Mark Hannan figured out a long time ago that closely bred cattle give more consistent performance.
He learned that from the extensive use of Jersey dairy cattle in his East Texas dairy.
Nine years ago, Hannan began scouring the nation for the few remaining strains of linebred beef cattle. He bought the best representative groups he could and started his own linebred herds, an operation he calls Happy Cattle Company, just south of Canton, TX.
One of the lines he brought home is a group of Trask Polled Herefords, once propagated by South Carolinian Neil Trask. These are the cattle which people so far are most likely to buy from him as seedstock, Hannan says.
However, that's not all the old-line seedstock he collected.