Texas breeders found best way to prove the quality of their cattle was to slaughter on-farm and promote locally
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Bob McClaren thinks he has figured out a business plan that could keep his 100-year-old Texas ranch solvent for the next generation.
The operation was originally a cotton farm established in 1909 by McClaren’s great-grandfather, Sherwood McClaren, but it has evolved into a large Angus seed stock provider that sells cattle across the United States at four sales a year.
The operation, called 44 Farms, sold 1,295 registered Angus bulls and 600 purebred females last year.
This spring it plans to offer 1,000 commercial heifers that were all bred to 44 Farms bulls. They will come with DNA data and complete vaccination information.
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McClaren and his sister, Janet Salazar, were telling bull buyers that their cattle were better than average and decided the best way to prove it was to process their own beef, which they started doing in 2013.
“Until you see how they perform on the rail, you don’t know,” he said in an interview during the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which was in San Antonio Feb. 3-7.
“We started harvesting the culls of our seed stock program. The first harvest we had 35 head, and 38 percent were Prime and the rest were Choice.”
The farm sent another group to slaughter and had similar results.
“We figured we were on to something.”
The ranch is located near Cameron, which is almost equal distances from Houston, Dallas and Austin and has a trading area of 18 million people. Ninety-five percent of their beef is sold in this region.
It is dry country with no oil and gas reserves to subsidize the ranch.
The family and the cattle survived a multi-year drought, in which the pastures looked as dry as a parking lot. Relief has come in the last couple years with wet winters, but springs continue to be dry. They have not had spring rain in 10 years.
“If we don’t get rain from January to May, we usually don’t get it,” he said.
Ranching is McClaren’s second career.
His father told him to get off the farm because there was no money in it, so he worked as a lawyer in Dallas. He also became president of the Houston Astros baseball team.
He started to worry about the legacy of the ranch when his grandmother died in 1990 and decided to come home.
“I always loved agriculture. I loved the people. I loved the cattle. I wanted to show my dad agriculture pays,” he said.
He and his sister were able to reassemble large parts of the original farm in the early 1990s and built it up to about 3,000 acres. He now ranches full time.
The farm had raised Hereford and Brahman cattle in the 1950s and 1960s, but McClaren introduced Angus in the mid-1990s.
“A lot of people were afraid of Angus cattle in Texas, saying it was too hot,” he said.
“We have shown that is not true.”
He said every decision he had made since he returned to the ranch was based on research and past experience.
The family sold its first orders of frozen beef online and shipped them to customers by UPS in 2013.
Their next initiative was to link up with two chefs in Houston who had seen the ranch website and wanted local beef.
“They became a cheerleader and ambassador for us and started to talk about us in publications,” he said.
More chefs requested tours and they were encouraged to bring their serving staff so that they could explain to diners where the beef came from. Their beef is now found in 45 restaurants and is still available online.
Everything starts with the farm’s breeding program.
It uses a genomics 50K panel from Zoetis called Gene Max to help select high ranking carcass bulls. Cows are artificially inseminated to the best bulls.
Calves are checked by ultrasound at one year of age to measure the rib eye and marbling score.
The ranch grows most of its feed, including corn and sorghum for silage. The cattle start on grass and are finished on grain at a custom lot near Hereford, Texas. They are then processed at Caveniss Beef Packers at Hereford.
Demand grew so quickly that the family launched the 44 Farms Right Way program for co-operating ranchers who use their bulls.
They must adhere to best practices, which include animal welfare and feed programs and cannot use antibiotics and growth hormones.
The steak business has been better than expected, and the farm has also been able to find an outlet for less popular cuts.
McClaren has used his connections to the sports world to develop a gourmet burger and hot dog, which are sold in the sports stadiums for teams such as the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Rockets.
