By Patrick Cavanaugh
The late Rosalee Coleman lived in Live Oak County, Texas between San Antonio and Corpus Christi. She passed away, while working her cattle on May 25, 2017 at the age of 76 in George West Texas.
American Cattle News had interviewed her about a week before her death and gave us a heartfelt story of perseverance.
Thirty years ago, she had lost her husband, a cattle rancher, and she had to decide whether or not she was going to sell out or stay with it.
“He died in December and I thought well, I’ll calf out the cows and then I’ll sell them the next fall,” Coleman said by telephone. “By the time I had spent that much time doing it, I decided that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to work in an office somewhere. I wanted to keep the cattle,” she said.
And she said that she never looked back on that decision. “You know, it’s been a long road since then. I leased some land for a while and finally bought some, and then now I operate. I’m 76 years old, so I won’t be in it too many more years.”
And when she needs help on the ranch, her son Riley Rhodes, and other, are always there to help when she needs it. “They come when I work cattle, twice a year. My son will get a crew together. We earmark the calves and vaccinate them, and if they need it, they get castrated. The rest of the time I look after the cattle myself. I don’t have
She noted that Riley has a separate cattle operation on his own. He also has an auction barn and buys and sell lands. She also she has two daughters, Amy and Anna, and they are all part of a limited partnership, which she is the manager.
When I decide that I don’t want to be manager anymore, he can just take over and run my operation for the girls also.
“On part of my land I have white Brahman cattle that I breed to Hereford bulls, and I raise the F1 Cross. Most of the time they’re striped, and they have a white face. They’re very popular here in Texas because they can take the heat,” she noted.
“So, I raise the F1 heifers and then I have another herd on another place where it’s the F1 cows that I breed back to Charolais bulls. That’s your terminal cross, and buyers like that and they can go anywhere in the United States to be fed out, and they do really well,” she said.
