Head'em Up and Move'em Out

In today's world, not much thought goes into where our food comes from or how it got to the grocery store.  We are so spoiled with convenience and expect the store to have on hand exactly what we are looking for at a great price. But over 125 years ago, cattle drives were a major economic activity in the American west.  Approximately, 20 million cattle were herded from Texas to rail heads in Kansas for shipments to stockyards in Chicago and points east.[1] It was this activity that helped to feed the United States citizens and keep a good cowboy employed.  Cattle drives, on a much smaller scale, still occur in parts of the western United States and Australia.

Long-distance cattle driving was traditional in Mexico, California and Texas, and horse herds were sometimes similarly driven. The Spaniards had established the ranching industry in the New World, and began driving herds northward from Mexico beginning in the 1540s.[2]

Movement of cattle                         

Cattle drives had to strike a balance between speed and the weight of the cattle. While cattle could be driven as far as 25 miles in a single day, they would lose so much weight that they would be hard to sell when they reached the end of the trail. Usually they were taken shorter distances each day, allowed periods to rest and graze both at midday and at night.^[3] On average, a herd could maintain a healthy weight moving about 15 miles per day. Such a pace meant that it would take as long as two months to travel from a home ranch to a rail head. The Chisholm trail, for example, was 1,000 miles long.^[4] 

^{Today, cattle and other livestock, are trucked to meat processing facilities and the complications of the cattle losing weight before arriving at their destination have been virtually eliminated.  Cowboys who worked the trail have been replaced by the truck driver, who can travel anywhere from 700 to 750 miles a day.}

 

On average, a single herd of cattle on a long drive numbered about 3,000 head. To herd the cattle, a crew of at least 10 cowboys was needed, with three horses per cowboy. Cowboys worked in shifts to watch the cattle 24 hours a day, herding them in the proper direction in the daytime and watching them at night to prevent stampedes and deter theft.[5]

^{Moving cattle today, requires one driver, a semi-truck and trailer with eighteen wheels and an open road. Beef, the finished product, can literally be in stores within a week.} 

^{Hollywood has romanticized the cowboy and many movies have portrayed cattle drives, with all the dangers of raging rivers, bandits and Indians to deal with on the trail. It was a hard life to travel the open trail and if you talk to a truck driver, you might just possibly hear that part has not changed. It takes a special breed of man or woman to move cattle across this vast nation.}