We don't exactly have your typical commercial cattle herd... , from registered brahman to sale barn rejects to corrientes, and everything in between.
One of the reasons we have various types, has to do with our uses. Team roping, cutting practice, youth rodeo, dog training, etc.
We have a small group of what we call the "good cattle", tiger stripes, F1's, grey brahman, black brangus, red angus, and beefmaster, all running with a charlois bull. We use the calves from this group to support Mandi's cutting horse habit. All of the calves get used in the cutting pen until they sour, or reach a shipping weight.
A couple of calves born last month to this group
One of Mandi's cutting calves.
I bought this old longhorn cow at the Buffalo sale last year. She's old as dirt, but I thought she had some unique headgear. I just hope I beat the scavengers when she kicks the bucket.
My favorite cow, this pic was taken in the middle of last years drought. She's as gentle as they come, great bag, and raises a heck of a nice calf.
We keep a group of about 25 or so head of corriente and longhorn heifers to rope, once they learn some head tricks, or start to drag, we send them to Mandi to use in the cutting pen. After they sour at the cutting pen, they get turned out to pasture with the commercial cattle. We keep one black corriente bull at the house with the cutting cattle, that way the corriente/longhorn cattle get a small bull for their first calf.
Here's a pic of Mandi and Termite cutting one of the old roping heifers yesterday.
The cutters are also used here at the house for training the dogs.
Here's a pic of my BC "Chip' learning his job. You might notice a sheep in the top left of the picture. That was CWard's prom date. He still refers to her as the "purdy one"
"Ruby" working with some of the old roping cattle.
Here is one of Mandi's projects. Last year we went and bought a pen of roping cattle. This longhorn cow was there with a small calf on her. We bought the pair for the price of the calf, not knowing if the cow would survive. After some TLC from Mandi, she was turned into a great lead cow. First one in the pens, and you can call her by her name, "Aggie"
Before
In the meantime, Mandi took advantage of Aggie being poor, and halter broker her, and taught her to drive.
After
Above I mentioned youth rodeo. Occasionally we will ship some of our roping or cutting cattle to the TYRA rodeos to be bucked out.
Here's a pic of some bucking practice
Just for grins, while I was digging through old pics, I ran across this pic of my friend/neighbor's son, JT.
