I was probably 8 years old when my dad brought the poster home. I’m sure it was just some free thing sitting on the table next to a pot of lukewarm coffee at either the auction yard or the extension office in town. But, man, I loved that thing.
“Beef Breeds of the U.S.” was emblazoned across the top in black, no-nonsense Times New Roman. Fifteen pictures, arranged alphabetically in a three-by-five grid (again, no-nonsense), each representing someone’s platonic ideal of the perfect full-blood bull from each of what that same someone had deemed the most important breeds of the American beef industry: Angus, Beefmaster, Brahman, Brangus, Charolais, Gelbvieh, Hereford, Limousin, Polled Hereford, Red Angus, Salers, Santa Gertrudis, Shorthorn, Simmental and Texas Longhorn. Each was depicted in textbook perfection – painted in watercolor, facing left, head high, left rear leg set slightly farther back than the right, standing in a field of green grass and bluebonnets.
I hung it at eye level on the north wall of my bedroom, right between the door and the head of my bed. As time rolled on, the larger canvas of the room’s east wall became festooned with posters of Barry Sanders, Steve Young, John Stockton, Penny Hardaway, George Strait and – red-blooded millennial boy that I was – Lindsay Lohan. But the beef breeds poster maintained its place of prominence next to the bed.
I spent countless hours poring over that poster, dreaming up big plans for the elaborate breeding rotation I’d utilize on my own herd – because, by golly, I was going to employ the top bulls from every breed on my outfit. (As we all know, a Santa Gertrudis bull crossed with a Charolais-Longhorn cow will produce calves that are exactly what the market is looking for.)
The poster was the impetus for me to discover and swoon over cattle of all shapes and shades: Romagnola, Murray Grey and South Devon. Tarentaise, Maine-Anjou and Pinzgauer. British White, Chianina, Speckle Park, Belted Galloway, Braunvieh, Nelore, Bonsmara, Amerifax, Barzona, Highland, Corriente, Dexter, Belgian Blue, Blonde d’Aquitaine. All the Angus composites. All the Bos indicus-influenced stuff. All the fancy club calf sires with enough hair to obscure any and all flaws.
The tiger-striped F-1s of the South held endless fascination for me – as exotic as an actual tiger to a kid from the Intermountain West. About the time I headed off to college, I started hearing whispers about Japanese cattle with ungodly amounts of marbling, and those sounded exciting. As recently as a couple weeks ago, the Disney+ algorithms served up Stanley Tucci luxuriating in the experience of a very rare steak from a Maremmana steer in Tuscany; that sent me down a two-day rabbit hole of exploring other never-heard-of-’em heirloom breeds.
Did I grow up to become a world-renowned cattle breeder, or a brilliant livestock geneticist? Well, no. The poster didn’t set me on that particular road. But it did spark my curiosity and stir my young imagination. Even if most of my theoretical breeding strategies were pure fantasy, it gave me something very real to be excited about in this world.
We here at Progressive Cattle do our best to stay grounded, to fill our pages with content that provides actual value to serious beef producers. And while feed efficiency and tax law and water shortages and dollars and cents must be accounted for, this is still an industry made up of dreamers and driven by curiosity. That side of the coin demands to be cultivated, too.
No, your head shouldn’t always be in the clouds. But every now and then, it’s good to float around up there for a while.
