The Cedar Creek Cattle Company is a partnership between Rick and Michele Adams and Bill and Conda Plaisance. We started with two main goals in mind: to have fun, and to show a profit from operations within a few years. We own or lease about 150 acres. One ranch is located 8 miles east of Lockhart, Texas and the other is at Tilmon, Texas. Our herd currently consists of 41 breeding females, 17 heifers in waiting, a couple of potential herd sires, a couple of young trophy steers and a herd sire by the name of High Center, a Highway Man son out of a Tabasco daughter.

It was obvious from the start that having fun raising Longhorns was going to be an easy goal to accomplish. The main reason is the people we met, from the get-go. At the first three ranches we visited, we not only purchased cattle, but also made really good friends. These friendships led to our introduction to the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America and the South Texas Longhorn Association. The people we met through these organizations were key to our success during our first year of operation. They provided valuable guidance and information that allowed us to learn more in the first year than we could have learned on our own in several years.

Early on we decided to concentrate on breeding Longhorns for sale rather than for show. We've concentrated on acquiring quality cows and using artificial insemination. This allows us to breed some of our cows to the best bulls in the country, and hopefully increase the value of their offspring. Rick volunteered to attend AI training at Bovine Elite. Then came the learning experience. We decided to AI our entire herd, so we sold our bull. This provided the opportunity for us to learn a lot. We were amazed at the different challenges each animal presented because no two are alike.

We learned how difficult it is to AI first calf heifers, how some cows really do not like to be handled and that it is very difficult to get a cow to settle during the heat of the summer. We also learned that one of the most important parts of the process is catching a cow when she first stands for the spotter bull. This requires getting up several times during the night to observe the herd. It's really fun to go walking through the pasture at night with a flashlight. This effort is all worthwhile once you start seeing the calves hit the ground. Rick is really proud to tell folks that he's "the daddy" of the AI calves.

We have used several bulls in our AI program, including The Shadow, Shadowizm, J.K. Sterling, Superman, LL Wrangler and Lockhorn. We are adding Super Bounce, Overhead, Tabasco and Phenomenon to this lineup for the next calving season. Now that we have learned so much about the AI process, we are more selective on which cows to AI to which bulls. As our herd grew, we decided to purchase our bull, High Center, to service our first calf heifers and cows that did not settle after a couple of AI attempts.

Another important piece of advice we received from the friends we've made is that marketing our cattle would be our biggest challenge. Truer words were never spoken. We decided to try to sell our Longhorns using the private treaty approach. We used newspaper classifieds to get started. Then Michele volunteered to obtain training to build a web site. Our web site "www.c4longhorns.com" was launched in October of 2001.

There was a lot to learn about building a successful web site. We viewed many existing web sites and determined what we liked about each one. We tried to incorporate some of these ideas into our site. The process also included selecting a hosting service, selection and registration of the site name and registering with several of the search engines, some free and some with fees. We also learned to take pretty good pictures of cows - even when they won't cooperate. It's very difficult to get a cow to pose for a picture.

The last important element we had to learn about sales was setting the sale price. We make every effort to set a fair price so that both our customers and we are happy when a sale is completed. We learned about pricing by going to consignment sales and recording the prices and catalog information obtained at these sales in a database. This was very useful to us when determining the value of an animal based on size, conformation, bloodlines and horn measurement. We also use the information we've accumulated to help us select AI sires that add value to their offspring. The lessons to be learned about the Longhorn business are never-ending. We are truly blessed to have made so many friends and acquaintances, and to be able to share information. It's like being part of a big family, and we just can't thank everyone enough.

We'd love to share information with you, show you our herd and get to know you better. You can reach us by phone at (512) 303-7017 or (512) 398-9340. Call or visit us any time.