worth millions. The demand was initially driven by retirees from Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Houston, but the extraordinary escalation in value over the last few years resuilted from Californian's cashing out on the West Coast and relocating here.

Most of the counties in Texas have a livestock commission, a company that sells livestock on commission for the farmers and ranchers. The various commissions have their sales on different days, mostly to avoid competition. My parent's place is in Mills County and the five adjacent counties are San Saba, Brown, Comanche, and Lampassas. Dinner with Ozzie and his wife was Saturday night and he said the next auction would be San Saba on Thursday.

"If you are interested in going," Ozzie told us, "I would enjoy taking you." So we agreed to meet Thursday morning and head to the auction. But before Thursday arrived, Mom got a call from Maurine saying that a cow had died while calving and was partially in one of their ponds, a relatively inaccessible one, and she wondered if my Dad had a wench or could bring his Four-wheeler over to help pull the cow out of the water.

So Wednesday morning, Dad and I loaded the four-wheeler in the pick-up and headed over to help out. We backed the pickup against the damn and drove the four-wheeler off the bed. From the rim of the damn we could see the cow, front end bloated, rear deflated by the vultures feasting. Even from across the pond, the smell was strong. I started breathing through my nose. The hill on the backside of the pond was thich with scrub oak. No pickup could even get close. I threaded my way on the four-wheeler over bolders and around mesquites and oaks. The once or twice I forgot and breated through my nose, the smell almost gagged me.

Ozzie took one of my Dads cargo straps and looped over the cow's front leg. Even though her rear was closer to us, it was already decaying so badly that if we'd tried dragging her there, the leg would have seperated. We hooked the other end to the four-0wheeler hitch and Dad pulled the cow 15 feet up the hill and out of the water.

When I finally let myself breath through my nose again, I actually tasted the strench in my mouth. It was rank and nauseating.

Ozzie was grateful and as we drove away he said he would be at our house the next morning at 8:30 to drive us to the auction.

The sale in San Saba, about 30 minutes from Goldthwait, is at the Jordan Cattle Auction, an upscale facility with abundant pens and state-of-the-art equipment. Most commissions have similar layouts. the office, where new buyers sign in before the sale and all buyers payout after, is in the front of the building. the lobby has doors opening into the auction area, and the auction area has large metal doors that open in from the holding pens and back out to them.

Ozzie took me up to the office window and introduced me.

"This is Eddie Ishmael and he is a new buyer. Can you get him signed up?"

The lady on the other side of the slilding window said, "Well, of course. All I need is a driver's license and a copy of your check."

And that was it.

"What name to you want them to use in there?" the lady asked.

"I guess Ishmael," I said hesitantly.

She nodded and we moved on.

We entered the auction are about 45 minutes bfore the sale and reserved three seats with name cards, then we walked through a metal door out into the pens.

The pens are made of welded metal pipe and they are covered with a tall tin roof. The sounds were nearly deafening. Cows mooing, calves bawling, metal gates slamming shut, cowboys yelling at the cows and at each other. At first it was a bit overwhelmeing.

We went up on the cat walk and tried to identify some pairs--cows with calves--but the cat walk was fairly high in the air and the cows and calves had been already separated. Supposedly, the cows are easier to handle that way and there is less likelihood that the calves will get injured by the much larger cows.

Ozzie was a great teacher, very knowledgeable and very patient. Cattle for sale at auction generally consist of fertile bulls, nonfertile bulls, bred cows, nonbred or open cows, pairs (a mtoher and calf), three-ways (a pregnant mother and calf), hefers, steers and yearlings.

Each auction house has its own markign system for telling buyers about the cows. These marks are generally sprayed on with paint. If the cow has an X on its back, it has been pregnancy tested. A "O" on its back hip, which stands for "Open," means it is not bred and will likely be sold by the pound for meat. If it is pregnant, there will be a number on its hip telling you how many months pregnant the cow is. A pregnant cow, depending on how many months, is either short bred (1-3 months), medium bred (4-6 months) or long bred (7 to 8 months). Obviously, the shorter period before birth, the quicker the rancher can make money off the cow and the less he will have to hold her as non-productive.

There is a vet on site at the sales and his job is to check the cows for pregnancy. At the Jordan auction, the vet was at the back of the roofed space. He wore a white medical overcoat with the right sleeve rolled up and a clear polastic glove that went all the way to his bicept. That arm and his whole side were covered in cow shit. He checked them by shoving his whole arm up inside them and feeling the size of the calf.

I ended up not buying at the Jordan auction so Ozzie volunteered to take us to the Comanche auction the upcoming Saturday.