About Us
Located 5 miles north of the central Texas community of Holland, on Texas Highway 95, La Encinada Ranch has been a registered red angus operation for over 35 years, specializing in raising registered breeding seedstock, mostly bulls, for the commercial cattleman.After raising commercial and registered red brangus for over 10 years, in 1980 we purchased a trailer load of registered red angus cows at the Texas Red Angus Association sale in West, Texas along with a registered red angus bull, KS TOPPER----out of the herd of pioneer Texas red angus breeder, Owen Kolle of Inez, Tx. KS TOPPER was an own son of LEACHMAN DYNAMO 327, himself a red son of the famous ANKONIAN DYNAMO, a several times national grand champion black angus bull that carried the red gene.We were so impressed with the red angus calves out of that bull that in the summer of 1983 we purchased the top 22 cow/calf pairs at the famous Powell Red Angus dispersal near Mobile, Alabama and brought them to central Texas along with a breeding/semen interest in their top bull, RED QUANTOCK 34N, out of Canada, and who sold in that same sale to South Carolina for $10,000. Red Quantock 34N was a Chiefline son of the famous Chiefline stud bull PBC D0202 6M H 904----better known in the breed as H0904.We had already been breeding extensively with artificial insemination since 1980. Using those initial cow purchases as a nucleus and with the help of AI and embryo transfer we had our first bull sale in March 1987 here at the ranch. We have not purchased any more animals since 1983 and everything we sell was bred and raised here. Our sires are all AI and the clean up bulls we raise ourselves and out of AI themselves.We now run between 120-200 registered red angus cows and calve them all in two seasons---spring and fall. We synchronize and breed artificially one time each season and then turn out clean up bulls for a total of 60 days. We like for our calves to be born within 60 days for comparison and also for management purposes. All our calves are raised on their mama’s milk and grazing---no creeb feed.We held annual bull sales from 1987 to 1996--here at the ranch---selling bulls throughout Texas and Mexico as well as most states of the southern U. S. Since 1996 our marketing has all been by private treaty. We have also exported many breeding bulls to Mexico over the years. Unfortunately, we have now stopped that because of increasing regulatory hurdles for exporting livestock.Since 1996 we have been selling the majority of our bull calves soon after weaning and letting the buyers grow them out themselves. Most of our bull buyers are large commercial cattlemen and repeat buyers who value the quality of our bulls and what they bring to the calves they produce. We find that by selling our bulls in this manner we are able to keep our selling prices low and our own financial investment reasonable.The bulls we do keep for selling at an older age are all grown on summer grass pastures and winter oats---we feed no grain. We use range cubes to gentle our cattle---bulls and heifers--- and to train them to come when called. We don’t chase or harass them and don’t need horses.