The Cows and the Steers

Livestock 101: Houston Rodeo lessons for the city slicker

Walk around the livestock show and you will see lots of Brahman bulls.
Photo by Heather Staible
An auction drew a major international crowd of buyers.
Photo by Heather Staible
Livestock 101: From left, a bull, a calf and a cow.

As a native Houston and lifelong Rodeo goer, I pick up a few helpful tidbits every year. Like, no matter how cute those new sandals are, do not, I repeat, do not, wear them to the livestock show. There’s a reason everybody wears boots.

Also, it’s amazing how just one bite into a bacon-topped hamburger all guilt disappears — despite the fact you just marveled at the size of a steer and oohed and aahed over the piglets. Oh, and cowboys dancing to Jay-Z never gets old. There’s just something about Wranglers and rap that is at the very least, highly amusing.

There are some livestock basics, however, that I was a bit confused about. Those boy cows, aren’t really cows and guess what? Those aren’t really udders either. With my proud-to-be-a Texan rep in jeopardy, I got a 4H 411 from Joel Cowley, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Livestock director, who thankfully didn’t smirk once during our chat.

I’m pretty sure in the cattle hierarchy, you’d rather be a bull, especially since you get to keep your manhood. Technically, a bull is a male capable of reproducing and is prized for its genetics, which is spread among thousands of ranches literally around the world. As a matter of fact, all the animals at the Houston livestock show are the crème de la crème and ranchers come from Latin America and Europe to acquire an elite bull’s genetic material.

A steer, on the other hand, did lose the family jewels and will someday end up on a dinner plate accompanied by a sturdy cabernet. The castrated males are more docile and, without all those hormones, the meat is much more tender.

So then female bovines are cows, right? Well, kinda. What separates the heifers from the cows are calves. Heifers are less than three years old and haven’t had a baby, while cows come of age after giving birth. Just when I was feeling all sad for the steers and their lot in life, I had a surge of empathy for the cows sold at the livestock show. The prize-winning mamas are implanted with the stud bulls ... ah ... gift of life, and through an embryo flush, can have up to 20 calves born through other cows, but with their DNA.

All that and no dinner? The bull definitely comes out on top of this setup.

The philosophy is the same for all the livestock animals really. In the pig department, a barrow is a young, castrated male pig and a boar is an uncastrated male pig. A sow is a mature female swine, a pig is a young swine, usually weighing less than 120 pounds and a gilt is a young female pig. Upon learning this latter bit of information about a young female pig, I will never look at Gilt Groupe the same way again.

A doe is indeed a female deer, but the term also applies to an adult female rabbit or goat. And while we are on goats, a kid is a young goat (makes sense) and a wether is a castrated male sheep or goat. A ewe is a female sheep, a ram is a male sheep and a lamb is a sheep that’s less than one-year-old.

I also had a couple of Oprah ah-ha moments in my livestock 101 tutorial with Cowley (did I mention he didn’t make fun of me once?) that I am happy to share with other city dwellers. Walk around the livestock show and you will see lots of Brahman bulls. Originally from India, Brahman bulls have developed an amazing resistance to heat, humidity and insects, making it a no-brainer breed for the Gulf Coast region.

Many cattle are the result of combo mating, taking the best elements of two breeds to create a superior animal. So, when you’re wandering around the livestock show, hoping the scent of farm will start to smell like lavender fields, read the signs. A Braford is the mix of a Brahman and a Hereford, 3/8 Brahman and 5/8 Hereford, and came about after a South Florida rancher needed to adapt his pure Hereford cattle to the environment. Enter the Brahman and voila! A new breed was born.

I also learned a bit about Kobe beef, a popular meat that seems to have replaced Chilean Sea Bass as a menu must-have. Kobe is actually the region in Japan where all Japanese cattle or Wagyu are found. "Wa" means Japanese or Japanese-style and "gyu" means cattle and Cowley says Wagyu is still a niche beef in America, but is impressive nonetheless.

“Here in the U.S. Prime is our top beef. In Japan, they start at Prime and go from there,” Cowley says.

Throughout the livestock show, pens are in constant rotation, so one day you can see the sheep and a few days later, check out rabbits. Whatever you do though, don’t call everything a cow.

There's a chance that testosterone-filled bull won’t appreciate it very much.

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Art on the Prairie

The roots of Lone Star art: William Reaves unearths the Texas modernistlandscape

Richard Stout, "Evenings Fall," 1967
David Adickes, "Three Men on a Beach," 1953
Jack Boynton, "Inland Lights," 1956
Emma Richardson Cherry, "Southern Morning," c. 1930

This month's editorial series, True Grit: Houston Style, has sought to answer to what extent Houston embraces its Texas roots. To investigate how Houston artists have come to terms with their state's landscape, we went to William Reaves Fine Art, a gallery whose mission is to define modernism in Texas.

"We opened the gallery to convey a story about the evolution of modernism in our state," says the gallery's owner, William Reaves. He pinpoints Houston as the "birthplace" of Texas modernism for the community's willingness to display abstract works in museums and support award-winning artists as early as the 1930s. Artist-teachers like Emma Richardson Cherry and Ella McNeil Davidson had means to travel internationally and cultivated a generation of informed local artists like Robert Preusser and Frank Dolejska in the 1920s and '30s via institutions like the Art League and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Reaves notes that much ink has been spilt chronicling the first half of the 20th century in Texas art, but it was not until after World War II that the region received the necessary influx of knowledgeable artists to create an enduring community. Several local artists who stayed in Europe after the war brought back global influences. Paris was briefly home to a creative Texan expat culture, inculcating such minds as Herb Meers and David Adickes, who studied under the lionized Cubist painter Fernand Léger.

"This sort of French-looking, Texas cubist school that they created when they returned was very different from the bluebonnets people were used to seeing," says Reaves.

As the 1950s progressed, Houston became a "hotbed" for non-representational art, led by figures like Jack Boynton and Richard Stout (whose work from the era will be on view in an exhibition opening Friday). "A lot of this stuff from the '50s is new again because it's been kind of squirreled away in closets for awhile," says Reaves. "It comes off as fresh because there's a kinship with contemporary artists."

No doubt that international currents increasingly flowed into the local art mix, but did Houston artists ever completely turn their back on the Texas landscape?

"My impression is that it's a blend," says the gallery owner, citing Richard Stout as an example of an artist who has studied under other masters and blended that style with an impression of the state. Explains Reaves,

He paints in an expressionist style and has been informed by a lot of different artists over time. In addition, he was an art professor at UH for 25 years, so he's very aware of what's going on internationally. But Richard is also from Beaumont and his work almost always sees a landscape influence — a lot of coastal plains and rich atmosphere. Yet it is painted in a way that is informed by a lot of important artists from the New York School."

Similarly, Boynton and McKie Trotter presented work at New York galleries, yet their respective reductive landscapes and abstract expressionist works evince a horizon line evocative of the wide skies and flatness of Texas.

In truth, the link between Houston artists and their Texas roots is not a black-and-white issue. But to some extent, the answer is embedded in the cadre of works on view at William Reaves Fine Art. More than simply display and distribute artworks, the gallery presents curated thematic exhibitions that are accompanied by robust physical and online catalogues derived from research conducted at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Hirsch Library.

"The gestalt of what we're trying to do," says Reaves, "is trace a history of Texas art that may have been overlooked, but at its zenith, there's this beautiful, vital modernism."

The exhibitions Lone Star Modernism: A Celebration of Mid-Century Texas Art and Richard Stout: The Early Years open Friday, with a reception April 9, 5 - 8 p.m. A gallery talk will be held April 30 from 2 - 4 p.m. Both exhibitions are on view through May 7.

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