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Life on Cloud 9 is Heavenly...
My wife, Carol and I bought our little slice of heaven in Southlake , Texas in 1992 and soon afterward built our home. Cloud 9 seemed an appropriate name since we have always felt we are on Cloud 9 when we are there. This is our first move back to the country since my childhood spent on a dairy farm in eastern Kansas. While Carol grew up in town, she was a horse girl growing up. So, it seemed both of us had a hidden desire to go to the country where we could have more space and a piece of land of our own to treasure...READ MORE
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A couple of years after we landed on Cloud 9, the Mayor of our little town, who had some longhorn cattle, asked if he could put them on our pasture for a while so that he could rehabilitate his pastures. The idea struck our fancy and so we became the guardians of seventeen beautiful cattle. So, after having them for a year, having babies born and named by our grandchildren, what do you think happened when it came time for them to go home? That’s right, we had to keep some of them. We purchased three momma cows and their calves. That was the start of the longhorn herd on Cloud 9.
For the following five or so years we did very little other than admire them. We liked calving time, so we borrowed bulls the first couple of years. We kept a couple of heifers and one bull. The herd grew a little, but we really had no direction or greater purpose than the joy of watching them in the pastures, and feeding them by hand. Like so many people who get some longhorns, the bull calf we kept with great expectations did not develop as we hoped, so in 2000 we bought a young Emperor grandson, out of BL Whiz, at the Slater disbursal sale. He matched up real well with our first cows and produced some show quality calves. He was very young and unproven when we bought him. But, he has proven to produce some wonderful confirmation, color and horn in his progeny.
We have proven that raising Texas longhorn cattle can be fun. We love the cows and the people we meet who are also interested in these magnificent animals. Recently we decided that after several years of just having the cows for the pleasure of having them, we would like to do something more with them. We spent several months researching our options. We went to shows, sales, visited the ranches of many longhorn breeders, surfed the web looking at cattle, and counseled with the staffs of the registry associations.
We concluded that we wanted to upgrade our momma cows and bring new blood in through the use of artificial insemination.
We are not able to pursue our longhorns on a full time basis since we are still running our very demanding business. However, we felt we could grow our herd to about twenty momma cows and manage it at that level until we can commit more time. What we are doing now is positioning for the time a few years from now when we can commit more time to raising these beautiful creatures.
After careful research we decided to purchase several young momma cows. We went to the great breeding programs of Darol Dickenson and Joe Assad. Both of these gentlemen spent a lot of time on our education. They both have distinguished themselves in the breed as having great programs. Both have developed line bred herds that include many of the great longhorn cows and bulls of all time.
We acquired several great young cows from DCCI with Super Bowl heifer calves at side. We think these calves have great potential to provide us additional quality momma cows as they mature. Every body that sees these calves wants them and do not want to take no for an answer to any price they offer. Our plan with these great cows out of Not Gunna, The Shadow, Just Cause, and Headliner, is to match them for A/I breeding with great complimentary bulls. There are bulls in the programs of many breeders that we believe will compliment the confirmation of these great cows and enhance the horn production of each and we intend to use these bulls fully. We will be using our herd sire Emperor’s Thunder ( Slater B817) for clean up breeding on this herd of cows.
We believe we have the foundation in these cows for significant and rapid herd improvement. Our belief is that this approach gives us the best chance as small breeders to make the most rapid improvement in our program. Out of this A/I program we plan to breed the next greatest herd sire in the longhorn breed.
With the Assad cows, we have another plan. The Assad program produces some of the highest quality show cattle available anywhere. This line breeding program has resulted in very fine cattle with lineage to many of the great cows and all eleven of the greatest longhorn herd sires of all time. Each cow we bought from the Assad herd comes bred to the great bulls of the Assad program and we expect will provide us additional momma cows of this same fancy quality. We are going to put our herd sire, Emperor’s Thunder (Slater B817), on these cows. He will add the blood of Emperor and Phenomenon to these already solid pedigrees. Emperor was recently voted the number one all time producing bull in the longhorn breed. So this addition to the Assad pedigrees is going to be powerful and will make already special cattle, even more special for anyone looking for great show cattle.
Cloud 9 is located in Southlake, Texas, just minutes northwest of DFW International Airport. We welcome you to come see the foundation of a great program in the making.
All of our cattle are for sale. Whether you are adding to an already great herd or just starting one we have cattle that you would be proud to own. And, if you just want to look at beautiful cattle, you’re welcome too, because showing off the cattle is one of our great pleasures. Give us a call and come see these beautiful cattle, we won’t try to sell you anything, but fair warning the cows will.
Look forward to seeing you on Cloud 9 soon,
Roger and Carol Hutton |
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