A look inside VP Ranch in Texas

At the V8 Ranch, Boling, Texas with Lee and Bob Hall, Lexington, KY; Jim Williams and Jean Barton on the Livestock Tour presented by Western Livestock Journal with Brahman cattle in the background. (submitted)

I’m glad I wasn’t in Texas last week when Hurricane Beryl left about 270,000 homes and businesses without power and air conditioning. The humidity was horrible in May. (Imagine what it’s like now.)

We had spent the night in College Station when pranksters set off the fire alarm at 2:30 in the morning

V8 Ranch in Boling, Texas, was our destination that morning, about an hour outside of Houston, on our Livestock Tours organized by Western Livestock Journal.

V8 Ranch is known for its Brahman cattle. Jim Williams will be the 2024 Saddle and Sirloin Portrait Gallery inductee on Nov. 17 at the North American Livestock Exposition in Louisville, KY. (The award is the highest honor given to a leader in the livestock industry who has made significant contributions to the livestock industry in the U.S. and abroad, as judged by their peers.)

V8 exports cattle to 46 countries, with 400 Brahman and 2,000 commercial Brahman cross cows on the ranch. They calve from January to May and from September to November.

Williams is the great-great-grandson of J.D. Hudgins, who founded a Brahman ranch. He is the sixth generation to carry on a legacy started by Hudgins. In 2007, we visited “J.D. Hudgins Ranch, Hungerford, Texas, and the 17-head show rope was tied on the lawn so we could have our picture taken with the gentle, huge bulls.”

He said this was a working ranch with no oil wells that relied on cattle to survive. Founded in 1944, four generations of one ranching family worked together to breed what many consider to be the best Brahman genetics on the market. The ranch is known for its focus on twelve cow families with pure bloodlines. Since 1976, V8 Ranch has shown 66 national or international grand champions.

We toured the ranch and saw the crossbred (1/2 Brahman, 1/2 Angus) cows with two ear tags indicating they were carrying embryo transfers, the heifers that were to be shipped to Mexico, the shelter to keep the cows, cows and calves out of the wind when they were weaned, and learned that the native pecan trees provided protection in the winter and shade in the summer. Pecans require good soil and there was plenty of grass on the sandy loam soil. I saw nine yearling heifers that were to be shipped to the Philippines.

I enjoyed a chicken-fried steak lunch under the pecan trees before heading to the Luling Foundation in Luling, Texas. Luling’s water tank was painted with horizontal stripes like a watermelon.

We were supposed to visit Langford Cattle Company with their Angus cattle, but they recently had a tornado on their ranch. This area is not considered tornado alley (150 miles north of Oklahoma), but one came through a week ago and blew down two buildings.

In Kentucky we visited the Big Ass Fan factory and in the large room at the Luling Foundation there was a Big Ass fan to keep us cool as it was 100 degrees Fahrenheit and high humidity when we got off the bus.

The Luling Foundation is a 501C(3) organization founded in 1927 to teach diversity in agriculture and improve the lives of farm and ranch families in three counties.

They gave $19,000 in scholarships for agriculture, vocational school and health care. There is a youth grill-off, children’s tractor pull, agricultural literacy for 3rd through 12th grade, etc. This room can be used as an auction ring for “Foundation Angus Alliance”, with 17 past sales.

The San Marcus River came from a source 20 miles upstream with 200,000 gallons of water. They don’t till the ground because the river can reach our building.

We were told the typical herd size in Texas is 25 cows. The typical cow is 4 to 6 acres, while mine is 1 to 25 acres. The beautiful land is now covered with homes. With the shrinking acreage there will be no more food. There is very little federal (Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service) or state land in Texas.

An annual field day is held by “Dinner Tonight,” a Texas-based program. They invite legislators to come and learn about the cattle industry in a one-on-one experience.

The dinner consisted of smoked beef brisket, sausage, potato salad, pinto beans, pickles, bread, peach crumble, sweet or black tea or water in the meeting room, where an auction block and a sales ring were provided.

I saw a long oil train with four locomotives in front and two in back. Ray Page, Orland, has too much brush and leafy trees to count the oil cars as he did last year in Nebraska.

At 6:00 PM we crossed the Guadalupe River with heavy traffic on the highway, on our way to the Estancia del Norte Hotel in San Antonio. The Crepe myrtle was in bloom. Gas was $2.99 ​​and diesel $3.29 at Exon.