The previous evening, an employee of 44 Farms warned me to watch for deer as I navigated toward the main highway from the 44 Farms ranch a few miles northwest of Cameron. As I returned to the ranch the next morning, the fog and the threat of deer had my full attention. A big day lay ahead at 44 Farms, and I didn't want any unexpected run-ins with the wildlife to spoil my plans.
****
Over the last several years, restaurants across Dallas have leaned into sharing where they source the food they serve. It's a trend that customers are in tune with. What started as “farm to table” has expanded to the point where it’s not uncommon to see even smaller restaurants touting the relationships they have with suppliers.
44 Farms is a name that appears often, particularly in beef-loving Texas. Rodeo Goat’s multiple locations all serve burgers made from 44 Farms beef. That slice of succulent brisket you get at Zavala’s Barbecue in Grand Prairie comes from 44 Farms, too. And at Knife Steakhouse in Dallas, Knife Plano at Willow Bend and Knife Italian in Las Colinas, 44 Farms steaks are all over the menu, a decision chef John Tesar made before he opened the first Knife location over a decade ago.
It’s natural to assume that these and other restaurants are serving 44 Farms beef because they trust the source of the product that goes into their delicious dishes. But we wondered what 44 Farms was doing differently to produce beef that Dallas restaurants adore. We heard that 44 Farms was hosting a bull sale on Oct. 26, with ranchers across the country descending on Cameron, so we trekked 160 miles south to tag along and learn more.
****
Bob McClaren is 44 Farms’ president and CEO. He’s tall and tan, with silver hair and a comforting, paternal voice. The 44 Farms ranch is the same land, next to the Little River, where his great grandparents started ranching over a century ago. But McClaren’s dad told Bob how hard it was to make a living on a small ranch and implored him to do something else with his life.
“So I followed his advice and became a lawyer,” McLaren says.
In the mid-1990s, McClaren and his sister acquired a third of the family ranch, about 200 acres. McClaren bought out his relatives' share and worked on expanding the ranch, convinced that he could make more than a meager living.
“It was wild, and it was rough, but I remembered what my dad had said, that unless you had a big ranch, making a living was tough” McClaren says.
After clearing much of the land to function as a ranch, McClaren went to work selecting the breed of cattle he would raise. Longhorn cattle are an ingrained piece of Texas’ cultural identity, but McClaren believed that Black Angus cattle could be successfully raised in Texas.
“I thought that if people knew about the Angus breed in Texas, they would see the value that others were seeing,” McClaren says. “The knock on Angus cattle is that they wouldn’t survive in hot and humid weather here, but we tried it, and they’ve thrived. They really do quite well.”
McClaren says that most cattle ranches in Texas now have Black Angus cattle, which was unheard of just 20 years ago.
****
Despite younger generations who are dialing back how much red meat they eat, the United States remains a country of beef eaters. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, just under 27 billion pounds of beef was produced nationwide in 2023, and the figure looks to tick up slightly in 2024.
If I had any questions about the scale of this business, my visit to 44 Farms’ fall bull sale removed any doubt. For Jarrod Payne, 44 Farms’ director of cattle operations, this is his Super Bowl.
“We started planning for this day in May. We’ve been busy every day for months, and this will all be over in 10 hours,” Payne says.
The fall bull sale (there's another sale in the spring) is the opportunity for cattle ranchers from across the country to leverage 44 Farms’ experience in raising high-quality Angus cattle and to incorporate those genetics into their own herds. When we arrived just before dawn, the glow of klieg lights reflected in the morning fog as ranch hands finished bringing almost 700 bulls into the pens adjacent to a barn where the auction would begin at 10 a.m.
According to Payne, the bulls for sale this day are all less than two years old. Copies of a 300-page catalog are on every table in the main building, detailing traits like temperament, carcass marbling and lineage of each bull for sale. As the auction nears, every rancher has either the catalog or a cheat sheet in front of them. Attendees fill up on breakfast tacos stuffed with brisket and eggs, plus plenty of coffee, before heading next door to the auction barn.
The data on each bull allows 44 Farms to offer cattle that meet the needs of each rancher, which might change depending on where their ranch is located, the age or the purpose of their herd. At a dinner hosted by 44 Farms the evening before the auction, we met cattle ranchers from West Texas, California, Nebraska and Wisconsin, each looking for something unique to their operation.
“No animal sold today is ending up on someone’s plate,” Payne explains for the layman. “These bulls will go out to breed with other cattle, which produce beef for consumption.”
Through a subsidiary called Prime Pursuits, 44 Farms maintains relationships with ranchers who purchase their bulls and then buy calves that have been bred from their stock. Prime Pursuits’ largest partner is Wal-Mart, which works hand in hand with 44 Farms and Prime Pursuits to sell Angus beef in over 500 Wal-Mart stores across the Southeast under the McClaren Farms brand.
Breeding high-quality cattle brings big money, and many of the bulls sold at the fall sale will fetch $10,000 or more. Lot No. 1 in this year’s auction is a bull known as 44 Razzle Dazzle L909. He's the prized bull of the sale, with a lineage from other high-performing bulls at past auctions. When the auction starts, there are shouts from bidders as the auctioneer’s cadence shifts into high gear. In less than a minute, Razzle Dazzle sells for $120,000 with the bang of the gavel, and the auction is underway.
***
John Tesar was still in the planning stages of his restaurant, Knife, in early 2014. But after trying 44 Farms beef for the first time, he knew what he wanted to serve in his restaurant.
“In Texas, there's so many steakhouses, and when I did this research around the country, the most average part of the meal at most steakhouses is steak, to be honest,” Tesar says. “So when I found 44 Farms, there was a unique flavor in it.”
Tesar’s first experience with 44 Farms beef was a 72-hour short rib from CBD Provisions in Dallas, which Tesar found to be phenomenal. The next week, he was at a meeting with the business partners from the hotel where Knife would be located, and they took him to dinner at CBD again.
“So they take me to dinner at CDB, and I order that 72-hour short rib again just to taste it. And that flavor is still there,” Tesar recalls.
Tesar had already decided that his restaurant would implement a dry-aging steak program. He had learned about dry aging from fellow chefs Daniel Perry Lang and Mario Batali and knew he would need consistently flavorful beef.
“I had found this dry-aging process with Adam and Mario, then I found 44 Farms and it was magic,” Tesar says. “I like to think it’s been the secret to both of our successes.”
44 Farms had launched a steak program in 2011, but its reach into restaurants was still small. Tesar recalls the ranch was processing perhaps 20 head of cattle a week to supply restaurants directly. Today, McClaren says that the number to supply restaurants directly with beef is closer to 400 head of cattle a week.
****
Tyler Gideon (left) works at 44 Farms, where Jake Gideon and Brent Hodges review cattle before the auction.
Nathan Hunsinger
McClaren distills the quality of the beef down to two factors.
“Number one, it’s the genetics. Number two, it’s how we develop them on these wide open pastures with fresh water,” McClaren says.
Tesar expands on how he can taste the difference in beef.
“Yeah, there’s integrity of the breeding, but it's the feed. The corn is so minimal. It’s grass and roughage, it’s sorghum and molasses, which is your sugar substitute that develops the marbling later on in the process,” Tesar says. “You can't deny it because it's in the flavor, and you see the popularity of other people using it.”
****
The image of a dusty rancher raising cattle on a farm is easy to picture, but today’s ranchers and producers are much more in tune with the ways of science and sustainability that go with the hard work of being a cattle rancher. The 44 Farms team includes people with titles like chief genetics officer and director of sustainability. There’s even a director of farm operations who previously worked on providing turf grass for Super Bowls and other athletic teams. He now oversees the natural grasses that feed 44 Farms’ own herds.
The auction was perhaps a third of the way through when I walked over to the 44 Farms office to grab some lunch: chicken-fried steak with a jalapeño cream gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans. Tables fill quickly in the main room while the auction next door is broadcast on TVs. I caught up with McClaren, who couldn't walk more than a few feet before chatting up a rancher he knows.
“I still can’t believe people take the time to come to Cameron, see our cattle and be a part of all of this,” McClaren says. But it's obvious that 44 Farms is working on all fronts to add value for fellow ranchers and restaurants alike by developing relationships that benefit everyone involved. For McClaren, the circular nature of the business couldn’t be more clear.
“We take care of the land and the cattle, and they’ll take care of us.”
