...“It’s a want-not-need market. They really don’t need these cows. They want them. They fall in love with these animals. They’re very addictive, they’re beautiful animals, they’re very docile animals,” says auctioneer Joel Lemley.
He breeds longhorns, too. He’s been doing it for about 25 years. If you ask him, or most anyone else in Fort Worth, how the industry has changed in that time, they’ll tell you the same thing. Take Dick Lowe of the Triple R Ranch in Horton, Michigan, or John Marshall, who raises longhorns at the Blue Ridge Ranch in Llano.
“When I got in,” Lowe says, “if you had a bull that had 60 inches of horn you were kicking butt. And today, if they’re not 60 by two, you throw them under the bus.”
Marshall agrees.
“When I got into this 10 years ago, if you had a cow in the 60s, tip-to-tip, it was a big deal,” he says. “All my cows are in the 70s or I don’t even have them anymore.”
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