Darol Dickinson – Lifetime of Longhorns
Darol Dickinson – Lifetime of Longhorns
Darol Dickinson was born in 1942 in Fort Worth, Texas and his life has been as colorful as his Texas Longhorn cattle. He’s been an artist, illustrator, photographer, writer, cattle breeder, cattle judge, and involved with a several breed and cattle organizations–and a passionate supporter of beef-type Longhorns.
“I am a Will James fan. He was an artist, and wrote books, and his goal was to make enough money to buy a ranch near Pryor, Montana and raise Longhorns and horses. When I was a little kid, my dad read Will James’ book Smoky to me, one chapter a night. At the end of the book, Dad and I both cried. I eventually read every book that Will James wrote, and we sell them in our ranch store today,” says Dickinson.
His early years were receiving the influence of Will James. He did paintings and portraits, selling them for $2 to $5. By the time he went to college he’d sold enough paintings to pay for his first semester. He sold portraits of people’s horses and herd bulls during his college years, and was adamant about correct details.
After college, every time he sold a painting he used the money to buy Texas Longhorns or land. In 1963, Darol married Linda Correll. Their ranch headquarters was on the high plains of Colorado and that’s where their children Kirk, Chad, Joel and Dela were born.
While building the ranch in Colorado, Darol visited every ranch he could find that had Longhorns—mostly in Texas—and asked what they would charge if he picked out some cows to buy. In 1967 he had 7 cows and within a few years had picked the top cattle from 15 Longhorn herds in Texas. He started raising herd sires and selling some back to the same ranches because they could see the improvement in quality.
He developed a marketing program to sell the calves—and had them pre-sold before weaning because he knew that selling registered calves at the local sale barn wouldn’t work. By 1975 he had 55 cows, and leased the top Longhorn bull in the nation, Texas Ranger JP, for 3 breeding seasons and collected semen.
“We started halter breaking all the bull calves that might make herd sires. As we halter-broke them, we scored them for intelligence, nervousness, ease of submission to training and leading, and how quick they learned—and how jumpy they were and whether they would kick you when you thought they were gentle,” says Dickinson.
“Sometimes we’d roll up an over-head door that rattled, and score the cattle on how much they reacted—whether they were jumpy or calm. After 50 years of scoring, selecting and breeding, we’ve developed some of the smartest cattle in the nation. They have the ability to make their own decisions for their own benefit,” he says. They think instead of just reacting to something.
“The smarter cattle were much quicker and easier to halter break and train. Today our grandkids halter break every bull on the ranch,” he says.
His family is all involved with the ranch, and everything is a team effort. Darol says it would not work, without them. “I’m the old man who did the early battles, but my boys and my hard-working wife ARE the ranch, as I cripple along. I am 79 this year. Our ranch would not be a success without my great family team.”
By 1979 Dickinson Cattle Co (DCC) had 200 registered cattle and was doing embryo transfers. “We built a facility to do non-surgical embryo transfer with Longhorns,” says Dickinson.
Dr. Charles Vincent from Kansas State University was a pioneer in the procedure. “He came to the ranch one day each month. During the early 1980’s, at one point DCC had 1200 recipient cows maintained for carrying embryos. We had 87 superior donor cows that were flushed every 50 to 70 days. One day Dr. Vincent transferred 105 fresh embryos.” The ranch grew to 2000 cattle on over 20,000 acres in 6 counties.
The cattle breeds with big horns were thought to be challenging; people were afraid to handle them very much. “So we developed a side-squeeze chute. It squeezes in from the side, with wider spaced horizontal bars and no vertical bars,” he explains.
Most cattle chutes in the U.S. have many vertical bars and that’s where legs and horns get caught and broken. “The animals stick a leg or horn through, jump forward and are injured. We developed a chute with open horizontal bars and never had any cattle get hurt in it. Many people came to look at it. A big embryo facility sent one of their guys to look at our chute. He was very friendly and acted like he was interested in Longhorns, but while he was there he measured my chute. An exact duplicate of my chute showed up at their facility!” says Dickinson.
“There are about 7 chute companies now that make a side-squeeze chute, copying my original pattern. We kept building prototypes and finally developed what we call the Bry chute. It is the only chute that you can collapse and fold down to 9 feet by 5 feet for shipping on a pallet. Shipping via Fed-Ex express anywhere in the U.S. We can ship it to the West Coast for $450 and the East Coast for $300,” he says.
“We developed a $1450 chute squeeze that’s very sturdy and quiet—while the major companies were building hydraulic chutes that sell for $6000 to $15,000. Our inexpensive chute is totally silent and sits up off the ground safe from rust. You can put any kind of cattle in it—including Yaks, Watusi cattle, Scotch Highland—anything with large horns,” he says.
The average person who raises cattle in the U.S. has about 19 animals. There are many small operations, and a person with a small herd can’t afford a $6000 squeeze chute. The Bry sells for $1450 and even with freight we can get it to them for $1700 to $1800,” says Dickinson.
In the late 1970’s he quit traveling to take photos and focused on Longhorns. “Everything we’ve done since then revolves around Longhorns. It’s been great for our family. We have 3 sons and a daughter, and our son Kirk does all the computer work, website, etc. Our youngest son Joel does the AI, embryo transfer and herd management. Now there are 8 grandchildren who work the ranch part-time or full time,” he says.
In 1993 the Dickinson family sold their Colorado property and relocated to the Ohio River Valley Grass Lands of eastern Ohio—moving the herd 1338 miles and starting a new clientele in the eastern U.S. The current ranch is in the Appalachian foothills, 5000 acres near the historic town of Barnesville.
They raise all replacements—rarely buying any outside cattle. “We can’t trust other people’s data so we prefer to raise our own animals. We sell about 500 cattle each year and 2/3 of those are registered breeding stock. The rest are sold as processed beef through the ranch store. Many people would rather buy meat at the ranch and drive out here on a gravel road than purchase at city stores, because they trust us,” he says.
All DCC cattle sell privately, mostly on the internet. “Highly promoted auctions for registered cattle are not an economical way to sell. There are many unnecessary costs that pass on to the buyer. We don’t consign our cattle to any auctions or sell at any local ‘spit bucket’ sale barns. Most auctions sell at such low prices it’s difficult to be profitable,” he says.
“We had to create some different markets. It worked–with a breed of cattle that nobody else wanted–and it became great. It was the trail less traveled!” Dickinson says.
The family enterprise includes a ranch store (Head to Tail Store–selling fresh and can Longhorn meat, plus anything and everything you can make from Longhorn hides and horns, all of which is also online), and public ranch tours, where people can see the Longhorns and other exotic cattle.
About 70% of the ranch income is registered cattle sales. “We started exporting semen, embryos and cattle in the late 1980’s and have now sent cattle, embryos or semen to 31 countries. Therefore, we’ve started Longhorn herds on nearly every continent and recently sent semen and embryos to Bolivia, Belgium, Brazil and Costa Rica. We have a network of ranches to deal with, and ship all over the world.”
Texas Longhorn semen and embryos from Dickinson Cattle Co were selected to improve Israeli cattle. In those desert cattle operations, the longevity, disease resistance, calving ease, ability to browse and handle multiple predators were much-needed traits for the Israeli herds. Mount Gilboa Ranch in Israel is using DCC Texas Longhorn embryos to change the European cattle genetics to a more desert-rugged breed. Texas Longhorn history traces back to Israel and many stockmen in Israel believe they have good qualities to offer again for the area.
In Nigeria, embryos and semen from DCC Texas Longhorns were introduced into the native humped cattle herds. Nigerians love the pretty colors and also the fact that Longhorns increase the size of their native cattle.
“DCC started sending semen more than 20 years ago to ranchers in Australia and they artificially bred native horned cattle with that semen. They also got a few embryos from Canada. Every 2 or 3 years I sent them semen from a new bull–about 13 bulls now. The quality of the Longhorn cattle in Australia is great; they have some steers now with horns over 100 inches from tip to tip, from our breeding,” says Dickinson.
Dickinson has been performance testing his cattle since the early 1970’s, but it was challenging to get the data he was desiring. “Back in 1967 I was 24 years old and had 6 cows and calves. I wanted to collect data on them. To get weights on the calves at weaning, I loaded them all into a borrowed horse trailer and hauled them 20 miles to the Pikes Peak Co-op that had a truck scale.
To weigh the calves, I parked the truck with the trailer backed up over the scale, put a halter on each calf and dragged it out the trailer door and tied that calf standing on the scale. I’d run into the feed store and weigh it, then drag that calf back into the trailer and pull another one out. So I had weights on my first calves, after sticking them out the back of an old horse trailer,” he says.
At Dickinson Cattle Company, 53 years of performance testing has produced Texas Longhorns with all the great historic virtues plus average birth weight of 62.5 pounds, combined with excellent growth. For example, one of the DCC’s AI export sires, Cut’n Dried, weighed 64 pounds at birth, with a mature weight of 2202 pounds.
People from many walks of life have purchased cattle from Dickinsons—many of them attracted to the breed because of eye appeal and unique traits. “Some customers are people who have no experience with cattle; they want to do something fun, and different from what their neighbors are doing.”
Dickinson sees hope for the future of the breed in non-cattle people with attraction to Longhorns. A singer from Nashville recently came to look at cattle because he’s buying some land near Nashville and wants to build a Longhorn herd. “He wants 10 cows and a bull to start. Most people realize that land is a wonderful thing to own, but after they buy land they need to have something to do with it –and decide to raise cattle. Some don’t want to raise Angus because everyone in the neighborhood has Angus,” he says. Longhorns are different, and easy; they take care of themselves.
“DCC has Longhorns, Buelingo (colorful belted cattle) and Watusi so we can put something in their pasture that’s not like anyone else’s cattle,” says Dickinson. He has sold cattle to many celebrities including Andre the Giant (who was a world-champion wrestler) and George Lucas (Lucas Film Company) who used Longhorn cattle for special effects in his Jurassic Park movie. “We’ve sold cattle to Colonel Oliver North and to Red McCombs who used to own the Minnesota Vikings. Longhorns appeal to a wide range of very successful people, and they are not raising them just for their pounds of meat; they are raising them because they like them,” says Dickinson.
To be successful in the registered cattle business a person must have unique-value genetics, be innovative, create a product that people want, and then market it successfully and this is something that Dickinson Cattle Co has accomplished very nicely.
August 2021
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