to the Show Ring
Brandon Horn pitches a winning game in the club calf business.
By Lisa Bryant, Cowboy Connection Designs & Communications
The Brandon Horn family
P
laying sports and showing livestock both require fire and passion for what you do. As the son of a small town western Oklahoma vocational agriculture teacher, Brandon Horn grew up with a halter in one hand and a baseball in the
other. It’s no surprise the halter would lead to a “homerun” career in the cattle business.
Horn pursued both baseball and livestock judging at Redlands Community College in El Reno, Okla. He sustained
a baseball career-ending injury to his hand, and he said he could see livestock judging was short lived so he moved
to Corpus Christi, Texas, to work on a cow-calf and show steer operation for about six years.
While Horn lived in South Texas, he was out buying show pigs and happened to call Rory Duelm on the trip. Duelm said they took an
instant liking to each other, so Horn started helping the New Braunfels, Texas, show pig operation with boar selection, breeding decisions, marketing and selling of show pigs as well as delivery.
“Brandon has a natural eye to see the difference in the one that has the potential to generate and the one that doesn’t,” Duelm said.
“Some people call it luck, but I don’t call it that.”
Not only did Horn gain a livestock partner while working with Duelm, but he also met his life partner in wife, Brek, who attended
and played volleyball at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. She grew up in the small town of Hereford, Texas, and shared
Horn’s passion for sports and livestock and also was an ag teacher’s daughter. They married and stayed in the area for another year,
continuing to help Duelm with his business.
In 1999, an opportunity presented itself that would change the young couple’s course. Brek was named the volleyball coach at
Abilene Christian University in Abilene,
Texas. The Horns moved to nearby Anson
where Horn continued to help Duelm for
five years, but started following his passion in
the cattle business.
“I was messing a lot with the show pigs,
but my love was the cattle and I wanted to
get more in it,” Horn said.
He bought his first female from Kris Black
and started small. He went fulltime with his
cattle operation after his children were born.
He started performing extensive embryo
transfer work in 2004.
A Solid Gold Opportunity
In 2006, Horn and family friend, cattle
partner and veterinarian Dr. Warren Dozier
of Sylvester, Texas, took a chance on an unproven procedure and cloned a 30-day-old
Heat Wave steer out of a Charolais dam that
they had raised. “He was the most unique
steer at that point,” Horn said. “I knew rather
than to try to make one like him, the thing to
do was clone him.
“Early on, it was not an exact science,”
Horn added. Although the process only
produced one live calf, it was a bull calf that
has proven to be one of special few. Horn
enjoyed watching the growth process. “It was
neat to see them and see a lot of the same
characteristics as the cloned steer. It was neat
watching the clone grow over the year and
watching how the process generated how
that steer looked—the color, the soundness,
and how square and neat made they both
are.”
When the bull calf was a month old, the
steer that he’d been cloned from, “Irreplaceable” was named the grand champion steer
for Madison Kelly of New Braunfels at the
2008 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
“I’ve never been around one quite like that,”
Horn added. “He was sound and stout and
didn’t have a heavy birthweight. He had all
the neat pieces I look for and was the way I
like to breed them.”
Horn named the cloned bull calf “Solid
Gold,” and he’s been the grand slam sire for
Horn Livestock. Solid Gold has consistently
sired steers that have followed the family’s
winning tradition including the 2012 and 2013
grand champions at San Antonio and Hous-
ton and the 2012 reserve grand champion
steer in Houston. Solid Gold sons now serve
in the herd sire battery.
Solid Gold epitomizes the traits Horn
looks for in a club calf sire—great feet and
legs with a square rump, heavy bone with
a great rib, chest, neck and throat plus a
perfect head.
Horn’s operation has
grown with the Solid Gold
bloodlines and he now
raises 250 to 300 head annually, and markets through
private treaty and online
sales. Even though Horn’s
children, Jagger and Aven,
are now successfully showing themselves, Horn said
all of his cattle are for sale
at any time.
“We offer a lot of the ones
we raise and we
show a lot of the
ones we raise,
but our business
is based on fair
market values.”
Bull sales are
held in spring
and fall. Bull
prospects are
not pampered in
a feedyard-type
setting. Horn
prefers to wean bull calves and slowly grow
them on grass if it’s available with a modest
amount of feed until they are 1,000 pounds.
With recent drought conditions, he has fed
the bulls and grown them on hay without
shipping any bulls out of state. Semen is
marketed through hornlivestock.com or any
major distributor.
Steers sell private treaty for the most part with a few selling in
online sales. Heifers are sold online the first Monday in June while
embryos and cows are sold the first Monday in July.
“I want to be moving toward a cow sale that is not just an annual,
reduction-type sale, but it’s a production sale to sell some of the best
stuff I have every year,” Horn said.
Always in Play
Although Horn advertises his cattle, he says
word of mouth is his best advertising. “I get
more business from people who talk good
things about my livestock,” Horn said. He
sells cattle out of Texas from California to
Mississippi.
Horn doesn’t dwell on the disappointments, preferring to stay
positive and realize that everything happens for a reason. “I don’t
get overwhelmed with a drought. I don’t get overwhelmed if going
through periods of not winning a steer show or raising the very best
calf or bull.
“
Most people
know right
from wrong.
It’s whether
they choose to
do it.
Having a successful show cattle operation
means many hours on the road away from
home for Horn. “It’s hard,” he said. “You have
to have good help if something goes wrong
and you are not there to help. You just have
to try to stay focused on the big picture.
“I like to plan several years ahead. I try to
think about what’s the next big thing that I will try to do to set my
business apart from someone else’s, and that’s usually one to two
years in advance, or at least that’s what I strive for.
“I’m not nearly as smart as others. School was long and hard for
me. I try to make it up by outworking others,” he said. The secret to
my success is hard work, faith in God and a very understanding wife.”
Duelm agrees that Horn worked 100 miles an hour for him. “He’ll
go 18- to 20-hour days like me and put all he’s got into it. He never
says that’s enough, we can do it tomorrow,” Duelm said. “He always
says let’s get it done today so we can do whatever we need to get
done tomorrow.”
“I focus on trying to do the right thing,”
Horn continued. “A lot of times we lose focus on
what we are doing in this sport. We are trying to
raise good quality kids to make good decisions
when they are faced with making the right decision. Most people know right from wrong. It’s
whether they choose to do it. Sometimes if you
are not in the habit of making the right decision,
whether it’s morally or ethically, it’s hard to make
the right decision.
“If you get in the habit of doing it and
doing it right, it’s easier. If you know it’s going
to be wrong, don’t do it. Just do what’s right.
It might take more effort at that time, but over
time you don’t think about doing something that
you know is not right or ethical.”
Horn believes the keys to success in this business are honesty,
hard work and doing what you say you are going to do. “If you can’t
do what you say, you need to be able to communicate why you could
not,” he stressed.
Developing Future Industry Players
Duelm said Horn is dedicated to assisting kids that are in a jam. “The
guy will give. He has sold some livestock for some higher figures, but
he’s also helped a lot of kids that needed help,” Duelm said. “There
was a family in New Braunfels who doesn’t spend a lot of money and
I told Brandon we need to get this family to work hard and to try
hard and get them a couple of good calves. We both said whatever we have to do to make it work, let’s do it. This young lady had her
a breed champion and placed calves just about everywhere she showed. They didn’t spend a lot of money but had good success and
worked hard to have a lot of luck.
“I trusted him with my nine-year-old boy,” Duelm said. “When my son was in the third grade, I wasn’t able to go to Dallas to the
state fair, Brandon took him on his own and we ended up with the grand champion barrow that year.
Horn’s eye focuses on the future generation. He urges young people starting out in the business to have a plan and not be scared to
try something new.
Horn still has some new surprises at bat and hasn’t accomplished everything he wants yet, but he says he is on the way. “I’ve been
lucky enough to be successful with the grand champion at Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston and San Angelo,” he said. “I’d like to try
to accomplish the same goals as my kids show.
“It feels good to win shows when you put in a lot of work. My son had the grand steer at Phoenix this year and that was pretty special.”
For Horn, it’s all part of the master game plan to keep hitting them out of the ballpark, live comfortably and keep the bills paid.