I Am Angus - Joe Leathers, 6666 Ranch - RFD-TV

to the untrained eye America's vast grasslands appear as an empty landscape a place to get across a land to fly over yet these places the cradle of thousands of farms and ranches underpin what matters most ranching is a celebration a celebration of life renewal and rebirth oh I don't know why cowboy ever chooses this vocation other than it's in his blood and he loves it I was raised on a cotton farm at lea lake Texas and never ever liked farming I mean my daddy loved it and it was in his blood to be a farmer but not mine and all I ever wanted to do was be horse backing and to be around cattle and so instead of pursuing a career where I could make a lot more money I pursued what I loved and so I'm a blessed man I have a wonderful wife and a wonderful family and five grandchildren and raised all my children on a ranch and I can't think of a better place to raise them and I'm thankful that I've got to do that whenever I was a kid growing up just about everybody that you met in town or a city had some concept of what where their food come from they had some concept of what it took to put food on their tables this ranches stayed in business for over 130 years because its progressive the people that owned the ranch and the employees and the managers before me have been people of vision not satisfied with the status quo but always looking to the future of what can be what you have to realize is 15 years ago this was solid cedar thicket and wouldn't run near the amount of cattle that it will run now and it was harder on the country so we started a brush control program and paid for every dime of it out of our pocket and essentially we have cleared and put back into production into the original state in the eighth way it looked in the 1800's a hundred and sixty thousand acres nobody told us to do it nobody required us to do it there wasn't any government regulations telling us to do it by doing that we have opened up Springs that haven't run in years and years because the brush the Cedars the Mesquite's the salt Cedars have saturated and soaked up so much water that's dried some springs up and we caught some footage of some creeks and spring water this morning that that are running them and it's literally because of the brush clarity and by doing so we've also made this country able to cattle available to wildlife as well any kind of natural wildlife that was here before we have more now than we had then and they're thriving together but in the process we've been able to run more cattle we were running a cow to ever 38 to 40 acres before now we can run a cow to every 30 acres and by doing all that we can still put enough we can put meat on people's table we work day-in day-out you're in you're out trying to improve the genetics on our cattle so that we can put more pounds of meat in the supermarket for the American consumer we started transitioning and we have now over the last 10 or 12 years completely made the transition we don't have any Hereford cattle left and what that's done for us is we don't have hardly any bad bags hardly any bad eyes and we have increased our gains in the feedlot a tremendous amount you know our stairs will gain for three to four or five a day consistently and the quality of meat has gone up and going from having a hard time market in Hereford calves we had people now standing in line to buy our cattle so that's the reason we made to change I'm proud of where we come from I'm proud of this ranches history I'm real excited about what we're doing today but all of that and a cup of coffee won't keep us in business for the future you can't stay in business Stan status quo I want the American public that sees this to realize that they are a part of this ranch they are a part of this history the ranching industry as a whole and they have a valuable stake in it's called food and I wanted to realize that the decisions that we make is for ultimately for the good of the American public and when I top out over on top of Ridge and I look down and I see a large herd of cattle and I thought to instantly go to how blessed I am to be able to see what my forethought father's saw for just an instant I get a picture of what it was like when these prairies were covered with Buffalo what the Indians saw along the short of it I can't think of any place that I would rather be on earth at that moment and I wished everybody in the United States could could experience that

Channel: Angus TV

Views: 121,229

Rating: 4.7746477 out of 5

Keywords: Angus, cattle, ranch, bulls, 6666 Ranch, Joe Leathers, ranching, conservation, beef, I am Angus, American Angus Association

Id: QSklWMNR4pE

Length: 6min 36sec (396 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 18 2010