CIRCLING THE (STATION) WAGONS is a tradition at the beginning of each summer in the Osage, where these well-nourished steers on the Drummond Ranch were part of this year’s annual Osage County Cattlemen’s Convention and Ranch Tour.

Grass Is Green, Cattle Fat
In Osage, But Price Lacking

By Colleen Schreiber

PAWHUSKA, Okla. — Unlike most all of Texas, Oklahoma’s Osage prairie and the cattle grazing it appeared to be in prime condition as cattlemen from near and far gathered for the recent Osage County Cattlemen’s Convention and Ranch Tour here.

As shipping time rapidly approaches for these Osage stockers, the cattlemen’s only lament during the annual event seemed to be that the cattle were not worth what they had anticipated they would be. Many were facing a tough decision of whether to cut their losses and sell, or gamble and feed these 850 to 900 pound stockers themselves.

Started sometime in the late 1930s, the Osage County convention and ranch tour is one of those traditions that has endured even though its purpose has changed somewhat. Originally the tour served as a way for ranchers in the county to show their cattle to buyers. Today, little trading and haggling goes on at the event, but the camaraderie between friends and neighbors gives it another purpose.

Rancher John Hughes went on his first tour in 1949.

"Back then there were very few paved roads and the cars didn’t have air conditioners. You can’t imagine the dust," he says. "No one would do that today."

The tour is basically conducted in the same manner today, just with considerably greater creature comforts. Each year a couple of ranches are designated as tour stops. Those ranchers work with the local county Extension agent to prerecord a brief synopsis of the management of their operations and a description of the cattle the tour participants will view.

On the day of the tour, everyone gathers for a sunrise breakfast before departing for the first stop. The caravan of Cadillacs, Lincolns, utility vehicles, dually pickups, Suburbans and the like is backed up for miles. At each stop the cattle are grouped and held out in an open pasture by cowboys. To view the cattle up close, the caravan of vehicles leaves the ranch road to form a huge circle around the cattle. Sometimes there are circles within circles. As the ranchers view the cattle, the prerecorded program is broadcasted over a local radio station.

In those early days, many Texas ranchers traditionally sent their steers by train to Osage County to fatten them on grass. The Blackland pens near Foraker, Hughes says, were the busiest railroad stockyards in the nation for a number of years. Barnhart, Texas, was the second busiest, and the number one destination from Barnhart was Blackland pens.

During those early years of the convention and tour, it was the Texas ranchers trading with the commission men from the Kansas City stockyards. Later, as the cattle business changed, the Osage tour began to attract farmer/feeder types, and then finally it was the calf buyers. Today, Hughes says, the people who come on the tour are mostly people just interested in the business.

"Quite honestly, most of the cattle grazed in the Osage today are already owned by the Caprock’s, the Sparks’, the Koch’s, Eastern, or someone who is going to feed them," Hughes explains. "There’s not very many of us who live in the Osage who actually own the cattle. We’re in the minority, so there’s not a whole lot of trading that goes on anymore."

Fred A. Drummond has been on every one of the Osage Tours.

"I’ll never forget an old buyer who once remarked that the annual event had gotten too damn attractive, that there was too much competition," Drummond says. "We don’t have that problem today."

This first stop on this year’s tour was the Drummond Ranch. Here participants viewed a set of mixed steers, which host Tim Drummond told listeners came from Southern Oklahoma and the North Texas area.

"The grass was a little slow to get started this spring," Drummond said, "but the summer has been excellent so far. We’ve had some very timely rains this summer. We also had some unseasonably warm weather, but I don’t think it set the steers back any in terms of gain."

This particular set of steers, he told participants, was put together around the first of the year.

"The receiving process usually takes a week to 10 days, then we scatter the cattle on dry grass and supplement them through the winter with about three pounds a day of a 20 percent cube."

As storms come in, he noted, the three pounds might have to be upped to as much as five pounds a day. Under ideal conditions, Drummond expects to get about half a pound of gain a day through the winter months.

The native pasture is burned in late winter and the weeds are sprayed according to necessity. The pasture these particular steers were in had been sprayed two years ago.

The steers are gathered in the spring and sorted and shaped up for size. They’re also processed again with wormer and fly tags. The thinner cattle, Drummond told listeners, generally go to grazeout wheat pasture.

Because Drummond Ranches runs their cattle year-round, they’re not able to double stock their country. Thus they figure a stocking rate of about three to four acres to the steer.

"In a nutshell, what we’re doing is selling grass, and the best way to sell that grass is through a steer," he remarked.

Drummond, like others, is disappointed in the current cattle market.

"Unfortunately, they’re not worth what we anticipated they would be worth this summer. We could be faced with feeding some of them to get a little of our money back. Hopefully, this market will pick up a little and we’ll have an opportunity to sell some of these cattle. That’s what we would prefer to do," he said.

The second stop on the tour was the Drummond Osage Ranch Trust, where tour participants viewed a set of commercial Angus heifers.

Host Joe Bush, whose mother is a Drummond, has been managing the estate for nine years. The operation, he told the group, consists mostly of stocker steers but they also run some stocker heifers and some Angus cows which he purchased from Fred A. Drummond.

"We’re actually building up the cow herd," Bush said. "Currently, we have about a third of the ranch in cows and the rest in stockers. We’re trying to diversify so we don’t have all our eggs in one basket."

The heifers included in the tour were spring calving heifers bred to calve at two and a half years of age. That way they have two summers to grow in the Osage.

"That’s the main ingredient for growing these heifers out," Bush noted.

In the winter, replacement heifers are supplemented just like steers, with four to seven pounds of 20 percent cake.

Bush uses heifer bulls with low birthweight EPDs, but also high growth rate EPDs, a combination that he admitted is sometimes tough to find.

He buys registered Angus bulls with proven EPD’s.

"We buy the best bulls we can afford," Bush said. "To me, that’s half your cow herd. We don’t just look at a number. We also look at their individual performance," he stressed.

The heifers shown were predominantly ranch raised, but Bush also buys some calves off the better ranches in Osage County. The top end, the better quality heifers, are grown out and sold in the fall as bred heifers. The rest, actually the majority of them, go into the stocker program.

Other stops on the tour included the K&L Cattle Company, Murphy Ranch, and Sooner Cattle Company.