When I first met Fred in 1992, his life was pretty busy between building fast motors for very fast cars and earning a living on the ranch. He could put up and sell enough grass hay each year along with renting pasture to the neighbors to get by and leave him plenty of time to build drag racing motors.
By the time we married in 1993, his interests had broadened enough that he saw the benefit of building our home on the ranch in order to raise a family and starting to run some cattle of our own. We pooled our resources and I directed mine at building our house while he spent his restocking the ranch with 125 Saler heifers and bulls to match. Boy oh boy were we excited by Saler cattle. Hard to find anything wrong with the way they looked: beautiful composition, moderate frame just right for our terrain, good milk and legs, and excellent mamas. They were the hot new breed on the beef scene and we were anxious to make our own mark on the ranch.
Our Salers came from the dispersal of Bill Wright’s herd near Tuscarora, Nevada. Some fine day in heaven, I’ll have to track ol Bill down and thank him for those beautiful red cattle, but something tells me that Bill knew by the time he sold out that you couldn’t keep those French beauties on any ranch for long. Fred and I spent four years chasing red Salers all over Paradise Valley and beyond.
The biggest problem with Salers was, as good as they looked, they couldn’t be contained, and both our cows and bulls would take you if they got the chance. In cattlemens terms, we had a major disposition problem. On average, we’d have to wean 4-5 times each fall before our girls got the message and quit trying to break back to their calves. Shipping calves was also challenging but perhaps our toughest job
in those days was loading and shipping cull cows and bulls. Those buggars were tough and strained us physically and emotionally. Finally after four years of our Saler experiment, we admitted defeat. Fred had put up with all he could, and finally called Tim Gallagher and told him to send trucks. It took three days of hard work to rid ourselves of our red menace, but you never saw a more relieved man than Fred after he slammed the back gate on the last cow pot full of Salers in October 1997.
You might think the story ends there, but alas, our herd would not go gently. We got a very agitated call from Tim on the morning of the sale, saying that he’d never seen anything like our cattle. “The Rojo Diablos” were taking Fallon by storm. Seems that after a night or two on good feed at Gallagher’s, a number of the girls had escaped and were headed south toward the high school.
The Goings brothers who along with their dad, had an HVAC business just behind the sale yard, had helped Tim’s crew corral a couple runners; but unfortunately, 5 of our Salers remained at large. By the time the getaway was finally scuttled, Tim’s men had recaptured and sold two with the rest of the herd, and three of the girls had met their maker, and were delivered directly to Mori meats for a hasty cut and wrap. Seems Fallon’s finest had no patience for cows charging their squad cars; and really, who could blame them. It seems a fitting end for cows whose disposition would make Joy Behar seem reasonable and sweet.
As for Fred and I, we collected our check from Gallaghers, sent Churchill County Sheriffs’ office 18 boxes of cut and wrapped beef along with a heartfelt note of apology. We used our proceeds to buy the better part of Tom Petroli’s old black ballie herd. We added Lilla Bell’s Hereford bull genetics to our new herd of mamas and we’ve been pretty content ever since. Ours is not a sexy herd, but it works for us, especially now that Fred is gone and Patrice and I have to work cattle on our own.
Fred had a lot of pretty interesting design tricks to get his motors to explode off the starting line and then breathe when they hit top speed. He wasn’t called Fast Freddy for nothin; but, I think we both learned a key lesson that there’s a big difference between building fast motors and building a cattle herd. Getting to the finish line fastest is everything in drag racing but when it comes to developing a herd of cattle, patience and occasional retooling make all the difference in the world. It’s taken more than a quarter century for me to be able to laugh at our Saler debacle, but sometimes the hardest learned lessons are the best.
Kris Stewart is a rancher in Paradise Valley, Nevada. She proudly raises a herd of Saler-free beef cattle.
