AUTUMN 2019 EQUUS 498 77
arranged for the overseas passage of
hundreds of other Swedish families in
exchange for work. Though Swenson
raised longhorns and his cowboys
rode Cayuses and part-Thoroughbreds,
his ranch never became known for
maintaining a fine remuda. The
same may be said for the huge XIT,
which once controlled 3 million acres
(4,687.5 square miles---more land
than the states of Rhode Island and
Delaware combined). The European
corporation that owned the XIT, which
once spanned 200 miles along the
border between Texas and New Mexico
in 10 Texas counties, bought it for the
express purpose of developing the
land into farms. Although they ran
large herds of cattle, corporation
managers considered this as merely a
temporary way to keep their books in
the black. The XIT liquidated its assets
more than 100 years ago, selling off
the land to ranchers, railroads and
town developers.
The Y.O. Ranch in central Texas,
which once had a half million acres,
has shown itself to be by far the
most environmentally conscious and
sustainable of the old ranches that no
longer make most of their living from
cattle and horses. Founded in 1880
and run by the Schreiner family, the
Y.O. was a traditional ranch that bred
Quarter Horses and longhorn cattle
until the 1950s. In 1960, however, to
generate income, Charles Schreiner
III and his family decided to shift into
exotic animal breeding and make the
ranch into a huge nature preserve.
The Y.O. lies smack in the middle
of the main migrational route used by
hundreds of species of North American
birds, and the climate, terrain,
vegetational cover and soil resemble
the African savanna. A lodge was
built, a professional wildlife
manager was hired, university-level
research began, and visitors who
wanted to birdwatch, learn about
prairie ecosystems or participate in
supervised hunts were welcomed.
When Charles Schreiner III died in
2001, the Los Angeles Times lauded him
as “a bona-fide cowboy who had the
business savvy of Bernard Baruch, the
showmanship of P. T. Barnum, and the
Texas pride of Sam Houston.”
Schreiner is credited with saving
the Texas Longhorn from extinction,and he is responsible for the first
pedigreed Texas Longhorn bull.
The ranch breeds Merino sheep for
wool and goats for mohair, and it has
developed new strains of mouflon, a
subspecies of wild sheep. Today it is
home to about 60 “Texotic” herbivore
species imported from Africa, Asia and
South America. The present acreage
of all the zoos in the world combined
would easily fit within the fence
lines of the Y.O., and the Schreiner
family’s conservation work, in terms
of both land management and species
preservation, continues to win awards.
Many other Texas ranches have tried
to continue in the traditional manner
even though, by the 1970s, raisingcattle became largely unprofitable.
Most of these establishments survived
because oil fields were developed on
their land that supplied a steady flow of
operating capital. Some oil-rich cattle
barons in the decades after World War
II bred Quarter Horses specifically for
racing, but as purses in such show
specialties as cutting and reining
approached and then exceeded the
million-dollar mark, many ranches kept
their horse-breeding programs alive
primarily for the purpose of winning in
those disciplines. The emphasis was no
longer on tractability and toughness,
but on the ability to win in narrowly
defined athletic specialties.
The last two decades have seen
a reversal of the trend toward tight
inbreeding for prizewinning at shows.
As the realization struck home that
cattle-handling skills---emblematic
to many people of American ideals
as well as Western traditions---might
completely die out, Quarter Horse
enthusiasts invented new ways to
compete. First came a fad for timed
cattle-penning; when that proved just
as destructive and inauthentic as many
forms of arena showing, it was largely
replaced by ranch-roping, ranch-cutting
and versatility competitions, which
are judged on skill and consideration
for the livestock as much or more than
on time. These competitive events
much more closely resemble real-
world skills required for commercial
cattle handling because they prize the
horse’s soundness, good-mindedness
and ability to help the rider do a variety
of different jobs. They serve to preserve
the wisdom as well as the techniques
of an older generation. Horseman Buck
Brannaman points out that cattle that
are “dogged, chuted and ATV’d” areMany Texas ranches
have tried to continue
in the traditional manner
even though, by the
1970s, raising cattle
became largely
unprofitable.