Tidy rows of pine trees grow where cattle once grazed through the rolling hills of East Texas.
Housing developments and lignite mines have swallowed prime pasture land.
Around Longview, cows and calves are dotting fewer landscapes, and local ranchers blame rising costs, fluctuating markets and changing lifestyles for pushing people from cattle production, a rural business with long ties to East Texas.
“The older generation is passing on, and the younger ones don’t pick it up,” said Byron Ford, a Hallsville rancher who runs the Longview Livestock Commission sale barn. “There’s not a lot of money in it, and it’s hard work.”
The number of cattle in the area has fallen by nearly half in the past three decades, but it’s hard to tell that on a Thursday in Longview. That’s when the livestock commission holds its weekly auction, where men in denim shirts and wide-brimmed hats still gather around the cafe at the sale barn just as they always have.
They chew on chicken-fried steak and shoot the breeze. Later, they’ll wander the catwalk high above the holding pens, inspecting the week’s offering. There will be breeding bulls, horses and goats, as well as heifers destined for somebody’s pasture and yearlings and worn-out mama cows destined for the feed lots and slaughter houses out west.
Among the onlookers will be only a handful of serious buyers. Though several East Texans still run large operations, many say they hold onto a few head of cattle as a hobby or for nostalgia. They’re just happy to break even on the endeavor.
“Most of our clients will be people with smaller herds. They’ve been in it forever and were raised in it,” Ford said. “It gets in you. People do it because they’ve always done it.”
Longview’s sale barn was built in the 1960s. There are other sale barns operating around East Texas, including ones in Carthage and Henderson. Ford expects that sales have slowed at all of the East Texas auction houses, and he said he wouldn’t be surprised if some begin to close in the years to come.
“If our numbers don’t pick up, everybody can’t stay in it,” he said.
A small-timer’s habit
These days, most small-time ranchers hold other jobs to pay the bills.
Among them is Danny Jordan, who retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture after 36 years and now runs a small herd and hauls cattle for a rural sale barn on the weekends.
“Back when I was a kid, back in the ’50s, that was when East Texas was fencing up, and my granddad had a few old cows. It wasn’t nothing because everybody had a few head of cattle,” he said. “Now it has evolved over the years that we have either got some big operators or we’ve got a lot of small operators like me that have a town job to support their habit.”
In the early part of the 20th century, Jordan said, many rural East Texans grew crops for their livelihood. Following World War II, they converted to cattle production. They didn’t have massive spreads like those found in cattle-producing areas of South and West Texas.
“The problem over here in East Texas is everybody’s got 80 acres of land,” he said. “We don’t have any real big landowners. As the cattle industry evolved over the years to better types of cattle, better breeding and better feeding, we had to expand or go out, and there was just so many people here, and I’m exactly what they are.
“Everybody had 75 to 100 acres, and it wasn’t enough to run cattle full time,” he said. “There wasn’t enough money there so they had to go to town and get a job.”
Jordan runs around 60 head of cattle on 92 acres in Laneville.
“I’m so small-time it’s ridiculous, but that’s what I want to do,” he said. “I don’t want to go fishing.”
Fewer cattle, more people?
The USDA figures that show a declining cattle population in East Texas might not tell the complete story, according to Greg Clary, an economist at the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton.
“There may be less cattle, but that doesn’t mean there are less people involved,” he said. “We have so many small herds in East Texas and across the South, there’s just a lot of people that have some cows.”
Clary is among several Texas A&M experts who are leading a “grazing school” this week at the Overton facility, in which greenhorns learn about forage management, genetics and other basics of livestock production. Clary, who is also chairman of the Texas Center for Rural Entrepreneurship, said some small producers still make money from their cattle.
“The possibility is there,” he said. “There are more people that are not making money than are, but there are some that do make money. But you have to really pay attention to all the management aspects of it and keep track of what’s going on from a production standpoint and a cost standpoint.”
Back at the sale barn
Before Thursday’s auction began in Longview, a long line of trucks waited to unload their livestock for the noon sale. Around 600 head of cattle were expected to pass through the auction gates that day, and Art Dudley was next in line to drop off a dozen head.
Dudley, a full-time cattle producer in the Henderson area, said he was just doing what he has always done.
“It’s what I like,” he said. “I don’t want to work for anybody else.”
2,147 responses to “Cattle ranchers dwindling in East Texas”
Designers have had to plan a “skill” path previous issues, an “action” path and a “character interplay” path.
Nice i really enjoyed reading your blogs. Keep on posting. Thanks
Thank you for sharing indeed great looking !
In the past couple of years, manifestations resulting from the impending debt crisis in Europe in addition to the melt down on Wall Street have come to fruition and are playing out on the various news outlets.
Fold this section in half and cross the entrance end (not the end with the plug) by all 4 wheels.
How Can Equity Release Benefit The Pensioners?
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful post with us.
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful post with us.
The information shared is of top quality which has to get appreciated at all levels. Well done…
Once a recruiter has recruited someone willing to collect information, the brand new spy will likely be put involved with a controller.
All citizens must have health insurance in Germany, which they purchase from personal, nonprofit funds.
The business house is constantly looking for ways that would guarantee profitable results in the future.
The UMPC displays are designed for showing widescreen movies.
The information shared is of top quality which has to get appreciated at all levels. Well done…
It can be finished every day or on a shot term intraday.
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful post with us.
A great post without any doubt.
The information shared is of top quality which has to get appreciated at all levels. Well done…
Contact cement bonds immediately, so ensure the veneer is strictly matched; if you’re utilizing carpenters’ glue, press from the middle out to power out any excess, and wipe the surplus off immediately.
It impacts your finances, but additionally joyful marriage with the service supplied by the Indian marriage ceremony planner.
Kinetic vitality depends on both the mass and velocity of an object, so a small object shifting quick still has numerous power.
Selling also incurs substantial brokerage fees with additional fees to buy back again later.
I’m very happy to find this great site. I need to to
thank you for ones time due to this wonderful read!! I definitely liked every little bit of it and i also
have you saved to fav to look at new stuff on your
web site.
The Best Premium IPTV Service WorldWide!
Nice i really enjoyed reading your blogs. Keep on posting. Thanks
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful post with us.
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful post with us.
Tribune cited violations of the sale agreement in regards to divestiture of stations, together with “belligerent and unnecessarily protracted negations” with the Department of Justice and FCC in an effort to keep up management of stations that it had been advised to divest, and violating situations barring divestitures from attracting “even the menace” of regulatory scrutiny.
Examine your lender by your local attorney general’s workplace, Workplace of Client Affairs or Higher Enterprise Bureau.
There are three kinds of tax that each trader must pay when trading stocks, taxes of capital positive factors, revenue tax (IT) and lastly stamp duty.
As a for-revenue business entity, the enterprise additionally must steadiness compliance with correct risk management to attain a fiscally responsible level of compliance.
You may click in your state to see extra element on wind speeds in your space.
Punch holes in rim on reverse sides of bowl.
Call the cruise ship harm attorneys of Hickey Legislation Agency at the moment.
It includes the economic indicators such as PPI, CCI, GDP, etc.teh top Forex is the place which provides you with the relevant information for you so that you can choose the trading strategy for your own self.
If one investor had to buy a large number of direct investments, the amount this person would be able to invest in each holding is likely to be small.
I’m really enjoying the theme/design of your site. Do you ever run into any browser compatibility problems? A couple of my blog audience have complained about my blog not operating correctly in Explorer but looks great in Opera. Do you have any recommendations to help fix this issue?|
Normally I do not learn article on blogs, however I wish to say
that this write-up very pressured me to check out and do it!
Your writing style has been amazed me. Thanks, quite nice article.
Hi there, I discovered your blog by the use of Google while searching
for a related matter, your web site came up, it seems great.
I’ve bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.
Hello there, simply changed into alert to your weblog thru Google, and located that it’s truly informative.
I’m gonna be careful for brussels. I’ll appreciate for those who
continue this in future. Lots of other people will be benefited out of your writing.
Cheers!
Hey, I think your blog might be having browser compatibility
issues. When I look at your blog in Safari, it looks fine but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has
some overlapping. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up!
Other then that, superb blog!
Great article.|
Awesome post.|
I absolutely love your blog and find many of your post’s to be just what I’m looking for. Do you offer guest writers to write content in your case? I wouldn’t mind producing a post or elaborating on many of the subjects you write related to here. Again, awesome site!|
Thank you for great article. Hello Administ .?????????????
Thank you for sharing indeed great looking !
Güvenilir Medyumlar hakk?nda bilinmeyenler neler sizler için ara?t?rd?k ve karar verdik.
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful post with us.
I am regular visitor, how are you everybody? This article posted at this website is really fastidious.
HB88 ?????? 3D ??????????????????????????????????????
Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful post with us.