After we paid off our loan of our first purchase from the Locke cows, we heard that Sam and Nan Duplantis were looking to downsize and sell a large majority of their mature cows in the fall of 2013. We were very familiar with this program and immediately drove to Erath, Louisiana to look at the herd. Despite Mr. Sam’s advice that he didn’t want us as a young couple to take out a big loan and be in debt just to buy the cows, we did it. In this deal, we purchased 78 head of Brahman cows from D-Bar Ranch, in somewhat of a “mature cow herd dispersal”, as we purchased their older breeding herd and they kept their replacement females. These cattle added a boost of practical performance genetics to our existing cow herd and helped propel both our numbers and our performance focus. Pictured above is Brandon and Matthew Pounds, our intern at the time, as they unloaded the cattle.
At this time, we did not have a lot of our own land, and Rachel’s grandfather Sloan Williams allowed us to take over one of his lease’s from Julie Cullers in Egypt, Texas. We unloaded these D Bar cows in some of the original family land owned and worked by Rachel Northington Hudgins. It was a good example of how generations continue to bless each other through the years.