The Watusi Longhorn

Last week the Trail Riders were on their way to Houston for the Livestock

Show and Rodeo. I planned to take pictures of the riders and wagons for some future painting projects that I have in mind. So on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009, I figured they had to be getting close to Houston because the big parade is scheduled to be on the following Saturday. So after breakfast, I got my cameras and went west on FM 1960 to Texas Highway 249 and started up the highway. I go all the way up Texas Highway 249 to Magnolia and couldn’t find them, so I took FM 1488 west over to Waller, Texas. I turned on US 290 toward Houston hoping to find the trail riders on the way back. Passing through the tiny community of Hockley, I noticed about half a dozen longhorn cattle in a small field on the south side of the highway. Since I always try to get pictures of longhorns for my image library, I put finding the trail riders on the back burner.

I exited off the main highway onto the feeder road and found an underpass and went back to find those longhorns. I found them and parked beside the highway and approached the fence. I was stunned at the size of the horns on several of these longhorns. The horns on the bull, several of the cows and especially on a large steer were extra long and very thick at the base next to the head. A steer, a big white one with red patches and spots, in particular, caught my attention. He was just magnificent. As I photographed and stared at him, I just had a sense of responsibility that it was my duty to do a portrait of him so that his image will live on for all to see.

One of the cows, a regular type longhorn, with a spotted roan color, came over close by to stare at me. A yearling steer got up and he and a young calf came over close by to also look me over. His horns also were very thick at the base, but not yet very long. None of them seemed to be too concerned or alarmed about me. The large bull was lying down chewing his cud, he never got up. He just ignored me and continued to chew his cud. The big white steer wandered over to get directly opposite me on the other side of the fence. He didn’t seem to be alarmed, just curious. Up close to him, I estimated the distance, tip to tip, of his horns to be a little over the reach of my outstretched finger tips, over six feet. After we stared at each other, eye to eye, not five feet apart, for a minute or so, he calmly decided that it was time for me to leave and slowly shook his huge right horn tip at my face. In doing so, his right horn came through the fence. Knowing that he could easily tear the barbed wire fence apart, I backed up, keeping eye contact with him, and retreated to my car. In watching him from my car, I could tell he knew exactly the location of each of the tips of his horns. For a few moments, he calmly looked at where the tip of his horn was through the fence and he slowly tilted his head in the right way to free the horn tip from under the barbed wire and then carefully backed away and removed his horn tip from the fence wire.

I knew that these cattle were not ordinary Texas longhorns. Down the road a short distance was a small metal working shop. I went down there to see if the owner of the shop knew who owned these unusual longhorns. The man in the shop said the bull is a full blooded “Watusi” and some of the others are part Watusi and part Texas Longhorns. They belong to a fellow named Ronnie Whitehead that owns the fertilizer company on the other side of the highway and he lives in that house across the highway, pointing to a home several hundred yards away. Mr. Whitehead was not at home, however I did get to talk to him on the telephone. He said the old bull was a registered Watusi and the big white steer is half Watusi and half Texas longhorn. The steer is about six years old. He invited me to come up some day and we will go into the pasture with them. He said the big steer is not quite as gentle as the others since he didn’t spend enough time with him when he was a calf. When I asked if he has a name, he laughed and said he doesn’t name his cattle. So I named him “The Watusi Longhorn”.

When I got back to the office, I wanted to find out something about the Watusi breed of cattle. They get their modern name from the Afican tribes, the Watusi and Ankole, in eastern Africa that breed them. They are an ancient breed and first appear on pictographs that are about 6000 years old in the Nile Valley in Egypt. They were and still are considered scared cattle to be owned by only the kings and tribal chiefs. Since the kings and chiefs counted their wealth by how many of them they owned, they were generally only milked and not slaughtered for their meat. By nature they are gentle and not aggressive. Only in the last thirty years or so have they been imported into the United States. In 1989, The Ankole Watusi International Registry was organized in the U. S. and adopted a breed standard for registration.

Finding the Watusi cattle is one of the unplanned fun things that I now get to do as I am out and about hunting things to draw and paint. It is almost sinful at how much fun I am now having finding unusual things and meeting new people. I did get some pictures of the trail riders and their wagons on Saturday morning as they were leaving Memorial Park on their way to the parade in downtown Houston.