Incoming Ranch To Rail Cattle
Show Signs Of More Selection

AMARILLO — If first impressions mean anything, cattlemen consigning to this year's Ranch to Rail program are zeroing in on what the industry is asking for.

Now in its eighth year, Texas A&M University's Ranch to Rail program began receiving cattle here for its 1997-98 research just days before the first snowfall.

Dr. Ted McCollum, Extension beef cattle specialist in Amarillo, and Dr. Ron Gill, Extension beef cattle specialist from Dallas, along with Dr. John McNeil of Texas A&M, who coordinates the program, had a chance to look over the cattle as they were tagged, vaccinated and branded before going into the feedyard.

Standing next to the squeeze chute at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Bushland, McCollum says the flesh condition of the cattle coming in during the first two or three days of receiving did not appear to be as good as in the past.

"Some of them, anyway," he says. "That's one thing Ron and I noticed. It just looks like they're a little thinner than they have been."

That may be because of the areas the cattle are coming out of, he says. Some of those areas had rain early in the summer, but dry conditions later into the fall.

Whatever the reason, they're getting a variety of cattle from a variety of locations.

"We got three loads of cattle from Arkansas and 30 or 40 head from Oklahoma," McCollum says. "One group of cattle came from New Mexico."

Another group came from Florida, still another all the way from Wisconsin. The Texas cattle came from all over the state.

"We've got cattle from Perryton up here in the Panhandle to Marfa to La Prior down south of Uvalde," McCollum says.

Many of them came from North Texas, around Bonham and Paris, and some came from near Bryan, north of Houston.

McCollum says he is expecting about 1000 head of cattle for the Ranch to Rail North segment, which will be fed at Randall County Feedyard between Amarillo and Canyon. The Ranch to Rail South program, which will feed cattle at Hondo Creek Cattle Company just north of Corpus Christi, is expected to have about 800 to 900 head.

As far as types of cattle, McCollum says about a fourth of the Ranch to Rail North cattle appear to have some Brahman influence.

"Of what you'd call English cattle, three-fourths to full-blood English, I think we've got about 220 to 230 head," he says.

The remainder are exotics or exotic crosses using various Continental breeds.

"We've almost got four pens of what we're calling exotics," McCollum says. "It'll be pretty close to the 400 mark."

Although most of the cattle are crossbreds, McCollum notes that they've had some straight Limousins, Charolais and Simmentals entered in this year's program.

"We've probably had more straight Simmental this year than any other exotic," he says. "I don't know if that indicates any trend. It may just mean those guys are testing their cattle."

The crosses vary and include Maine-Anjou crosses, Charolais crosses and Gelbvieh crosses.

In-weights vary widely, too.

"We've had some down in the 450 range, and we've had some up over 800 pounds," McCollum explains.

As the cattle are received, they are sorted by type — Exotic influence, Brahman influence, British influence — and then by weight.

"We're sorting into at least two weight groups," McCollum says. "On British cattle, we're only running two pens of those, so we're just doing a heavy and a light sort. We've only done a two-way sort on the Brahman cattle, though we probably could have done a three-way. On the exotic cattle, we've gone to a three-way sort, lights, mediums and heavyweights."

"Actually, I think the genetic base may be a little better, more desireable, than it was two or three years ago," Gill says. "We're seeing a trend toward more English-type cattle coming in here, Angus-sired, primarily."

Other than that, Gill says they look pretty much like the cattle in the program the last several years, although fewer breeds appear to be represented.

"It looks to me like a few less breeds this year than in years past," he says. "It's like they're kind of zeroing in on what works best. I think all the talk on what the industry's actually looking for helped some of them."

The cattle that were being processed in this year appeared to be the result of more selective breeding programs, Gill says, rather than whatever the producer liked or whatever was available at breeding time.

"That's the most striking thing," he continues. "You can actually kind of tell what some of these cattle are."