The Cow Artist

I like cows. This is a pair that's interesting to me. The mother is a Hereford; her calf is a Black Baldy, which means Daddy was an Angus. It used to be that the hills--or rather, the prairies--were alive with the gorgeous rust-red of Herefords as far as your eye could see. It was red and white, all over the place, and hardly another color of cattle to be found. Problem was, Hereford heifers are small, Hereford bulls are big, you see the problem. So ranchers started breeding Angus bulls, which are smaller, to Hereford heifers, and they got more live calves and fewer dead mothers. But in so doing, they also changed the look of the plains. Now what you see is black and white, or just black, as far as the eye can see. In fewer than twenty years, the aesthetics of ranching in this part of the country has changed permanently.

I miss seeing fields full of purebred Hereford cattle. l loved the look of curly red and white on green grass in the summer and russet grass in the fall.

This pair was painted by The Cowboy Artist, whom I discovered only just now when I went searching for cows in Google Images. From what I can tell, she paints cows beautifully. To me--and trust me, I saw a few cows in my time as a rancher's wife--her cows really look and "feel" like the real thing.

I'd hang this painting on my wall, I really would, that's how much I like cows. I also like them in hamburgers.