Welcome to the Ranch!

Last night a big thunderstorm awoke us in the middle of the night.  I was waiting to hear the sound of a train whistle signaling a tornado.  The wind-driven rain was striking the house in all directions.  Luckily we escaped any major or minor damage, but the pastures are very muddy this morning.

I am proud to announce that Cross Creek Cattle Company has been named Cattle Ranch of the Week by Texas Born Texas Strong.  It is an honor to be profiled and showcased on this website.  We want to thank them for choosing our ranch.  Check it out and leave a comment, if you would.  The power of word of mouth is amazing.

As this year winds down and the holiday season is in full-swing, everyone at Cross Creek Cattle Company wishes each and every one of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  I will resume writing in January; until then,  have a great holiday season.

We harvested our last grass fed beef for the year.  It aged for two weeks before having it cut according to our customer’s needs.  Most customers went with the standard method.  This  includes 1″ thick steaks, tenderized round steaks, 4 pound roasts, and much more.

We want to thank our customers for choosing Cross Creek Cattle Company to meet their grass fed beef needs.  We guarantee that our beef is hormone free, steroid free, antibiotic free, and grain free.  We work hard to raise beef that is all-natural, flavorful, and nutritious.

On the ranch’s website, there is a page dedicated to the health benefits of grass fed beef.  The page is based on the book, Pasture Perfect, by Jo Robinson.   Researchers have found that overall grass fed beef is much healthier for people than grain fed beef.  The most noticeable difference is the amount of fat.  Grass fed beef is much more lean for obvious reasons.

Therefore, grass fed beef needs to be prepared with its leanness in mind.  On the page What to Expect, there are several methods a cook can employ to ensure tasty, tender meat.  We also include recipes to use with our grass fed beef.  Recipes for chili, soup, stuffed mushrooms, and roast are available to the public.

The best characteristic of grass fed beef is its flavor.  Have you ever purchased a beautiful, thick steak from the grocery store only to be disappointed that it had absolutely no flavor?  It might as well have been chewy water.  We wait to harvest cattle until they are about 18 months old.  This allows the beef to develop a full flavor.  It is delicious!  It is how beef should taste.

Those of us at Cross Creek Cattle Company want to take this time right before the end of the year to thank all of our customers.  Whether you purchased beef or a show calf, we thank you for supporting our family owned and operated ranch.  We wish you the best this holiday season.

Lane is cauterizing the horn while Clayton hold its head and Jake stands ready with medicine.

It was a beautiful Scottish day at Cross Creek Cattle  Company.  The overcast sky and the cool day was highlighted with constant drizzle that dampened your hair, clothing, etc.  This of course made everything feel even colder.

My immediate family stood in the barn with my father discussing the day’s plans.  Sorting, de-horning, branding, vaccinating, and castrating were the items on the agenda.  We divided up the jobs and got to work.

We are all experienced cowboys having worked cattle for most of our lives.  Even my eight-year old son is competent in many areas of cattle work.  My dad is the most experienced of us all.  He worked side-by-side with his grandfather since he could walk.  Isn’t funny how cyclical life can be?  Here my dad was working alongside his grandchildren.

This particular kind of cattle work is not for the faint at heart.  You are going to see blood.  You are going to smell the scent of burning flesh.  It is one of the most unpleasant parts of living on a working ranch.

Daddy is branding. Clay is holding the vaccines waiting for his turn to work.

It is easier than in the past.  We have squeeze chutes that hold the calf still while you work on them.  You do not have to rope, tackle, and throw the calf.  We have electric branding irons and a cauterizing instrument.  We do not have to keep a fire going with metal brands sitting in the fire until they have red-hot tips.

We do give two vaccinations.  Each calf receives an 8-Way Blackleg and IBR4 vaccine.  The first prevents a fatal disease called Blackleg.  The most susceptible calves are ones thriving with great weight gain by eating nutritious grass.  A certain spore in the ground causes this disease and it is completely preventable with the vaccine.  The latter prevents the Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis (IBR) disease.  It is a transmittable disease via contact.  We have never had any of our cattle with this illness, but there are other herds nearby.  Occasionally we find a stray cow in our herd from a neighbor’s pasture.  Both vaccines are ones that we deem necessary to prevent for the health of our herd.

We brand the cows we intend to keep.  Believe it or not, but there are still cattle rustlers.  People steal cattle and usually take them directly to the sale.  A brand is one sure way to prove that a cow belongs to you.  You have to register your brand with the state.  Our brand is a C with a squiggly line beneath it.  The C stands for the alliteration in the name of our ranch.  The line symbolizes the creeks that cross the ranch.

We de-horn for safety purposes.  Our cattle are docile and easy-going.  Regardless of the naturally good disposition, it is always safer to work around cows without sharp-tipped horns.  There are several ways to remove horns.  If you act when the calf is very young, you can scoop out the horns.  You can pay for a veterinarian to perform cosmetic surgery in a sense to remove the horns.  You can also remove the tips.  The horns will not continue to grow so the cow will have blunt nubs.  We chose the do the latter this time.  It is important to cauterize the bleeding because a cow can lose a lot of blood if you do not act.

It was a successful day.  We worked together as a team.  Nobody got hurt.  The cattle are doing fine.  Cross Creek Cattle Company is literally a family-owned and operated ranch.  We are teaching the next generation so that high quality cattle and grass fed beef can continue for generations to come.

Our snowman last December.

While most of the United States of America is accustomed to snow in their winter weather forecast, it is a rarity in Southeast Texas.  We actually have a chance of this beautiful precipitation on Friday and Saturday.  Already this week it has snowed in El Paso, Lubbock, and Dallas.

Last year two weeks before Christmas it snowed.  It snowed hard during the evening hours.  My kids bundled up and went out in the darkness to play in the snow because we knew it probably would not last until the morning.  They built a 8 inch snowman and a extra large snowball.  They made snow angels on the trampoline.  As funny as this might sound to someone in Colorado, we had a blast.

Hopefully it will snow again this year at Cross Creek Cattle Company.  We don’t need it.  It is not a necessity; however, a little snowfall is good for the soul.  It brings the kid out of anyone regardless how old.  It brings a sense of quiet to the ranch as even the animals stop to admire the beauty of a falling snowflake.  They have no idea what it is, but they know it is special.

When we have a winter blast of cold weather, we do have to take precautions for our animals.  We put the cows on a pasture with a wind block to the North.  Usually a solid, thick portion of a wooded pasture helps block out the bitter, cold wind.  Sometimes it is the dam on the lake.  Whatever the form of the wind block, we make sure that our cattle are as warm as possible.  We also give them plenty of hay as the grass in the pastures are gone until spring.

We have a very old horse named Ladd.  He starts shivering at 50 degrees; therefore, he wears a horse blanket when the temperatures dip.  The blanket does a great job holding in his body heat.  Ladd quite enjoys his occasional winter outfit.

Of course if it does freeze, our main concern is water.  We have to ensure that all of our animals have access to fresh drinking water.  When I was a child living on this ranch, I raised animals for 4-H.  I remember many mornings before the sun rose above the horizon that I was outside with a flashlight breaking the ice off of the top of the water troughs.

Winters here at the ranch are typically mild, which is great for our cattle and horses. They do not have to endure long freezing cold winters.  However this weekend we wait with anticipation to see if we will receive any snow.