Cows Ain’t Hard: Making Millions of Mistakes as a Cattle Baron

By William J. Wright, Richard Cox and Jackson R. Wright

All farmers want to be doctors, and all doctors want to be farmers. Bill Wright got caught up in the back half of that statement after buying the pasture next door to prevent someone from converting it into a pig farm or salvage yard. He had several friends who ran cows who offered advice, but mainly he was making it up as he went along.

What happened next is how campfire stories come about. Wright's grandchildren have heard the stories so many times that they now tell them themselves. He is still the county standard by which all cow operations are compared, as in, "This is what he did, so don't do that."

Come through that hole in the fence and join the journey of going from the owner of an empty field to a cattle baron by not paying attention.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Dec 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798385203079

William J. Wright

William J. Wright is a retired physician who lives with his wife, Sarah, on seventy acres outside Pettyview, Arkansas, where they raised their four boys and where these stories took place. He is the author of Beginning with Genesis: A Journey from Knowledge to Wisdom (2022) and Building Blocks of Wisdom: The Chiastic Structure of Matthew’s Gospel (2023).

Book preview

Introduction

Frequently books or especially movies will start out with block letters proclaiming, BASED ON A TRUE STORY. That usually means that the first date is right, and night will follow day, but beyond that it is the writer’s views and prejudices ground into the heart of some otherwise interesting bit of history. None of that here. We tell you up front that we did the best we could, but some of this is our best guess as to what happened, was said, etc.

The main reason for that is you can’t always tell what a cow is thinking. The second reason is that I couldn’t hear everything the cows were saying. They kept it low because they usually were talking about me—that was easy to tell because every so often they would stop and glance in my direction.

Am I the only one who thinks it is no coincidence that cows mumble the important parts?

Another thing frequently done is to say, The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Since none of the people in this account are innocent, it’s obvious that any names that were changed was to protect the author.

As is always the case, four people will have five opinions as to what happened and who said what, with everyone positive that their version is correct. I have discussed the events with everyone I can still find, but no doubt some amazing insights and key details have slipped through my grasp.

What follows is my best attempt to document what one edge of the cattle business was like when we still could get real beef in the grocery stores before the big corporations got their monopoly.

Becoming a Cattle Baron by Not Paying Attention

Running cows ain’t hard. At least that must have been in my thoughts as I surveyed the adjoining field I had just acquired, henceforth (more or less) to be referred to as The Field. The purpose was to head off some future neighbor from trying to increase the general amount of enterprise in our area by starting up a Previously Owned Car Part Depot or a Non-Beef Protein Production Center. This was a definite possibility as the previous owners were physicians like myself and, I reasoned, if I thought of it so would they. My present survey was largely affected by sights and smells, and the thought of a few well-mannered bovines scattered across the acreage had a pleasant bucolic appeal.

A plan was formulated, with the assistance and blessing of my wife, Sarah, I hasten to add, that included the purchase of one cow to be fattened on the range and put in the freezer. This required grass, a cow, and a freezer; I had grass and a freezer.

What type of cow to get was my next problem. I consulted Gobert, my neighbor, the mayor of Pettyview, Arkansas, and Possessor-of-All-Information. He informed me that cattlemen, one of which I was soon to become, only ate steers. They also cost more. Being a free thinker, I wondered that I had not been able to tell steer from heifer at the grocery store. Now, with a little experience and less conjecture, I realize that I can tell the difference. Some steaks taste very good while others cooked by the same method don’t measure up. With no information about the source of the meat, the cook is faulted. That may be a hasty judgment.

At the time, however, I was in the more-conjecture-less-experience phase. I decided as a scientist/cattleman/physician to get one of each (heifer and steer) and see for myself. Gobert arranged for a cattleman friend of his, Oscar (his real name—we are mostly using real names because all that follows really happened, although you won’t believe me when you read it), to pick up a steer and a heifer on his next trip to the sale barn. This new herd would be of good quality because Oscar was a cattleman.

If you are really paying attention, you would be asking, Why get both the steer and the heifer at the same time since you can only eat one at a time? If you asked that you are too smart to become a cattle baron by accident—the title of this chapter—and you are probably reading the book to be sure it doesn’t happen to you. You will have to become a cattle baron the hard way—through skill and hard work.

If you weren’t asking yourself questions, you may be a cattle baron by the time you finish the book.

Some themes that are not recurrent yet, but will be, have started to emerge. Ranching by Committee and The Sale Barn particularly stand out, but I may notice them more because the words cause my eyes to water and my hand reflexively goes to my back pocket to ascertain that my wallet is still there.

Sale Barn Day arrived, and right on schedule that evening Oscar rolled up to the pasture gate with his trailer full of cattle. Included were my steer and cow, and a cow and a cow/calf pair that Oscar had gotten for himself, and maybe some other stuff—the herd in the trailer kept moving. He drove to the middle of my forty-acre field, got out of his truck, looked around, and said, "Where’s your round