Part III

The tour ended with The 6666 Ranch (pronounced The Four-Sixes).  This ranch is huge in several ways: 1) land mass 2) number of head of cattle 3) influence and history and 4) Quarter Horse breeding. The Four Sixes is located in King County Texas.  You can read their history HERE.  

The focus of the tour was on how the ranch was handling the current drought and what they have done to mitigate their cattle’s impact on the property.  We met the cattle manager and he spoke to us about his views on sustainability and the history of the ranch.  We learned that three years ago he decided to remove all cattle from the ranch to protect it from overgrazing.  They had already taken steps to down-size the herd to 4,000~ mother cows.  They were unable to relocate the cattle to one of their ranches in the Texas pan-handle because it also was drought stressed. Instead he searched long and hard for grass in other states.  The herd was broken up and placed on 4 or so different ranches from Montana to Nevada.  Cattle are migratory.

During the tour, we saw more water than they had seen in almost four years.  The inch and half of rain that had fallen the night before had all the creeks and streams flowing into the local river, and we all just smiled and paused on several occasions to admire the running water—it was a big deal.  The ranch’s pastures varied on quality and how they had handled three years of little moisture.  This variation is due to different ecology and soil types.  I’m talking about 2,000 to 20,000 ac pastures.  Some pastures had been hit hard by “wood lice” (aka termites).  Thousands of acres of bare ground because the termites, like us, need something to eat, and they just chopped on everything dead in their way.  The dead stuff being grasses and forbs that had just given up because of lack of water.  

Other pastures were rebounding to two years of rest, but still had a ways to go before being fit for cattle.   We only looked at these pastures from the bus.  I wish we could have gotten out and walked in a few.  There was an illusion to some of the pastures; they looked full of grass, but only from one plane-of-view.  If we had been walking in them, we would have seen the bare ground between the plants.    

The social dynamic of this ranch was also emphasized.  They happen to be one of two employers in the county, the other being the local school.  The owner of the ranch understands this role very well and when deciding to move the cattle off the ranch they understood that they needed to do so to keep their employees employed.  They also couldn’t sell out of the business like some because of their social obligation to their community.  

We were also given a tour of the Quarter Horse breeding program, which was impressive, but I’ll let you read about it versus me telling y’all about it. HERE

Mr. Leathers, general manager, is featured in a nice short video by the American Angus Association.  It was produced a number of years ago before the drought, but gives you good insight on how The Four Sixes wants to treat the land and cattle.  VIDEO