Past Meets Future: Pineywoods Cattle at the Kerr Center

– Wylie Harris

Ruby persuades Historical Farm Development Manager Jim Combs to give her a bite to eat.

Visitors to the Overstreet-Kerr Historical Farm and the Kerr Center Stewardship Ranch may note the herds of red or speckled cattle with longish horns grazing in the sun.

Folks sometimes take these cattle for Texas Longhorns, and it’s true that the two breeds are related. But these are actually Pineywoods cattle – a breed with a history all its own, and a rich promise for the future of sustainable agriculture in Oklahoma.

When the Spanish first arrived in North America, they brought with them a few cattle that they turned loose into the forests of what would become the southeastern United States, to be rounded up whenever the need for meat required.

As the animals spread throughout the Gulf Coast region, natural circumstances and human needs shaped the adaptations of populations in different areas.
“You’ve got one breed in three localities that has evolved over hundreds of years into three separate breeds,” explains Jim Combs, Development Manager at the Overstreet-Kerr Historical Farm.

In the western extent of their range, the cattle were bred for longer horns, for ease of roping. These became the Texas Longhorns. In the swampier east, shorter horns that wouldn’t snare in vines and branches fared better, and dogs replaced lariats as the roundup tool of choice, giving rise to the Florida Cracker breed.

In between, in the more open pine forests of Alabama and Mississippi, a breed emerged that would become known as Pineywoods cattle.

A Breed Apart

Pineywoods cattle are generally red, brown, or occasionally black and white, spotted, or speckled. Their horns are small to medium in length and tend to curve inward or upward. Mature weight ranges from 600-1000 pounds, occasionally larger, depending on the environment (see sidebar).

The smaller structure and horn size are a legacy of breeding to meet the needs of farmers and loggers in the deep South. At different times and places in its history, Pineywoods cattle have been called upon to provide draft power as well as meat and milk – a true multi-purpose breed.

Historically, the Pineywoods breed flourished because of its adaptations to the forests of the South. The cattle can survive and reproduce despite internal and external parasites, high temperatures and humidity, and poor forage.

The breed is noteworthy for its reproductive vigor and longevity. Its varied foraging habits, low birth weights, and hardiness make the cattle highly self-sufficient.

As commercial agriculture became established in the region, though, larger, faster-growing breeds gained in popularity, to the point that Pineywoods cattle became a rarity.

The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC) now lists the status of the Pineywoods cattle as “critical,” meaning that the breed has fewer than 200 annual registrations in North America, and a global population of less than 2,000 head (see sidebar).

The ALBC has located less than 500 head of pure Pineywoods stock. Finding them can be something like looking for a needle in a haystack, with the breed scattered in tiny pockets across several states, and the owners often unaware of their animals’ unique heritage.

Some of the old families in Mississippi and Alabama maintained their own closed herds, giving rise to distinct strains within the breed, each bearing the name of the family that originated it (see figure). A few Indian tribes also brought their Pineywoods cattle west with them as well.

One such pair of westbound wanderers were Missourian Tom Overstreet and his Choctaw bride Margaret Victor, who came to what was then Indian Territory in 1871. The farm they homesteaded is now the Kerr-Overstreet Historical Farm, home to one of the few remaining herds of Pineywoods cattle.

Working a Little Magic

The long journey of the Pineywoods cattle took a turn toward the future when a herd arrived at the Kerr Center through a joint livestock conservation project with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

Begun in 1985, the project aims to preserve the kinds of livestock used by the pioneer farmers and Native Americans in the area during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The Kerr Center’s first Pineywoods cattle arrived at the Historical Farm in 1995. As of 2007, the Overstreet Pineywoods herd numbered 51 head.
The animals are of the Carter-Baylis strain, purebred descendants of the Spanish cattle of the 1500s that were preserved by the Carter/Baylis family of Mississippi since 1850. According to Combs, the Carter-Baylis strain is known for its traits of a strong mammary system and good disposition, because the families milked the animals up through 1942.

With the Overstreet herd of Pineywoods cattle, Combs seeks to identify and foster certain traits – height, length, good udders – while preserving the Carter-Baylis strain’s unique genetics.

“I’m trying to bring them up off the ground, stretch them out,” he explains. “If a person can use the genetics properly, you can work a little magic over 3 to 5 years.”

Polled Rescue

Combs’ strategy for preserving the Carter-Baylis strain has a twist. He’s also breeding in the polled, or hornless, trait from a separate strain, called Palmer-Dunn.
Overstreet’s 75 grazeable acres, Combs says, don’t support enough cattle to keep more than a single strain going, forcing him to pick and choose the strain and traits that will be the focus of his work with the Overstreet herd.

“I’m interested in polled because it’s only in the one strain, and there is some demand for them,” says Combs. “I’m shooting for all polled eventually.”
Combs bought Overstreet’s first four polled cattle, sight unseen, from Mrs. Muriel Dunn, the 84-year old widow of Earl Dunn. Mrs. Dunn’s maiden name was Palmer, and the cattle were of the Palmer-Dunn strain.

After a year, Dunn was pleased enough with Combs’ work that she offered to sell her entire herd to the Kerr Center. Kerr Center President Jim Horne gave the go-ahead, and pushed for an immediate purchase, though it was already late December. “If these are the only polled ones,” he said,“I want to make sure we get them.”

So Combs and a Kerr Center crew spent one day driving to Dunn’s Mississippi farm, another day setting up pens, and loaded the animals early on the third day and made the trip back to Oklahoma. Bad weather set in right after Christmas, proving the wisdom of the rushed trip.

Rascal, a rare polled Pineywoods bull from the Palmer-Dunn strain.

Preserving to Produce

“There’s beginning to be more and more interest in Pineywoods,” Combs says, “especially among small farmers with about 50 acres who want a smaller cow with a gentle disposition.”

Pineywoods Cattle Manager Mary Penick agrees, noting that the cattle are gentle both as a breed characteristic and as a result of daily handling in the ranches’ rotational grazing systems.

“The niche might be people who like Longhorns but get tired of dealing with them,” she observes.

Penick manages a separate Pineywoods herd, at the Kerr Center Stewardship Ranch in Poteau, that was split off from the Overstreet herd at the beginning of 2006. The Stewardship Ranch herd now counts a total of 73 animals.

But while the Overstreet herd is devoted to the conservation and preservation of a particular Pineywoods strain and traits, work with the Stewardship Ranch herd is aimed more at developing animals that perform well on grass from a mixture of strains, as well as markets for those animals and their meat.

D.P. Sponenberg, a veterinarian who works closely with the ALBC and has consulted with the Kerr Center on its Pineywoods program, confirms this approach. “If conservation is successful and the numbers of the various strains stabilize,” he writes, “then it is possible and also wise to use cattle in breeding herds that are tailored as much for production as for conservation.”

“Composites should be developed and production characterized. This is important for the entire breed, because the breed has a secure future to the extent that production-minded breeders take it seriously and use it for its main strengths.”

A Taste of the Future

Penick summarizes the rationale for her efforts with the Stewardship ranch Pineywoods herd in plainer terms: “You’re never going to save a breed if they’re just hobby cattle.”

With Combs working at Overstreet to preserve the Carter-Baylis genetics and introduce the polled trait into that strain, Penick is free to use combinations of both Carter-Baylis and other strains at the Stewardship Ranch to find a mix that produces optimally on grass.

The Stewardship Ranch herd birthed its third crop of calves in 2007. Penick anticipates marketing the meat from the herd within the next five years or so. During the same timeframe, there are plans to set up satellite production herds of Pineywoods cattle in southeastern Oklahoma as well as southeast Texas.
“The ultimate goal of this project is to find uses for Pineywoods cattle that will entice others to raise these cattle,” she says. “This will spread the genetics of these cattle and reduce the risk of losing the breed.” There is already a list of people waiting to buy and show Pineywoods cattle, she adds.

A recent lecture by Jim Horne carried the title, “Honoring the Past - Anticipating New Futures in Agriculture.” That phrase captures in a nutshell the key elements of the Kerr Center’s mission that are embodied in the Pineywoods project.

Preserving the genetic diversity of crops and livestock is a critical safeguard against increasing genetic uniformity. It’s a line cast to the past not out of nostalgia, but rather from a keenly pragmatic assessment of the future needs of sustainable agriculture.

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