The King Ranch in Texas spreads large on the prairie, about 825,000 acres large. A local down there told us ranchers don't usually speak in terms of acres, instead they talk about sections. Given that yardstick, the King Ranch contains about 1290 sections. Townships are a meaningful measurement to me with their standard area of 36 sections and with simple division I find the ranch is almost 36 townships big! Counties vary a lot in size but that must be about two or three North Dakota counties.
Our guide for the day, a longtime King Ranch employee, talked some about the profitability of their various animals and told us the surprising rank order of most profitable to least: 1. Bobwhite quail, 2. deer, 3. cattle, and 4. horses. They lease out huge tracts of land to large corporations for the hunting rights.
Water is the limiting factor in this part of the country. It took about 400 wells to fill their needs. They don't irrigate anything and don't even try to control cactus growth because cactus with the spines singed off serves as cattle feed in drought conditions.
To find a breed of cattle that did well they developed them with their own breeding program. Their Santa Gertrudis cattle (named from the nearby creek) consists of a cross of 5/8 Shorthorn blood and 3/8 Brahma. They have developed another breed, Santa Cruz, with 1/2 Santa Gertrudis genes and 1/4 each of Red Angus and Gelbvieh. All their cattle wear the desirable red color they say because it's more compatible with the climate. Their quarter horses, too, are sorrel colored for the same reason.
I wondered it they took credit for things they didn't do. Woven wire fenced their pasture land, and the guide said they on the ranch developed it in the early 20th century. Barbed wire scratched the animals and insects attacked the wounds. Woven wire was something I had always worked with, and I never would have dreamed it was developed down there. We used it to keep small pigs in the fence.
Sixty thousand cattle, 300 quarter horses, a huge farming operation with fields blackened as far as we could see, plus citrus groves in Florida, and other ventures they dabble in started to boggle my mind. Family members want more income, and they cast about looking for ways to get it. The ranch is in the hands of the sixth generation, and they intend to keep it viable.
