Running Arrow Farm: Raising Quality Registered Texas Longhorn Cattle

Yes, we have young calves (both males and females) and several young females (heifers) of breeding stock age that are available for sale thru out the year.

As for the bulls, we are very limited in space so we will only grow out one to three of the best bull calves of that particular calf crop for potential breeding stock for our customers each year. The bull calves that do not meet this early selection process are turned into steers to be used as pasture pets or various other uses.

This means if you like a particular young bull and have potential plans for him in your own breeding program. You would need to contact us while he is still at a pre-weaning age to let me know your plans for him.

I will leave a young bull intact until weaning age, (6.5 moa) and then I make my decisions as to whether or not the young bull meets my goals of what I am looking for: dispostion, size, confirmation, pedigree, horn, and color.

If I don't feel that a young bull fits the top end of my herd, he will be banded and turned into a steer for other jobs that he is better suited for. If he is not good enough to use on my own females then he is not good enough to use on another breeder's herd.

I do also look for the possiblity for the young bull to have a job as a commercial herd sire as the longhorn bulls are very useful on 1st time commerical heifers that need to have a smaller calf born that will be healthy and vigorous and allows the young heifer to bred back right away because her 1/2 longhorn bred calf is much less stressful for her at calving time.

I am not as quite as strict with my young females... but I do still look for quality in them. And find them jobs that they are best suited for. Not only do I want top quality breeding stock but I want my customers to have quality breeding animals also.

We will accept a 25% deposit on a young calf. This will hold a calf until it is ready to be weaned from it's mama (dam) at approximatly 6 1/2 months of age. By that time the calf has it's 1st and 2nd series of calfhood vaccinations, been de-wormed, if it's a female has it's silver tag and shots from the veternarian (OCV Tag) and is ready to go to it's new owner along with a copy of all it's health records, and any measurements that we have taken.

(Weights, hip heights, tip to tip horn measurements, base of the horn, and total horn are more of the things we keep track of.)Information about it's personality and history of it and parents.

I keep a very detailed record of it's lineage and will provide a 6 generation pedigree along with a copy of the registration papers that we will have transfered to your name upon final payment and pickup/delievery of the animal.

We have just recently purchased "Rumble" who is a son of the very famous bull "ROUNDUP". Roundup was mated with "DEERFLY". All three of these animals were bred by "Owen McGill" They represent 30 or more years of his Quality Line Breeding Program.

Rumble has an impressive 80 total inches of horn, 13" base, with 53" tip to tip. His hip height is 52" and in early summer when we also have good grass for him he will weigh in at about 1250 lbs.

This makes him an excellent size to use with our young 1st time heifers as they are still growing into their adulthood. Longhorns will mature at about 5 years of age, and will calve into their late teens and twenties. Making for a long lived useful animal that have their 1st calf at 2 years of age and continue thru out their long lifetime.

We bought Rumble because of his pedigree and horn plus the fact that we love his body style too. We know the quality of animals that are in the background of his lineage.

Rumble is a double bred "Roundup" son... his dam "Deerfly" is also a "Roundup" daughter. This makes him 75% Roundup. He will pass on 37.5% of Roundup Genetics to his own offspring.

For his sire's side of the pedigree Rumble has: "Tango", "Playboy", "Tabasco", "Bold Ruler", "Brandy", "Guadalajara" and "Spook". For his dam's side of the pedigree he has "Torch" and "Cherokee" in addition to all the names already mentioned above.

We are excited about Rumble and what he can do to enhance our breeding program. We are both proud to own and to sell his calves.

His 1st calf crop for Running Arrow Farm is due to start arriving about June of 2008. We are rotating in more females for him to service as time goes by.

It's hard to not bred all the girls to him...but he will have to settle for his 1/3 share. grins

"Jet Black Phantom" is the oldest bull we own. He is an 1998 son of: "OVERWHELMER". Overwhelmer was mated to "JET BLACK WYNONNA" an almost Solid Black daughter of "JET JOCKEY X WYNONNA". Overwhelmer and Wynonna both made their mark in the Show Ring in their time. They have proved to be reliable bloodlines and are still popular even today.

We are using Phantom as our base for our breeding program. This also provides us with valuable daughters that we are then able to breed to either "Rumble" or "Roundup's Blue Spock" (a grandson of "Roundup" that I will also be introducing.)

Phantom's bloodlines of Overwhemer, Jet Jockey, Bail Jumper, Cowcatcher, Texas Toro, Senor Mulege, Doherty 698, Wright #489, Better Yet, and Miss Widespread have all proven to be valuable bloodlines for the building blocks of our breed and of our own herd.

It has already been recognized within the Longhorn breed that the crossing of the Roundup bloodlines with the Overwhelmer/Jet Jockey bloodlines is a very sucessful one that tends to bring the total package to the picture.

Phantom has about 71 to 75% batting average of putting more heifers on the ground. This means we have nearly 3 heifers for every bull calf that he produces.

I have noticed that the Phantom calves tend to have lateral horns with their early growth pointing back towards their shoulders. Oldtimers that I have talked to say that this is a good sign. So I use him on high horned girls to bring down the offspring's horns while keeping their total horn. His calves tend to have an easy going attitudes and usually come looking for pets and scratches.

Phantom is our largest bull with a hip height of 57" weighs 1840 in full summer grass. He has 64" of total horn with a base of 13".

Phantom will let me scratch his head sometimes when no one else is looking. I am only 5' 1" and Phantom lets me boss him around.

We have a new Phantom '08 calf crop coming up that will be available for purchase. As well as 2 young heifers and one young bull that are already old enough to add to your pastures.

Roundup's Blue Spock is a son of: "ROUNDUP'S PURPLE SAGE" Sage was mated with "OZARK'S MIST" an own daughter of the famous "OZARK MOUNTAIN QUEEN".

Ozark Mountain Queen was among the 1st group of 7 elite cows that reached 70" of tip to tip horn in their day. RAF also owns an own daughter of hers.

"Roundup's Purple Sage" is an up and coming son of: "ROUNDUP" who is already making his mark for being able to produce offspring that are going to the "LONGHORN SHOW CASE" and placing in the top end of their classes.

Many thanks go to Lisa and Gary Baugher of Bluebird Ridge Longhorns in Kansas www.kslonghorns.com for breeding and selling Spock and his dam, Ozark's Mist to us. We really love the "Ozark Mountain Queen Lineage" as this cow family produces very nice maternal bodied females.

Spock was entered into the 2005 class for total horn for his age group. He won the reserve ribbon. (This was our very 1st time to take an animal to the showcase and to be able to get 2nd place the very first time out, was very exciting for us.)

At that time Spock had a prediction of being able to grow a possible 70 to 74" total inches of horn. (He has since managed to erase all new growth and more as bulls tend to dig into the ground. The deep sand that we have is very effective in removing any new growth faster than he grows them out.) The genetics of that forcasted horn growth is still there to be passed onto his offspring.

Spock was calved in Dec of 2003. He currently has a hip height of 56" and weighed 1425 lbs. He has not reached full maturity yet. He has a base of 13" with 62" of remaining horn which is down from his 66" of total horn in Nov of 2006. (See what I mean about him erasing his horns? He has managed to wear them down fairly evenly, and they are not shredded or broken on the ends at all.) He is a very well balanced young bull. He continues to darken with age like most of the Roundup lineage tend to do.

Spock is a grandson of "Roundup", "Eveready", "Mounty's Dividend" and "Ozark Mountain Queen" along with the famous names of "Tango", "Brandy", "Tabasco" and "Juanita". He goes back to the older lineage of: "Big John", "TVR Suzi", "Ozark Ruler" and "Ozark Lady". Some of these older lines have "Bold Ruler" in them.

Spock is considered a blue roan. He has produced very colorful calves already. We have one daughter of his that we have managed to save back as future breeding stock, and are watching her very carefully as she is showing good horn growth for her young age.

Spock will be used on both Phantom and Rumble daughters as well as select cows from our breeding herd.

We have one young bull soon to be weaned and the upcoming '08 calves by Spock that are/will be available for purchase.

As time permits some pictures of our top brood cows will go here so you will be able to see the dams of our calves.

Every new mating and birth of a longhorn calf is the result of very careful planning and matching of the dams to the right sire. Every birth of a longhorn calf is like having Easter and Christmas and your birthday all rolled up into one. Because not only we have the sex of the calf to look forward to, but the possiblities of different colors and coat patterns is there each and every time.

Longhorns are not made from a cookie cutter pattern. And it is this challenge of breeding for horn, body style, pedigree, color, etc. that makes a love affair with the Longhorns. Their intelligence is icing on the cake for this beautiful animal.

The Longhorn breed has also been selected heavily to have nice color and color patterns thus we can do duplicate matings of sire and dam and normally not get the same colored calf two years in a row. This is not only a challenge for predicting colors but an absolute delight each and every time.

Texas Longhorns are "more varied than the colors of the rainbow," as J. Frank Dobie wrote in his book "The Longhorns".

I would like to introduce to you a brand new Longhorn Coop. www.txlonghorncoop.org

This is a coop that is addressing the current problem of what to do with our lower end animals. And they already have a "Certified USDA GRASS FED LABEL" and need your longhorns to help supply the healthy demand that is growing for them.

You may not know it, but in any longhorn herd you have 3 levels of longhorns: Superior, Middle, and Lower End. Even if you compare only two animals side by side... one will be at least be slightly better than the other one.

It is a fact of longhorn life, that the lower quality animal's job is to be sold in one form or another to provide financial security to the rest of the remaining herd by funding monies to buy hay and feed. The middle quality animals are also sold because one man's middle quality animal may be another man's high quality animal in a different herd.

There is also the extra bull calves, the old girls that have lived a long life and cannot have any more calves, the old bulls that have been retired, or animals being animals something has happened and it would be unfair to let them suffer from an accident. Or somebody has a attitude that makes them hard to deal with, and we don't want to make (breed) more cattle that inherit that same attitude.

But for this coop we will be dealing with the lower quality animals... these are the animals that normally end up in the local sale barn to be sold as ropers and also to enter the food chain.

This is called "Culling". For one reason or another it would not be a good choice to use these animals as prime breeding stock. "Culling" is a very useful tool to keep the quality up in one's herd. We want to bred the best to the best to ensure that we are able to put the highest quality calves on the ground. This is what makes a good dam or sire so valuable to us. We have seen the quality of calves from them and they continue to put quality calves on the ground year after year.

Traditionally, Texas Longhorn cattle have been heavily docked because they are "Longhorns" and don't fit the commercial markets needs. However, the industry is slowly changing toward leaner beef.

But in today's market for "Branded Labels" and the consumer wanting and needing a more healthful leaner beef product, the lowly longhorn can now be the "Star"...as the "Texas Longhorn Breed is America's Original Grass Fed Beef".... Nature itself shaped this breed to be what it is... and Nature has bred this animal to be naturally 95 to 98% lean. This means less calories, less fat, less cholesterol for the consumer.

The TxLonghornCoop is looking for new members to join. The benefit of joining this particular coop is that you will grow the Longhorn Beef, and the coop will process that animal with their USDA Label. They will be the coordinator between you and the grocery chain that is already excited about the Longhorn Lean Products that we as Longhorn Breeder can offer.

Already three different grocery chains are excited about the longhorn lean meats because they have to go outside of this country to import what the American Consumer says they want... Naturally Lean Meat.

The commerical cattleman and the Commercial Cattle Industry as a whole is locked into a "fatty system" that is very slowly changing. The commercial cattleman is rewarded with growing fatty cattle that during processing have the extra fat cut off so you can eat what is remaining. And this is called good. (To each their own... but I prefer lean meat myself.)

The Texas Longhorn Lean meat has significantly reduced fat content (roughly 95-98% lean) and this is what makes them so valuable to today's market. The consumer of today wishes to have a leaner product like what we have.

Because we are able to use this coop to market our own beef longhorns we will be paid dollars by the packaged pound or even by the hanging weight instead of the local sale barns where we are paid only pennies on the pound for a live weight animal. This in turn will add value to the remaining animals by giving value to and removing the lower end that is already going to the sale barns..

If you are at all interested... or know someone who takes one to three animals a year (or even more) to their local sale barn...

Have them please contact us as we would be happy to talk to you about joining this www.txlonghorncoop.org and finally getting paid dollars per packaged pound instead of pennies per liveweight.

Sounds like a win-win situation to me... does it to you? Together as members of this Coop we can do this, seperate we have no viable chance to make the kind of changes we need for this additional marketing tool of our Texas Longhorns.

Please join today:

http://www.txlonghorncoop.org/images/membership_packet.pdf