Rocking O Longhorns - About Us 2020 TLBAA Breeder Of The Year

The Ranch

Our ranch is located about 25 miles Southeast of Austin, and we have leased 1100 acres several miles south of Lockhart.

The People

Curtis, Chad, and Lex Ohlendorf

Rocking O Longhorns is a family owned and operated ranching operation.
Some of us have other significant time commitments, but we all enjoy the cattle and the time spent together bonding at the ranch.

Curtis Ohlendorf

Curtis Ohlendorf is a fifth generation Texas farmer/rancher and is the one most responsible for making Rocking O Longhorns what it is today. His love of animals and agriculture, along with a chance sighting of a colorful newborn longhorn at a cousin's ranch, were the inspiration of our herd. With help from his sons, he slowly grew the herd by leasing more and more land. Fence and pasture improvements were commonplace, and many a hot Texas day was spent carrying fenceposts and wire through rugged terrain. Since retiring from the University of Texas in 2008, he has managed to fill his time with the various activities involved in managing a cow herd that numbers about 375 breeding age females spread out on 3000 acres. As you can see by this picture, he is always on the move!

Ross Ohlendorf and CO Shamrock (picture courtesy of Sports Illustrated)

Ross Ohlendorf inherited his father's love of ranching, but his job as a Major League baseball pitcher used to keep him away from the ranch for about eight months of the year. He would help out at the ranch when at home and would stay as involved as he could during the season. He managed the website and handled most of the marketing. He also took advantage of his travels by stopping by a number of herds around the country. After playing for the New York Yankees, Pittsburgh Pirates, San Diego Padres and Washington Nationals, he was thrilled to be able to stay close to home for the 2015 season, signing with the Texas Rangers. That season was highlighted with a save in game 2 of the playoffs against the Toronto Blue Jays. For 2016, he ventured out of state again to be a relief pitcher with the Cincinnati Reds, and for 2017 he decided to go international, as a starting pitching for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. His love of longhorns has been well documented over the years, with feature stories in Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, Modern Farmer, Texas Monthly, the Texas Longhorn Journal, and a Tokyo newspaper. While playing baseball, Ross dreamed of one day returning to the ranch full time. That dream became a reality in the spring of 2018, and he has been working along side his father daily since then.

Our Customers
Our customers are key to us fulfilling our mission to spread the joy of owning Texas Longhorns. They generally fall into one of two groups. The first group is first-time longhorn owners. Many in this group are looking for a fun way to get their ag exemption, and they are drawn to longhorns for a variety of reasons including their eye appeal, their variety, their role in Texas history, and their ease of care. We also have a number of UT alumni looking for a longhorn or two to add to their commercial cow herd. The second group of customers is established longhorn breeders. These customers are often looking for something specific to enhance their program, whether it is a top young bull or heifer or one of our good producing cows. Our customers have included some of the most veteran breeders and owners of some of the most elite herds in the country.

There are a lot of good breeding programs out there, and we really appreciate our customers coming to us to start or add to their longhorn herd. In addition to offering great cattle, we strive to provide a great buying experience and ongoing customer service after the sale. We have experienced a lot in our twenty-five plus years raising longhorns and enjoy sharing our knowledge and opinions with our customers. We want our customers to have a positive buying experience and to get a lot of enjoyment out of their longhorns, and we have been rewarded with great relationships and a large number of repeat buyers.

Herd History
updated 10/28/2022

We bought our first three longhorns in December of 1995 from Bob Coffee's Travis Peak Ranch. Mr. Coffee was named the TLBAA Dave Evans Breeder of the Year in 1999 and served as a great mentor for us in establishing our herd. Many of our cattle still trace back to Travis Peak Ranch, where we purchased our first two herd sires named Ranger's Roughneck and Brawl. They were both out of the wonderful cow India, who was one of the top producers of show winners during her lifetime. We owned Brawl through his death in December of 2006, and as recently as 2010 we had over 40 of his daughters in our herd. He sired tremendous size and mothering ability, great color and his gentle disposition. We were able to use his son Big Chief as his replacement for a few years. Big Chief placed second in his class at the 2003 TLBAA World Show, where he was the biggest bodied bull his age. We also had the pleasure of raising Blue Jacket, the 1999 TLBT National Grand Champion Bull and TLBAA Reserve Junior World Champion Bull. His calves were very correct and thick, with great color and slick coats.

We have always preferred cattle with good horns but were primarily concerned with raising big, healthy, colorful calves in our early years. As we began paying more attention to the market we decided to increase the emphasis on horn length in our breeding program. In the spring of 2002, we purchased Capone from Darol Dickinson's ranch in Ohio. Capone had both the longest horns and the third best weaning weight from Darol's 2001 crop of bulls, which numbered over 100. While pleased with our purchase, we were not aware of just how tremendous a bull Capone would become. His horns surpassed the 70" mark before his 4th birthday, giving him some of the longest horns in the breed at the time. We sold Capone in 2006 but retained about 40 of his daughters. In the fall of 2016, we still had 9 of his daughters going strong and producing wonderful calves for us. Stockton Ranches bought not only Capone but also one of his daughters, CO Pinta, from us. CO Pinta was a colorful heifer with long, flat horns (from her sire) and good thickness (from her grandsire Blue Jacket). Stockton Ranches sold CO Pinta at the 2006 Legacy Sale for $49,000, making her one of the highest selling heifers of all time. We are very proud to have raised this heifer and happy to still own many of her close relatives.

After selling Capone, we decided to purchase two more bulls, Winner's Edge and Undeniable, from Darol Dickinson. Both bulls were sons of Winchester, who was the first bull we knew of to both weigh over a ton and have a tip to tip measurement over 70 inches. Undeniable was a full brother to Victory Lap, one of Darol's main herd sires. We used Undeniable for a few breeding seasons before deciding to sell him in favor of our other up and coming bulls. Winner's Edge was a staple of our program for six years, the second longest tenure of any bull we had used to that point behind Brawl's ten years. Edge's dam Queen of Not was a top cow in the breed at the time. Her horns were among the best, and her beauty was hard to match. We are incredibly happy with the job he did for us. He produced beautiful females with tremendous horn, color, conformation and milking ability. These cows raised great calves with any bull we put them with, and they formed the core of our breeding program. The Winner's Edge daughters out of Capone daughters out of Brawl daughters are very complete cows and great examples of the "pretty and productive" females we aim to raise at Rocking O. In 2022, we still have five cows with this exceptional pedigree.

From 2007 through 2010, Winner's Edge shared senior herd sire responsibilities with a tremendous Emperor son named Emperor's Echo, whom we purchased from Rafter H Longhorns. As you can see from his picture, Echo was a magnificent bull. Not only did he have amazing size and conformation, but his total horn measurement was also very good for his time. He was one of a small number of bulls to win both in the show circuit and the horn measuring contests, where he beat the great Boomerang CP. Echo's dam Country Girl sold for $17,000 as a 13-year-old and is one of the cornerstone females of the great El Coyote program. Echo's calves had great appeal for the show circuit. His daughter CO Appaloosa won Grand Champion Female in the youth shows at both the 2013 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and the 2013 TLBGCA Spring Show. Echo daughters raised big, well-built calves and regularly calved at 10.5-11 month intervals.

In May of 2010, we purchased the great Awesome Alamo from Panther Creek Ranch and Hudson Longhorns, and he maintained his role as a senior herd sire here for over four years. He was a beautiful bull, with great thickness, conformation, color, horn and pedigree. His dam Hatch's Candy Cane is regarded as one of the top cows in the history of the breed. Her offspring include SDR Candy Cane and Awesome Teardrop, who sold for $170,000 (the all-time record for a longhorn cow for many years) and $80,000 respectively. Alamo's first calf crop of 10 included a heifer with 70" horns before her fourth birthday and another heifer that sold for $25,000 and is currently over 80" tip to tip. He also produced a number of wonderful bulls and heifers for Bill Hudson and Joe Valentine, and his offspring are owned by successful breeders around the country. Alamo was one of the most consistent producing bulls we've seen. His calves have moderate frames, beefy bodies and great early horn growth. Many of them have flashy colors as well. Alamo daughters continue to have great demand today. The 2022 Eddie Wood Cowtown Classic sale was topped by an Awesome Alamo daughter at $40,000. A few of his best daughters have sold in the private treaty market recently for $30,000, $50,000 and $100,000. We feel the pretty colors, nice horn and beautfiul conformation he produces still has great demand today and hopefully will far into the future. He has made a powerful impact on our herd, and we are currently using three of his grandsons as herd sires.

For three years, JP Grand Richy shared senior herd sire responsibilities with Alamo. We purchased him at the 2011 Longhorn World Championship, where he had a total horn measurement of 103.5". This was the second best total horn measurement at the event, placing him ahead of his paternal brother JP Rio Grande, as well as Top Caliber and WS Jamakizm. Richy was the biggest-bodied bull at the event, and we felt fortunate to be able to buy him from Tom Christopher. Richy gave us large calves with a very healthy and growthy appearance, as well as great colors. His larger frame complimented Awesome Alamo's more moderate frame, and we had the option of breeding a cow to Richy to add size or to Alamo to add refinement. This combination worked very well for us for several years until we were ready to move to the next generation of herd sires.

In 2014, we promoted our exciting junior herd sires JR Laredo and Rolling Thunder to senior herd sire status, giving them each about 40-50 of our best cows. Laredo won bronzes for ttt and composite horn at his only measuring competition and ultimately was one of the first handful of bulls to make it to the exclusinve 90" tip to tip club. He had a really nice roll to his horns, which he tended to pass on to his calves. In addition to their beautfiul horn set, he was very consistent about passing on pretty faces, long bodies and beautiful dark pigments. The other herd sire Rolling Thunder was a son of Creole Dixie Lee, a big bodied cow with one of the most magnificent cork-screw twist horn sets in the breed. She was also a tremendous producer, with all of her mature daughters measuring at least 70 inches ttt and two of the three oldest measuring in the 80's when 80" cows were very rare. Thunder is one of the most attractive and most gentle bulls we have ever seen. His daughters are long and tall, with a very feminine and graceful look. Our Winner's Edge daugters really clicked with Rolling Thunder. One of these progeny was RO My Oh My, who we think was the first 95" twisty horn cow in the breed. The combination of JR Laredo and Rolling Thunder added femininity, horn, and beauty to our herd.

Over the last decade, we have strived to add distunguished herd sires to compliment JR Laredo and Rolling Thunder and push our breeding program forward. These well-known bulls have included Plumb Line, Lots Of Flair, JTW Testosstyrone (2012 TLBT National Reserve Grand Champion bull), Black Kettle (leading futurity-winning producer for several years), Hot Playboy, X Star, King Cowboy (2nd longest total horned bull in the breed at one time), Big City BCB, Patton HB (one of the first bulls to measure 95" tip to tip) and Jet Lag (still one of our favorites for the beautiful calves he produced). Our current herd sire lineup is as good as any we have had, with each bull possessing one or more industry leading qualities. CV Casanova's Magnum was the second bull in the breed to reach 90" tip to tip. His head and horn set are still as handsome as any bull we have seen. His blue roan color also leads to some very flashy calves. We are grateful to his owner Pat Ivicic for leasing him to us. Chard Iron and Non Stop are our two black and white bulls. Both are big bodied with excellent genetics for twisty horns and for mothering abilities. We have been using Non Stop on our JR Laredo and Rolling Thunder daughters for several years with great success. Stockman BCB had been one of our favorite herd sires at El Coyote Ranch for several years, and he was our top choice to replace Jet Lag after we sold him to Diamond B. Stockman produces flashy color patterns with as much consistency as any bull we have seen. He is also a terrific horn producer. We have owned four of his daughters and they are all very nice. We look forward to his first calves in the spring of 2023. BRR Sir Luca is a wonderful young bull we own in partnership with our friends at Bella Rio Ranch. His offspring have a beauty that is hard to beat. They are very complete animals, and we have Sir Luca with many of our best young cows. We also have several young bulls we raised that we are using. These bulls are very complete with genetics we trust for producing flashy, well-built, good-producing cows. Fire Chief and Jim Dandy are our JR Laredo sons, and Colt 45 is a son of CV Casanova's Magnum. Each is out of a special Awesome Alamo daughter. Our herd sire lineup has us very excited about the future of Rocking O Longhorns!

We have received several awards over the last decade from the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America. In 2018, we received the "Movers and Shakers" award for registering and transferring the most cattle. In 2020, we were voted the Dave Evans Breeder Of The Year! This was a very special award for us, especially since our mentor Bob Coffee had received this award 21 years earlier. We are very grateful to our customers and friends in the breed who made us receiving this award possible.

Our success is in the breed is a result of many factors, but when it comes to the quality and type of cattle in our herd, the herd sires we have used and the females we have purchased get a lot of the credit. We have been very fortunate to have been able to buy our pick of the females from some of the top programs in the breed as they retired from the business. These additions have really propelled us forward. There are three herds that we want to mention. These herds are special to us both for the cattle they raised and also for the people who raised them. The first herd we were able to purchase was Lazy L Longhorns. Lazy L was owned by the late Larry Stewart and his daughter Ashleigh. Over their 20+ years in the breed they purchased many of the best cattle and raised even better calves. They used embryo transfer and AI, but they also bought the best bulls they could find, regardless of price. They are the only program we know of in the last 20 years to have their own annual production sale. We were so fortunate to be able to purchase their best females as they gradually dwindled down their herd from 2013 through 2018. In 2022, we consider five of their cows to be among our very best, and we have featured four of them in our internal embryo program. Our first 100" cow LLL Pretty Lady was from their breeding. We cannot understate the value Lazy L Longhorns has had on our program, both in terms of the cattle we own today and the sales we have made to our valued customers from their genetics.

The second breeding program we were able to purchase was that of the legendary Jones Ranch owned by Ron and Jo Jones in Salida, Colorado. The Jones's reached out to us in 2020 to let us know they had sold their ranch and needed to sell their cattle... Our relationship with Ron and Jo started in 2007. For several years prior to that, Curtis Ohlendorf regularly checked their website for bulls for sale. When Ross Ohlendorf was first called up to the major leagues in September of 2007, he spent much of his first major league off day in his hotel room in Toronto going over the Jones Ranch website and taking notes on the cattle he was most interested in. His first purchase after being called to the Major Leagues was from the Jones Ranch, and every year or two we would add more JR cattle to our Rocking O herd. These purchases included beautiful females and industry leading bulls such as JR Laredo and JR Flash. One year, we were snowed in while going to Salida to pick up cattle. The Jones's were wonderful hosts and we are so grateful for the day we spent with them waiting for the snow to melt. After Bob Coffee, the Jones's became the second most influentual mentors for us, and we are so honored that they chose to reach out to us in 2020 to give us the first opportunity to buy their cattle. We picked our favroite nine females, two of which we plan to keep in our herd indefinitely. The Jones's are special people in the Texas Longhorn breed, and we are so honored to be able to help carry on their genetics!

The third breeding program that has a special place in our herd and our hearts is Buckhorn Cattle Company, owned by Buck and Sharon Adams of Guthrie, Oklahoma. We first met Buck in 2015 when we traveled to Oklahoma to see his herd. We had long admired the conformation and beauty of the Buckhorn cattle we had seen in herds around the country. On that first trip, we purchased a beautiful young cow named BH Quiver and her newborn Rio Diego heifer calf. A few things stuck out to us from our visit - first of all, Buck was one of the nicest people we had met in the Texas Longhorn breed (which is really saying something). Second, the cattle in his herd were even better than those BH cattle we had seen previously. Third, he knew what he liked and had a plan for producing it. He only used the best bulls in the breed, and he purchased females that added something special to his herd. Buck also wasn't afraid to cull cattle at the sale barn. Many breeders want to sell as many cattle as they can. For Buck, if he wasn't proud of an animal, he would take it to the sale barn. He truly had a breeding program and not just a herd. One interesting memory from that trip - Buck told us his ideal cow was around 1100 pounds. At the time, we felt bigger was better, but as we thought about Buck's comment and the cows that we were most attracted to, we finally realized that we really liked the smoothness, longevity and beauty that the 1100 pound cow tends to exhibit, while still being big enough to have a nice prescence in the pasture. His comment helped shape our strategy with our breedings and bull selection in ways he never intended when making that comment.

In late 2020, Buck reached out to us saying he was ready to slow down and wanting to know if we would be interested in purchasing most of his cattle. Our intial reaction was "definitely if we have the space." Buck worked with us on timing, and we were able to make it work with the space as a result. We are so blessed that he picked us to take over his breeding program and that he was so determined to make it work for us both. When we went to Guthrie to look at their cattle, Buck and Sharon were wonderful hosts. They provided us a place to stay and had us over for a wonderful dinner where we discussed many life lesson that we will keep with us for a long time. They are truly wonderful people, and we are grateful to the Texas Longhorn breed for exposing us to them and many other wonderful friends! In the end, we purchased Patton HB, Delta Lucky Duck, and fifty Buckhorn females. Some of our customers were able to acquire Buckhorn cattle from us, but many of these females will stay in our herd a long time. Buck and Sharon maintained about 25 females and two very nice young herd sires... In the fall of 2022 they sold us these cattle as well. We are so grateful for their friendship and for them pushing our breeding program forward.

In addition to the three herds mentioned above, we have many other wonderful friends in the breed who have consistently sold us wonderful cattle. Bella Rio Ranch (David, younger David, Becca and Matt Vizza), Travis Peak Ranch (the late Bob Coffee), El Coyote Ranch (Felix and Della Serna), Stockton Ranches (John Stockton and Bill and Susan Burton), and Dickinson Cattle Company (Darol and Joel Dickinson) had each been raising longhorn for many years when we got started in 1995. We have benefitted greatly from their friendships, advice and cattle. Ben Garner, Scott Edwards, Diamond B, DCT Cattle Company, KDK Longhorns, TLS Longhorns, Pat Ivicic and Sneed Ranch started their herds with our cattle and have in turn sold really nice cattle to us. Other long-time breeders that have influenced our herd include Safari B Ranch, Ty Wehring, Brazos Rose Ranch, Lonesome Pines, Tom Christopher, Joe and Lorinda Valentine, Kathy Palladini, Lynn and Josie Struthoff, Tom and Judy Meredith, John Marshall, Bow Carpenter, Mike Casey, Hudson Longhorns, Red McCombs, Bob Loomis and Brent and Cindy Bolen.

Thank you for reading about our past at Rocking O Longhorns. We hope you will be part of our future!

2020 Texas Longhorn Breeder Of The Year (TLBAA's Dave Evans Award)