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BREED
HISTORY
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King Ranch, Texas
celebrated its centenary in 1953. Its history makes fascinating
reading in a host of publications, even novels. Contrary to some
recent rumours, however, the development of an adapted breed in
the twenties from its tens of thousands of head of cattle on its
more than half a million hectares, was a means of survival and not
an oil baron's or rich man's whim. During the Great Depression of
the thirties the cattle world had taken note of the fact, that
from 1925 to 1932 the newly bred Santa Gertrudis cattle doubled
the income of the Ranch, possibly saving it from dissolution.
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In the pioneering and putting into
practice the by now classical method by the King Ranch of crossbreeding
European and hardy "tropical" cattle and then stabilising these
crossbreeds genetically on the advantageous level by interbreeding to
establish a new breed.
In practice this had been achieved as follows.
After experimental crosses of Zebu bulls and Shorthorn cows from 1910 - 1918 had
proved a success, from 1918 onwards, for ten years, an extensive crossbreeding
program was applied, in which several hundred, mainly A.P Borden-importation and
Hudgins-bred Zebu bulls were randomly crossed with about 5000 purebred
Shorthorn cows. The resultant F1 crossbreeds were interbred separately. At the
same time a few outstanding Zebu bulls were bred to select outstanding cows from
the experimental crosses. One of the offspring from an exceptionally good milker
was the bull Monkey born in 1920. Due to the outstanding type and performance of
this bull a line-breeding system was initiated, in which 150 (!) of his sons and
many more of his grandsons were introduced into the herds as quickly as
possible. Eventually the whole of the 5000 cows were bred to offspring of
Monkey, who in this way was the progenitor of a strain of cattle called Santa
Gertrudis after the section of the King Ranch, on which they were bred.
The Texas Mob at Kingsville - 60 000 Santas on 825 000
acres.
The factors contributing to the successful creation of the Santa Gertrudis
breed can be ascribed to the result of:
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The number of cattle employed formed a large base for selection, which
vastly increased the chances for the appearance of a variety of desirable
types in every generation.
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The interbreeding of superior crossbreeds to fix a desirable type.
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A selection strategy to achieve genetically based progress in weight.
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Possibly the greatest contributing factor was that the continuity and
management of the process was in the hand of one person Mr Robert J Kleberg
Jr, who not only conceived and formulated the breeding plan but remained
responsible for the selection and breeding process during the entire
development of the breed.
After thirty years of this clearly defined
breeding program the USDA (US Dept. Agriculture) recognised the Santa Gertrudis
in 1940 as the first breed developed in the New World. The King Ranch, however,
had been selling bulls to selected breeders and encourages grading programs
since 1934 and conducted bull-sales since 1950. The breed has since spread worldwide.
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