PUNCHING COWS since he was five, Bill Craft, left, has been ranching in the Texas Panhandle most of his life. He started his own operation when he was just a teenager. At right is son Jack, who now leases the family ranch. Like his father, he has been taking in cattle on the gain, but he is in the process of shifting to a cow-calf operation. The yearling cattle shown here are some Jack took in on the gain for AzTx Cattle Co. They averaged 757 pounds going out and are now on feed at Hereford Feed Yard.

Bill Craft Says Clarendon
Ranch Country Hard To Beat

CLARENDON — The Craft family has been farming and ranching in the Texas Panhandle for the last 100 or so years. Likewise, the Texas Panhandle has been home to Bill Craft most of his life. And in his opinion, it's a country that is awfully hard to beat.

"It usually rains in the spring here," Craft says. "We might have a hard summer, but we nearly always have a good spring and that gets us going and helps keep us in business."

He uses the JA Ranch as his barometer.

"The JA Ranch is the oldest ranch in the Panhandle, and they’ve never had to leave it due to dry times.

"If you stock this country right you won’t have to leave. You may not prosper every year, but at least you get to try one more time."

Annual rainfall here is about 20 to 21 inches, but the last several years have been abnormally dry – dry in that half the rain they’ve received has come in one event in the spring and the other half in one rain in the fall.

An average stocking rate for that part of the Panhandle, Craft says, is about 20 to 25 acres to the cow. The encroachment of brush, however, has pushed it up to 30 acres to the cow.

Brush encroachment is becoming a serious problem. Though cedar has always been here, it’s been primarily isolated in the ridges. It started moving out from the ridges in the early 1960s.

"When the starlings moved into this country, they started spreading the cedar. They are the very thing that has ruined this entire country," Craft insists.

"We had a lot of cedar to the west and some to the southeast, and the birds had a flight pattern from one cedar thicket to another. It was about two miles wide, and you could literally see their flight pattern after a few years."

The Crafts have tried to keep the spread in check by using a combination of two-way chaining followed by a prescribed burn. They've had excellent results at a cost of about $11 an acre. His son, Jack, didn’t even recognize the pasture afterwards because he’d never seen it without the brush. They've grubbed another 50 sections on the Matthews Ranch for about $18 an acre.

Craft says he would take mesquite over cedar any day.

"Mesquite is a legume, and it puts nitrogen back into the soil; big country with big mesquite flats is the strongest country you will have. Cattle do better there.

"Cedar is the opposite. Cedar is a parasite," he continues. "It’s green 12 months out of the year, and it ruins the country directly underneath it. It’s a moisture getter, but more important than the moisture loss is the fertility loss. Cedar weakens the soil."

Craft started punching cows when he was five. A man by the name of H.L. Lott ran 200 cows on about 20,000 acres in the Clarendon area. Lott hired Craft to help him and his son day-herd his cows.

"We trailed those cows from Mulberry to Red River and back up Red River," Craft recalls. "We started out early in the morning, herded them all day, penned them at night and then rode back home. The next morning we turned them out of the corrals and herded them down the river to another spot."

For Craft's "pay", Lott would rope a yearling and Craft and the other kid about his age would get to ride the animal after they'd had lunch.

An only child, Craft already knew by this time what he intended to do with the rest of his life, and for the last 55 years he's been true to that childhood dream. He's ranched most of those years in Hall, Donley, Briscoe, Wheeler and Collingsworth counties. At one time he had a little more than 100 sections under his control. With that came the upkeep of 80 windmills. There were six to eight people on the payroll during his heyday. Today, basically three people run the same amount of country.

Though Craft always preferred ranching to farming, his father was a farmer — a very good farmer, Craft says. He always ran some cattle as well, but his heart was never in it, so he turned that part of the operation over to Bill when he was very young.

"I bought the bulls and sold the calves and did what trading there was to be done by the time I was 14 years old. Those traders were really pretty tough hombres," Craft recalls. "I really got a good training at an early age. They took me for a ride every now and then, but I eventually caught up."

Though he day-worked some for neighbors, his father always encouraged him to work for himself, and because of that prodding Craft began building his own herd at a young age.

"There were several times I would much rather have worked for a big outfit. It’s a lot of fun being with the wagon and 12 to 20 men and 10 good horses in your mount."

It was mostly the people, Craft says, the principles they stood for, their beliefs and values, that attracted him to the cattle business. He learned from his father at an early age to be true to his word.

"I’ve always tried to be as honest as I knew how. If a person stays with that, he’ll be a better, more satisfied person.

"I’ve sold cattle to people with a handshake and bought cattle on a handshake. Back in the early 1950s, at the beginning of the drouth, I had some yearlings that I contracted for spring delivery to Joe McMurtry, here at Clarendon, for 28 cents a pound.

"When spring rolled around they were only worth about 14 or 15 cents, but he received those cattle just like they were making him a dollar a head."

Craft gave him the 10 percent cut that was customary at the time, and he cut some off the heavier end. Thinking they would make him some money, Craft kept those heavy cattle through the first part of June, and finally shipped them to Fort Worth. They weighed 500 pounds but only brought back eight cents a pound.

"That was quite a come-down," Craft recalls. "Just a couple of years before, we were handling $300 cows and 50-cent calves."

Craft says he learned more about the cow business from is father-in-law, Jack Molesworth, than from any other individual.

"He was a great man and a great cowman. He knew a cow from the inside out, and he knew how to handle cattle."

Molesworth's father, John, was a large operator, and Jack grew up with the chuckwagon. He went on to manage the ranches that his father put together.

The Molesworths were Englishmen. John Molesworth had learned to grade wool in England, and he heard that more sheep came from San Antonio than anywhere in the U.S., so he decided he would come to America to grade wool.

What he didn’t know was that all the woolen mills were in Boston. Molesworth, however, knew a lot of the English people in San Antonio who had come before him and already had a chance to get established. He decided to prevail on his contacts to help him get a job working on a ranch.

An old trader heard what he intended to do and tried to talk him out of that, telling him it would tie him down to one place and he wouldn’t get to see the other parts of Texas. He offered, instead, to loan him the money to buy a freight wagon.

Molesworth made quite a little bit of money in the business, enough anyway to pay back the trader for the team and the wagon with sufficient left for passage back to England. Back in his homeland, Molesworth immediately began securing financing so he could return to the States and set himself up in the ranch business. He bought land in Uvalde County at Montell. It was just the beginning of what came to be a successful career.

He later managed a ranch for the Rowe brothers in the Panhandle and then around the turn of the century he and W.J. Lewis drew up a partnership. Molesworth had met Lewis while working for the Rowe brothers.

The two made a formidable pair. About that time all of the foreign-owned ranches, the great big ones, Craft says, were breaking up. John Molesworth knew many of these large English and Scottish ranchers, and he and Lewis began buying their herds.

The two men also had a good arrangement with John Clay, who was on his way to developing the largest commission firm in the country. Clay headquartered in Kansas City, but he had offices all over the U.S.

Eventually they had enough money to begin buying ranches of their own. At one point, Molesworth and Lewis operated the T-Anchors at Canyon. When they had cattle to market, they drove them to Amarillo and held them at the playa lakes at the edge of town. At times there might be eight to 10 herds grouped there, Craft says. Some of the buyers would come there, ride through the herds and trade on the cattle right there.

Sometime around 1912 Molesworth and Lewis took on another partner. Theodore Pyle was one of the most well respected cattlemen in the state.

When the partnership between the three cattle barons ended, Molesworth moved from the Panhandle to West Texas. He bought two ranches in and around Sierra Blanca. One was 300 sections, and the other 280 sections.

It was a new country with grama grass almost to the knee. The mistake Molesworth made, Craft says, was that he stocked his West Texas country just like he had stocked his Clarendon country.

"That didn’t work too well, and in a couple or three years it didn’t look so good. He cut his stocking rate in half, and in a couple more years he cut it again. They nearly made a desert out of the country before they found out that it wouldn’t carry but so many cows."

Molesworth had a love for good horseflesh. He put together a good set of polo ponies, and according to Craft he was on the first polo team in Texas. They decided to go to New York to play some polo, but instead of taking a direct route they figured they would go through New Orleans and play a few games there to help finance their trip.

"The people in New Orleans didn’t take to playing polo like they thought they would," Craft says, "and they ended up selling all their polo ponies there, and barely made enough money to get back to Texas."

He also supplied remounts for the Cavalry. It’s said that in addition to his cowherd he also tried to run 1500 mares on that country.

"He kept five people on full-time breaking horses," Craft says. "One account says that they gathered all the mares out of a 150-section pasture and put them in a 70-section trap where they could handle them."

Bill’s late wife, Dorothy Patricia "Patty" Molesworth Craft, was an integral part of her husband's operation, a full partner in all of his ups and downs. She kept the books and was a good hand horseback.

She was a full-blooded Englishwoman. Her grandparents on her mother’s side were among the early settlers in the Texas hill country.

Captain Gordon joined the English navy when he was 14. He became a captain before retiring at the age of 32. He decided at that time to come to Texas to become a rancher. He settled in Junction and took on a Texan as a partner.

"Captain Gordon furnished the money, and the Texan furnished the experience," Craft says, "and he said after about two years in business the Texan had all the money, and he had all the experience."

Gordon started all over again, this time on his own, and this time he made the money. In addition to ranching he started a mercantile store in Junction, and he built the telephone line and switchboard there. The only complaint Gordon had about his telephone system had to do with some rambunctious cowboys.

"They had dances in the top of the courthouse in Junction on Saturday night, and as the cowboys loped home they took great pride in shooting the insulators off the telephone poles," Craft says. "Captain Gordon complained that he had to put new insulators on every Monday morning."

Bill turned the family ranch over to his son Jack a couple of years ago. Father and son now operate independently. Jack leases Oakes Creek back from Bill and Bill operates two farms south of Clarendon, at Brice.

Both have primarily been in the stocker business, mostly taking cattle in on the gain. For years they took in cattle from the San Antonio area. One year when calves got really cheap, Billy Mitchell sent them 3000 salebarn calves in 15 days.

"It was the easiest year we ever had," Bill insists. "It worked for everyone."

They’ve also taken in cattle from Florida. Those cattle did better than any others, but they were wilder and consequently harder to handle.

"They had great genetics, just no brain," Bill adds.

They generally begin receiving cattle in late October and early November, and they like to be finished receiving by Christmas.

"We want to get them straightened out so that they’re ready when the grass comes," Bill explains.

Most of the cattle have had their first round of shots before they arrive. On arrival they’re kept in close proximity until they’re healthy and eating well. They ride the cattle every day for the first 30 days or so. Rather than doctor the sick ones in the pasture, they’re hauled back to the treatment center.

"One treatment usually doesn’t do the trick," Bill explains, "so we treat them for a few days in the pen, and then we take all the treated cattle to a different pasture."

The cattle are supplemented through the winter. The product of choice is the cheapest source of protein at the time, and more often than not, cake is the preferred choice.

Sometimes they supplement in the summer as well.

Up until this recent drouth, they banked on a 300 to 350-pound gain over a year’s time. One year they were just a pound short of reaching the 400 mark. It was their best year ever.

Ranching through the ‘50s drouth became one of the great character-building times of Bill's life. Craft had gone off to college at TCU to major in business administration. Along about his junior year, he decided he was ready to enter the business world as a cowman and returned home to Clarendon. That was 1946, and it was an excellent time to be going into the cattle business. Cattle prices were high and going up, and he was able to lease a ranch at the right money. He bought some cows and a couple of hundred yearlings, and the yearlings and that first calf crop just about paid for those first cows, so he bought some more.

"It was raining. I had some good years, and I hit the ground running and built up to 800 cows and 700 yearlings."

By this time, 1949, he had married and the young couple, deciding they wanted to be on their own, moved to the South Plains and leased part of the T Bar at Tahoka just south of Lubbock. In no time Craft had 35 sections leased there.

"It was good country, strong country, and the cattle did well, but it was short grass country," Craft says, "and when we got into the dry times, we didn’t have anything. My grass blew away in the spring of 1953."

So there he was, caught right in the middle of the drouth in country that he obviously couldn’t stay in. He did everything he could, moved cattle around, sold way down, and even shipped some of his cows to Alamosa, Colorado, to some irrigated fields. But when it was all said and done, his 800-cow herd and 700 yearlings had been reduced to 30 cows.

"I owed $3000 on those 30 cows and they were worth $100 each. I broke exactly even."

His pockets were empty, but the drouth had not broken his spirit. He simply started over, this time not only with a wife, but two young children to his name.

Craft moved his family back to the Clarendon area, where he worked for his dad for about six years until he had enough money together again to lease another ranch. He bought a few cows along the way, and when he found a place to lease he pastured some more cows until he had his own herd built back up.

Though the drouth had instilled in him a cautious nature, after that period in his life, Craft says, he never really looked back much. He had good success, and that good success allowed him to grow.

He went into a partnership with the Matthews family from Albany. The Matthews' bought a place in the Clarendon area, and Craft ran it for them. They bought more country, and Craft operated it as well.

"About the most I ever had gathered up under my responsibility was about 7000 yearlings and a couple hundred cows," he says.

Like his father, Jack Craft is getting a taste of operating through drouth. Because of the drouth, he's been lucky to get a 200-pound gain. That’s largely why Jack has decided to go back to a cow-calf operation. He already has a cowherd started, but until he can build his numbers he plans to pasture some cows for others.

"I wasn’t willing to borrow the money to build my herd," Jack explains. "Plus, this is a less risky option."

Bill’s son-in-law, Kade Matthews, now operates all the Matthews country. Even though he’s turned most of the country over to the younger generation, at 76, Bill is just as busy as ever. He operates two farms, one that he inherited from his father, and an adjoining farm that he acquired later. Bill continues to take in stockers, double-cropping with winter wheat and an improved grass, and he runs another 100 mother cows of his own.

He became interested in B. Dahl bluestem soon after it came on the market, and he's had a good stand now on the one farm for six years.

"This is the one grass in which everything I had read about it was equal or better to what they claimed," Bill says. "I didn’t expect it to be as good as it is."

He's been able to achieve high rates of gain with good carrying capacity. He runs two yearlings to the acre through the summer.

"The cattle really like it," Craft says. "I get about five to six months of grazing. I honestly think I can run

about 1500 pounds per acre on it, and I can certainly gain two pounds per day. In the most accurate test I ever did, the cattle gained about 2.25 pounds per head per day, and that’s with absolutely no supplement."

In the winter he runs about a cow to every two acres and supplements them along with protein.

"The cows do extremely well, which surprised me," Craft says. "I had some cows that I wintered on native grass and others that I wintered on B. Dahl. Both were supplemented the same. Come spring, the cows on the B. Dahl were about 100 pounds heavier than the cows that wintered on native grass."

The yearlings graze the grass until about the 15th of September, then it's rested for about 30 days, just enough time for it to set seed. Some years he's been able to harvest the seed.

After the seed is set, he turns the cows in. The grass is about knee high and there is plenty to carry the cows through the winter.

"Last year I grazed it abnormally hard, and last spring it was extremely short, shorter than I intended for it to be, but we had a wonderful year. In fact, I seemed to get on the grass earlier than usual by about 15 days. I don’t know whether it was the year or whether it was that I had the grass grazed closer."

The seed costs about $20 per pound, and it takes about two pounds to the acre, though a pound and a half would likely yield a good stand as well.

"To some that sounds high, and it is, but nearly any other grass that you plant will cost that much because it requires more pounds of seed per acre."

Craft says the grass can be hard to establish, but he's lucky in that he's able to irrigate the crop to aid the process along.

"It will perform under dryland conditions," he adds, "but not nearly as well."

He estimates that it costs about $50 an acre, not counting irrigation costs, to get a good established stand, but he figures he nets that cost back in two years' time.

Bill has never retained ownership through the feedyard. Feeding cattle, he says, is a high-risk business with a very small net return.

"I don’t think there is enough return for the amount of money you have to invest. I much prefer to pasture cattle. Let someone else own them and take the risk."

Jack tried feeding once and found out what his dad was talking about.

"I'm still glad I did it," Jack says. "I learned a lot."

There have been many accomplishments in Bill Craft's life, but the greatest, he says, has been his ability to expand his operation and pay for it as he went, all off income from his livestock operation.

Though the immediate outlook is not as bright as Jack would like, he's still optimistic about his future in agriculture. The risk has definitely increased over the last few years, in large part due to factors beyond his control, but he knows worrying about it does little good. Instead, he's chosen to find ways to keep his own risk to a minimum. He does that by taking in outside cattle while building his own herd on the side.

And Bill — well, he plans to continue on, business as usual.