Page:Patches (1928).pdf/20

 Thus the question at once arose, if the bison could subsist in this way merely upon the bounty of nature, why could not cattle be raised in the same manner and thus get rid of the first cost of raising them.

So the western emigrant soon had small herds of cattle grazing upon the prairies just as the bison had done before them. These were the nuclei for the mighty herds of cattle in our western grazing land which finally made this nation the greatest beef-raising country in the world.

The root stock however, of this cattle raising industry had already been planted on this continent nearly two hundred years when the original "Texas Longhorn" was imported from Spain into Mexico. These long-horned, tall, gaunt cattle finally drifted across the Rio Grande into Texas, and thence up the Panhandle into New Mexico and what is now Oklahoma and still further north, so when the western settlers first came to the western prairies there were wild cattle grazing on the plains in the same herds with the bison.

From time to time the early cattle men introduced new stock of Durham, Hereford, and other large breeds and crossed them with the Texas Longhorn. The real Texas steer is a tall, rangy animal weighing when fat a thousand pounds.

Since the herds of cattle ran unrestrained upon the prairies the question of identification very early arose,