Goodbye Winter Hello Spring

Ice Storm

Life in Texas is very interesting. You can plan every February there will be a big storm. This year did not disappoint us. We had the mother of all ice storms. It only lasted a few days but boy was it icy. Headed to the barn early and didn’t seem too bad. We have a slight hill and down I went. Couldn’t stand long enough to make progress. This is the time of life you are thankful you are short, not that far to the ground. Finally made it to the barn and was struck there for 5 hours. Nothing worked on the ice. No mule, no walking, nothing. Watching the cats slid down the hill was beyond funny. Finally it was warm enough to venture back to the house. We did get the mule to work on low and 4 wheel drive. Finally all cows were feed. Appreciate the warm weather ahead of us.

2023 Vet day

I love our Vet days. We had tons of shots, vaccinations , dehorning and tattoos. Thank you Weatherford Animal Clinic, Dr Morrison, you all are the best.

Girls looking on

Steve took a few minutes out of his day to round pen the horses. After being on the barn for over a week they were ready to kick up. It’s fun to work with horses and see them out in the pasture after a good stretch.

Love our Texas sunsets. Thank you God for all your blessings.

Farewell 2022 Hello 2023

Before we exit 2022, I wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. We are so thankful for such a great year. We would like to thank all our customers for doing business with us. This year we have sold Wagyu Breeding stock coast-to-coast. We are so excited for our customers to be on their way to the “Love of Wagyu experience”. Our goal is to ensure each and every customer is successful. Steve has spent many nights sharing with customer’s, our best practices, and working on their next steps in their breeding programs. Success is not only for us, but also for our customers.   

Hello 2023:  

We are excited to start 2023. One of bulls will be leaving soon for Southlake Texas. We will miss him, but he will be going to a great home and Wagyu breeding program. We have our breeding plan in place for this year and will have babies before we know it. Spent this last year designing the ranch to be more effective in our breeding directions. We have had numerous ranch visitors, which is always a treat.  

We were so fortunate to have our kids and grandkids come to the ranch during the holidays. Family is so important for us and to spend time is another one of those blessings.

As always, we had one new dog and new cat decide to make the ranch their home. I can’t say our new residents overjoyed me, but I also feel that God is asking us to share our home with our little friends/family. Stay tuned for more information to come.

Happy New Year to Everyone.

South Carolina Here we Come - American Wagyu Association Annual Conference 2022

We were looking forward to the AWA 2022 September annual meeting. At the last minute we decided to drive to the conference from Texas. It would be a two-day trip, and it was an easy two-day trip. Getting on Interstate 20 until we arrived in Charleston, South Carolina. Would highly recommend driving the south with all kinds of potential stops to visit the Civil War History, as well as experiencing Southern Food and Hospitality.

 The sessions at the conference were amazing. We left the conference learning a great deal about genetics and phenotype and how both play in the quality of the final beef product. Such needed sessions were provided on nutritional factors impacting the overall health and marbling. One of the more exciting sessions was the Wagyu Beef Marketing Panel. Great ideas on how to market Wagyu beef in specialty stores and on the web. Each participate gave an outstanding overview of their own marketing approach to the wagyu marketplace. Extemely insightful and the take aways fit each and every member attending, whether a seed stock breeder or a meat producer with ideas to move the wagyu breed ahead.  Discussions on marbling and tenderness for the end user were a main focus at this year’s conference.  Access from ranch to table is becoming more of a trend, where the ranches are doing their own websites and distributions. Great benefits for end users.

 Attending the conference is always a great opportunity to network with new breeders, as well as long time cattle ranches. An environment of sharing is what the American Wagyu Association creates at the annual meetings. I loved that we had the opportunity to share information with some very new breeders. Always great to reconnect with other ranches to exchange information or just complain together about the Texas drought.

 Next year the Texas 2023 Wagyu Association Annual meeting will be held in our own backyard, Ft. Worth Texas. We are thrilled. Along with the Annual meeting, the Wagyu World Conference 2023 will also be hosted in Ft. Worth.

Busy Start of the 2022 Summer Schedule

Hot weather has hit Texas early this summer with temperatures well over 102 degrees almost daily.  The bulls and cows found all the available shade and the ponds provided ample water during this very hot spell.

During all this hot weather we had five calves born. As soon as they were old enough two claves along with their mommas were shipped to Colorado.  The remaining calves have formed such a bond, and its fun to watch them run, chase and play with each other.  

In early June we did our annual pasture rotation.  We moved our “girls” to the bigger pasture and moved the “boys” to the smaller pasture.  We also moved our selected bulls and heifers to another separate smaller pastures for breeding.  We love moving the cattle.  All the cattle were so eager to move to new pastures.  They all seem happy with their new homes. .

Breeding season has started.  We have taken a couple of acres to breed some of our available heifers with our amazing bulls  We are so excited to be able to use new genetics for our next generation of calves.  Breeding is such an exciting extension to growing our business.  It takes a lot of time, research, and finding the right data to increase the size, marbling and other characteristic that we are enhancing to increase the quality of our breeding stock.