Mexican cattle shippers have
tried spraying the white hair
markings of the Holstein breed
with paint to camouflage them.”
He added that the paint will fade
and the animals are spotted.
“We have to be alert every day.
The overall check is if they look
sick or if they’re not eating. After
that, we look for weak or sick
individuals or crippled animals.
They have to swim 70 to 80 feet
in the vats. We regularly reject
about 2 percent.”
All culled cattle are marked
with paint on the right hip. The
checkers are particularly vigi-
lant against ticks being brought
across the border. “We don’t
have cattle tick fever in the U.S.
anymore. It caused a lot of cat-
tle deaths – and fever ticks used
to be a problem as high up
from the border as Tennessee,
but they’re not now.”
Brown is also in charge of a
river-riding crew who bring the
cattle in for testing if they, or
the Border Patrol, catch any
who might be herded or wan-
der across the Rio Grande. He
asked for 50 men to patrol the
river and got three. “Now we’re
doing it with two men. If the
Border Patrol catches any drug
smugglers, they get the mari-
juana; we get the pack horses.”
The cattle crossing at
Presidio/Ojinaga is the busiest
in Texas because Chihuahua is
the Mexican state with the most
cattle, he explained. During the
last fiscal year just over 200,000
cattle were imported through
Presidio/ Ojinaga. Two other
ports in the state of Chihuahua
also export large numbers –
Santa Teresa and Columbus,
N.M.
And a lot of U.S. butchered
beef is exported south. Kent
Bacus of the National Cattle -
man’s Beef Association said
Mexi co is one of the fastest grow-
ing markets for U.S. beef. “In
2010, we shipped 248,000 tons
valued at $819 million.” Through
August 2011, about 170,000 met-
ric tons had been shipped, worth
about $650 million.
High-end markets are most
profitable, but Bacus said cat-
tlemen also seek to market
every part of the animal – “We
sell everything but the moo.”
Some of the high-end beef
cuts go to Mexico, and
Mexicans also buy tongue, liver
and other variety meats.
Rick Tate, a Big Bend
rancher who heads the Davis
Mountains Trans-Pecos Heri -
tage Association, said one of
the biggest changes in the U.S.-
Mexico cattle connection is
that it’s now year-round instead
of seasonal.
“Fifteen to 20 years ago, you
had big influxes of cattle from
October to April – you could put
300-pound Hereford calves from
several different ranches together
and send one load or five loads.
You had a lot of inventory to pick
from. When they started crossing
all year round, that strung the
numbers out, and during the
slow time it got hard to come up
with an even, homogeneous
product to sell.”
He added that Mexican cat-
tlemen “for a long time did not
take good care of their cattle –
they’d have significant death
loss before they got to the cross-
ing pens. But the ones that got
there and got on this side were
the survivors. You got the
hardiest of the hardy over here.
That was a plus for us and
minus for them.”
“Over the years,” Tate con-
tinued, “the Mexicans have
improved their caretaking –
their medicine usage, feeding
programs, nutrition in general,
to where a lot of that advantage
is no longer there. It’s a whole
lot more like buying calves out
of a sale ring here when it used
to be getting a virgin animal
that was ready to do anything.”
Mexican rodeo cattle – the
Mexican version of longhorns
– are also no longer accepted
by the United States, he said,
because those cattle had to be
TB-tested every time they
moved. The English breeds –
Angus, Hereford, Shorthorn –
are considered the top breeds,
along with some of the conti-
nental breeds – Charolais,
Limousin – and cross-breeding
with Brahman or Brown Swiss
lowers the quality designation.
“And then there’s just cattle. It
still happens that Mexican
traders will buy bulls on this
side to take over and improve
their herds. Again, to their
credit they’re always looking to
improve,” Tate added.
Breeding animals, if going
south, “have to have a whole
plethora of health papers,” and
the requirements change from
time to time, rancher Tate said.
“The new disease is trichomo-
niasis – most people call it tric,”
a disease that a bull can spread
to every cow he breeds.
“On an annual basis there’s
somewhere between 750,000
and a million cattle that come
out of Mexico for the grazing
programs.”
Another change is that cattle
are shipped on trucks now, not
on trains. “It’s a whole industry
making the cattle trailers,” Tate
said. “The law in Texas is that
truck, trailer and cargo have to
weigh less than 80,000 pounds.
The empty truck and trailer
might weigh 35,000 pounds, so
it can only haul 45,000 pounds.
That’s still a lot of cattle. It’s
significant for the trucking
industry. I think they get about
$3.75 a loaded mile. So if
you’re going from Presidio to
Amarillo – maybe 500 miles –
that’s $1,700 you add to the
cost of cattle.”
Cattle broker Charles
Sellers of Fort Worth points out
that the cattle industry on the
U.S. side of the border has
become more “corporatized,”
particularly in the feeding
yards. “There’s lots of fore-
contracting,” he said. “It’s
turned into like Wal-Mart – the
producers and dealers are the
vendors, they’re selling to the
huge conglomerate feed yards.
If one has an ear broken or the
shoulder is sore, they deduct it
from the paycheck. It’s gotten
ruthless on the end when
they’re sold.”
Still, the result of all the tests
and marketing is that the
restaurant diner or the patio
chef has his steak – or ground
beef, depending on the dollars
spent – that’s tasty and healthy.
Without those checks, that
might not be the case.
Budget Inn
Highway 90 E • Sanderson, Texas • 432.345.2541
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Dis & AAR
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Newly Remodeled • Special Weekly
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432-837-3100
Cenizo
First Quarter 2012
17