A FATHER-SON TEAM, John Merrill Sr., right, and John Jr. are sharing this year's ranching travails right along with thousands of other Texas producers, but they're taking it in stride. The Merrills know their operation is well managed, and it's poised to come back just as soon as regular rains do.

1998 Proving To Be Tough Year
For Merrills, Like Many Others

By Colleen Schreiber

CROWLEY — This year has been a tough one for ranchers all over Texas, and fourth and fifth-generation ranchers John Merrill and son John Jr. are no exception.

Their XXX Ranch, located in the tallgrass prairie just outside Fort Worth, received only 2.98 inches of rain during their primary growing months of April through June, a far cry from the 30-year average of 11.36 inches.

"This is the least grass I've ever had in my life," the elder Merrill says, even though five of eight years here in the 1980s qualified as certified drouth disasters.

"We shipped all our steers off at the end of June as we usually do to let the native grass rest until frost, with nothing but four saddle horses left on the entire ranch.

"It hurts us to see it this way," he continues, "especially when some grass was left when the steers were gone, but there was no regrowth, and grasshoppers ate the grass and mulch to the ground in some places."

The 40-acre hay meadow which normally averages 1400 to 1500 bales from one cutting a year only produced 455 bales, another indication of just how dry it's been this past year.

The Merrills run an early intensive stocker steer program from March through June. In a normal year they expect to put on 180 to 250 pounds of gain per head over that period. Last year they wintered 700 steers and then added 1000 to total 1700 in the spring. This year they won’t winter any, and they'll have fewer cattle in the spring.

"It's a triple whammy," Merrill remarks. "We won't have any income from our hay, no winter grazing and reduced spring grazing."

Merrill's great-great-grandfather came from Georgia to Kendalia, Texas, not far from present-day Boerne, in 1856. Poor health caused him to move back to Georgia during the war years.

His grandfather, Lemuel Pruitt Merrill, without his parents, left home to fight for the Confederacy when he was 14. After the war he and a buddy, Monty Price, came back to Texas to trade cattle. Merrill has a framed U.S. Internal Revenue Service receipt hanging in his office which reads: "received of L.P. Merrill, $1.67 for special tax on the business and occupation of cattle broker to be carried out at large in the state of Texas. May 1, 1871, Boerne, Texas."

Merrill's grandfather went on to become an early-day trail driver who made six trips up the trail from the 1860s to 1880s. He took cattle to Caldwell, Kansas, and Columbus, Nebraska. On one trip he joined another drive to take cattle to feed the Sioux Indians at Fort Randall, in the Dakota Territory.

L.P. Merrill took his own herd up the trail in 1882. He did well and was able to expand his land investments. He went back in 1884, but a blizzard took a terrible toll as he carried the cattle over for a better price.

After Lemmuel's father passed away, he brought his mother and the rest of the family to Squaw Creek, near Glen Rose, in 1872.

Merrill has a copy of the Loving Stock Manual, dated 1901, in which his grandfather's two brands, a running M and XXX, are recorded. Those same brands have been used from 1872 to the present.

John Sr. grew up on a registered and commercial Hereford operation. Registered stock was sold by private treaty and commercial cattle shipped to the Fort Worth Stockyards. They also ran about 50 head of registered Thoroughbreds and Quarter horses.

The class of 1926 at Texas A&M included John's dad, Louis Merrill, R.A. Brown, Jack Turner, and Jack Idol, all of whom ran registered Hereford cattle.

"My Dad committed heresy by switching to Angus cattle in 1947," Merrill recalls.

His father made another earth-shaking announcement in 1950 when he told his family that he was selling the homeplace.

"We were in the rocks and the brush at Glen Rose, and Dad said he found a place where he could run a cow to two acres. It was between Mansfield and Midlothian. He said, 'I’m going,' and he did.

"My dad loved cattle," he continues. "He was with them day and night, seven days a week. He would take them right to the point of perfection and sell them. He had the ability or the discipline not to get emotionally attached to them so that he would not sell them when he thought he should, and he did the same with the land."

Like his father, John Sr. attended Texas A&M University, receiving a degree in range science. Following graduation he did a three-year tour as an Air Force pilot. When he came home in 1956 his plan was to go in partnership with his dad, but his father, Louis Merrill, had other intermediate plans for him.

"He said, 'you remember everything about the electrical and hydraulic system of the C-124, but you’ve forgotten soil and water and grass and animals and people. Before you invest your money or mine, get your feet back on the ground.'"

Merrill signed on with the Soil Conservation Service, and for 18 months he lived and breathed soil, water, plants and people, while living and working on the ranch at Midlothian.

"It was a real education," Merrill says. "I still use on a daily basis principles I learned during that time."

Merrill's father had always been a steward of the land, despite his ability to divorce himself from it emotionally. His commitment ran deep, in that he was among those who organized the Soil Erosion Service and the Soil Conservation Service. He helped write the Soil Conservation District Law and became the first regional director of the Soil Conservation Service for Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

Merrill and his father were partners initially in the registered Angus business, but he wondered whether he could make it on his own or if he was just riding his father's coattails. In 1960 he decided to test the waters.

"We went in as friends and came out as friends," Merrill says. "We divided the cattle half and half and flipped for each group."

The Merrills began implementing performance testing long before it was popular. In fact, they were charter members of Performance Registry International. Their cattle, Merrill says, were criticized by some in the industry, even association people, as being too big. A 1000-pound cow in those days was considered a big cow. That's not to say that they overdid it.

"We learned through performance testing that we do not want maximum performance. We use records to bracket the level of performance to match our resources and minimize additional inputs."

In 1961, at the age of 28, Merrill's life took a significant turn. It was at this time that he was approached by the chancellor at Texas Christian University to head up the TCU Ranch Management Program.

After clarifying a few details with the chancellor, like being able to continue ranching and making class attendance mandatory, Merrill agreed to take the position.

"I thought I was filling in a year or two 'til they could get a real teacher, but I ended up staying 35 years while living on and operating the ranch."

The program was started in 1956, in large part due to prompting from a number of ranchers who felt that college graduates coming out of the major ag programs knew a lot, but they still didn't know how to ranch profitably.

The program has undergone many changes during Merrill's tenure, and today it's widely recognized all across the U.S. as well as in some foreign countries.

Students attending the program receive four years of major courses in nine months by completing 54 semester hours of work in two semesters. The program was constructed in such a way that it focuses on every aspect that affects profitability of ranching. That became 12 courses, and at one time Merrill taught all 12 of them.

In addition to the classroom work, students are exposed to a variety of working operations through on-site field trips. They visit with 130 or so people in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas who generously share their experience.

The program has grown not only in size but in reputation. Today the program has four full-time instructors and can accommodate up to 36 students at a time.

For many years, Merrill ran the ranch himself with minimal outside help while teaching fulltime. Foremen and other help were hired as the operation grew. In 1982, his son, John Jr., came back to the ranch full-time.

Merrill came to Tarrant County in 1961. The headquarters for the XXX Ranch lies only 200 yards from the Fort Worth city limits. The country is similar to the Flint Hills of Kansas, with similar land formations and the same tallgrass prairie plants, like Big bluestem and Indiangrass. The main difference, Merrill says, is that it's been grazed 100 years longer.

When Merrill first started, he used three-pasture, two-herd rotation systems. Each pasture was grazed six months and rested for three months. He stayed with that system for 10 years and then switched to a high-intensity, low-frequency system where one herd grazed each of the six pastures for 40 days, followed by 200 days of rest.

"The grass did great but we lost about 100 pounds of weaning weight because we were staying in too long and staying out too long," Merrill says, "so we cut it to 25 days of grazing followed by 125 days of rest. The grass did just as well and the cattle did better. When we cut it to 18 and 90, the grass did well and the cattle were about back to normal."

Eventually another pasture was added and the pastures were grazed for seven days and rested for 42. Finally, Merrill implemented a 12-pasture system where each pasture was grazed for four to seven days depending on the size of the pasture. The short duration grazing system allowed him to increase his carrying capacity by about 50 percent.

"The absolute key to intensive grazing is not to increase livestock numbers until you grow the extra grass," Merrill stresses.

Movement of livestock, Merrill says, should be based on proper use of the best plants. In Merrill’s case, the key plant is Big bluestem. After the first frost, he keys on a different plant, usually one that didn’t get a lot of use during the growing season, and also one that stands up and cures better. For Merrill that’s usually Little bluestem.

Merrill stayed with his registered Angus herd for many years but eventually it got to the point where he didn't have time to properly merchandise them, so he rolled over into a crossbred cow-calf operation. He used Brown Swiss bulls on his Angus cows and changed from fall calving to spring calving.

Gradually he added Herefords to the mix and developed a three-breed cross with the Brown Swiss contributing a quarter of the genetics. Later he added Santa Gertrudis for a four-breed rotational cross.

"We produced steers that would grow well and grade well and a heifer that would grow well, breed early, calve easy, milk well and salvage well," Merrill says.

In the late 1980s after a long-range planning session, the Merrills decided to sell their cows before the next price break.

"I had already ridden a cow-calf herd from top to bottom in 1953-54 and 1973-74, and I didn’t want that experience again, so we made plans to sell all the cows in 1993 and not ride it back down again," Merrill says.

Thus the XXX Ranch shifted into a stocker operation. Today it's an early intensive program, which brings cattle to the ranch about the first of March, just before the start of spring grass.

"That way we can cake break them and get a handle on them while they’ll still come to feed," Merrill explains. "We cake them a little in June to gentle them again prior to shipping. We're able to gather yearlings with a feed truck in front of the cattle and two to four men behind on horseback, and we very seldom get them out of a walk."

Steers are taken in on a flat fee basis. They come from all over, from Kentucky to Mexico. Steers that do best are healthy, weigh between 550 and 650 pounds coming in, with enough frame and not too fleshy. Younger, lighter cattle aren't able to handle enough of the taller, coarser grasses to do well.

Like the cow-calf operation, the stocker program has seen a lot of change over the years — change, Merrill says, that is always driven by the bottom line.

"We avoid the syndrome that maximum production means maximum profit," Merrill says. "We looked at every way we could graze our land with yearlings. The traditional way was to buy them in the fall, dry winter them on about two pounds of cake a day to gain about a half to one pound per day, then gain well on spring grass April through June and ship July 1. They would gain a pound and a quarter a day, or 300 pounds total on five acres.

"Or we could run them in the summer, April to October, to put on 250 pounds of gain. That takes four acres," he continues. "We could double up in the winter only on three acres, but the steers would only gain about a pound a day or 50 pounds per acre, not a good deal. We could run them year-round and rotate, but they only average about a pound a day. Or we could run them March through June, early intensive, and gain 180 to 200 pounds or about two pounds per day on about two to 2.5 acres and produce 90 pounds of beef per acre."

Merrill looked at the cost of each of these systems. They varied from 59 cents per pound of gain on the winter- only program to 25 cents on the early intensive program.

"That's what put us in the early intensive business," Merrill explains, "the pencil."

That same pencil took them out of the farming business.

"There's nothing better when wheat makes and nothing worse when it doesn’t," Merrill says. "We were farming up to

1900 acres. For years and years we could plant a small grain dryland crop for about $25 an acre. Now it costs $80 to $100 to put in a crop. The last wheat crop we planted cost $107 an acre. That’s a tremendous risk, so we quit farming."

They also learned that on a 50-acre Coastal bermuda patch with about 200 pounds of 16-20-0 fertilizer per acre, they could run a cow to two acres through the growing season.

"We found that the more we fertilized, the more cattle we could run — and the more money we would lose when fertilizer was high and cattle prices were down."

Merrill says there is a real need for a cool season perennial adapted specifically for his area. He's tried fescue with moderate success.

One other important factor the pencil taught him was that big is not necessarily better.

"We've been big ranchers and little ranchers," Merrill says. "We were up to 33,000 acres at one time. For 10 years we had a ranch in Parker County, and we leased 25,000 acres at Grandbury during the 1980s. Olen Badgett and son John were seeing after 2000 head of cattle on three ranches 35 miles apart.

"After awhile, we found we could make more net money as little ranchers doing the best we could with what we had rather than stretched out trying to be big ranchers."

As with his father, Merrill's entire career has revolved around stewardship. The teacher in him keeps him preaching what he believes, and the rancher in him keeps him practicing what he knows to be true.

It's no surprise, then, that when the XXX Ranch is blessed with rains, the Merrills manage in such a way that every drop counts.

"You can eliminate an awful lot of drouth by maintaining good grass cover," Merrill stresses. "You have to have grass to grow grass. The minimum amount of grass cover you need to prevent erosion is about 1500 pounds per acre in short grass country or 2000 pounds per acre for mixed grass."

Merrill recommends charting the average monthly rainfall and the average monthly temperature. Along with experience, he says, this can be used to estimate the approximate forage growth curve for a particular area.

"Try to match peak livestock needs with peak forage production," Merrill reiterates. "By moving from a fall calving program to spring calving we were able to increase our calving percentage with less feed."

In Merrill's country, optimum forage growth occurs in April, May and June. By July the plants are usually dormant and remain so through the summer months. A secondary growth period generally occurs from Labor Day through November or until frost, but with the shorter days and cooler nights it's primarily reproductive production and not forage production.

"That throws some ranchers," Merrill notes, "because they look out across, see seed stalks and think they have more forage than they actually have. Don’t ever look across rangeland to determine forage production. It will cause you to underestimate range condition and overestimate forage production."

Some are of the opinion that they can graze plants through dormancy without any rest. Merrill says, at least for his area, that's not correct. Many people, he adds, don’t realize how critical the fall is.

"Cool season plants produce less production than warm season because of shorter days. If you graze continuously, you'll graze out your cool season plants, which means you’ll increase feed costs during the winter months. That's why it's wise to stick to a rotation plan year-round. If you go into the fall with leaf growth and root growth and storage, then you get a jump in the spring.

"There are lots of ways to graze," he continues. "Continuous year-long grazing only came with fencing, and it only seems normal to two or three generations who grew up inside a fence."

Another point to keep in mind, Merrill says, is that the same amount of grass isn't grown each year, therefore the same stocking rate isn't necessarily appropriate year in and year out. Timely minor adjustments of livestock numbers up or down according to forage availability maintains best forage and livestock production at lowest cost and prevents major wrecks.

"With cows, we make our final determination in the fall at weaning to determine how many we can winter," Merrill explains. "This tells us how deeply we need to cull or keep according to the amount of forage available."

Finally, Merrill says, "If you don't live in the pasture, you miss an awful lot of what goes on, because it changes daily."