WHITEFACES TO BE FEATURED AT TUCSON HEREFORD CONGRESS

WHITEFACES TO BE FEATURED AT

For over two and a half centuries Tucson has been the host for countless numbers of visiting cattlemen, in a richly historical tide that, in its earliest days, surged up from Mexico, and, within the last hundred years or so, has moved in from all directions. But seldom, if ever, will so many cattlemen have converged simultaneously on Tucson as will be the case on April 4th, 5th and 6th when the American Hereford Association holds its annual "Hereford Congress" and concurrently celebrates its dia-mond jubilee, its 75th anniversary, in the Old Pueblo.

TUCSON HEREFORD CONGRESS

Larry Domino 50th. Larry Domino 37th is owned by Arizona rancher, Alan Feeney, outstanding raiser of Herefords.

Hereford breeders from all over the nation will be there, as well as from Mexico, Australia, England and Canada. They will discuss, iron out and decide on various business aspects of their association's affairs and they will also attend a tightly scheduled series of morning lectures and panel discussions concerning cattle raising and its related problems, with afternoon sessions devoted to practical live-cattle demonstrations of what they have earlier been discussing and hearing about. Registrations by purebred breeders across the counEvery last year totaled 522,639 (Arizona ranks 29th in the nation with 6,442 registrations last year), to send the total recordings over the nine million mark to establish a new record in livestock history of the world. If the first animal in the line represented the type prevalent in 1881 and the last animal the modern type of today, you would note a vivid portrayal of the great progress and accomplishments made by the men and women who have dedicated their lives to the improvement, decade by decade, of the Hereford breed.

If the breeders, past and present, would jot down the highlights of their years spent in improving their herds of Herefords, it would be a story filled with the romance of the West, the hardships that came with drouth and blizzard, the good times and bad times that came with fluctuating prices; the story of families that depended on their Herefords alone to feed and clothe their family, to send their children to college, and then provide them with a legacy to pass down to the next generation. It's an inspiring story of how breeders with determination made it possible to provide the nation with the finest beef that any country could have. It's a story of rugged individualism at its very height.

Nowadays, the alert cattleman has to keep abreast of everything that is going on within his industry, and like everything else, new technical advances are being made constantly. So the program has been designed not only for actual cattle growers, but for other people connected with the meat industry as well. The “Congress” program will benefit them all, whether they raise Herefords or some other beef breed, whether they are purebred operators with registered cattle, whether they are commercial cowmen from ranches and farms, or whether they are cattle feeders who buy the range cattle, put them in feedlots and fatten them up for market, or whether they are meat packers or retailers.

The American Hereford Association has many local branches of which the hosting Arizona group is one of the most active. For Herefords in this state are big business. Some of America's best known purebred herds are located here, producing many of the champion cattle at the famous livestock shows, the manicured, marcelled livestock and highly pedigreed animals, some of which sell for such fabulous sums in Denver, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas and, as they say, at private treaty.

Many other purebred ranches and farms, eschewing the rigors and expense of showing their cattle on the “circuit,” devote their energies to producing range bulls and heifer replacements for the commercial operator, the calf-producing cattle rancher. Due to the incontrovertible nature of the genetics involved (avoiding excessive or lengthy use of the same blood strains), along with the additional profit that is possible with higher quality cattle, the good cattle rancher replaces a certain percentage of his range bulls every year. And for these new bulls he goes to the registered breeder. The range man buys the best bulls he can afford because one bull out on his ranch will sire up to twenty-five or more calves a season, thus exerting a great deal of influence on the rancher's product, his annual calf crop.

Cattle ranching in Arizona has always been an important part of the state's long history. When Coronado crossed what is today the international line in 1540, searching for the Seven Cities of Cibola, he very likely had a mobile meat supply, in the form of a herd of cattle, along with him, for he deplores, in his diary, the lack of forage with the consequent damage to his party's varied diet, that he encountered after reaching New Mexico. But the peripatetic Jesuit padre, Eusebio Kino, can be called Arizona's first real stockman. He founded a chain of missions in Sonora during the last years of the 17th century and by 1700 had extended his Pimeria Alta domain as far north as San Xavier del Bac, near Tucson. Each new mission, presidio or visita that Padre Kino set up for his Indian charges would be started off with a herdof cattle, garnered from the overplus of mission herds previously established farther south. Cattle ranching as an industry has been a part of Arizona's history ever since then, at times almost dormant, at others, resurgent, lusty and vivid.

The first Herefords were brought to what is now Arizona by an early settler named Colin Cameron, sometime shortly after 1883. He had become a part part owner of an old Mexican ranch, the San Rafael de la Zanja, located just north of the international line, about thirty miles east of Nogales. This richly grassed and well watered land grant, from its very inception at a tumultuous public auction in the Sonora town of Arispe, in 1822, was the subject of almost continuous and fascinating legal, physical and ballistical controversy up until 1902 when William H. Greene acquired it from Cameron and his associates.

Greene had immense commercial ranching interests across the line in Sonora, as well as other properties in Arizona, and the San Rafael was developed to supply good bulls for these other ranches. Thomas Heady, onetime president of the Arizona Cattlegrowers Association and now retired, was manager of the San Rafael for over forty years and he greatly expanded the importation of purebred bulls that Cameron had started. Heady built the cowherd up to 1,400 head and by the time he retired in 1947 he had registered a record 38,000 head of cattle with the American Hereford Association, under the famous RO brand (OR for the Mexican cattle). The Greene family still owns this ranch and RO bulls nowadays not only supply their other American cow outfits, but are sold far and wide throughout the West. The RO show herd makes frequent and successful forays into the ruggedly competitive stock show circuit.Other pioneer Arizona cattlemen of the late '80s were quick to see the advantages in producing good Hereford cattle instead of the heterogeneous mixture of inferior animals that previously had overflowed the rangelands of the state-a polyglot combination of racy looking Mexican corrientes, gaunt Texas longhorns and other odd lots (Chinos) from all over. So Hereford bulls (Please turn to page thirty-six)