By Robert Marlin
Much has been written about what makes a good marriage. My favorite quote on the subject has no author— “A good marriage is one where each partner secretly suspects they got the better deal.” A widely held belief is that couples who have long-lasting marriages share five basic characteristics: communication, commitment, kindness, acceptance, and love. Any couple that reaches fifty years, their Golden Wedding Anniversary, obviously has staying power.
Jane and Hayden Moore celebrated their fifty-ninth anniversary last June. While Jane will tell you she and Hayden share the five basic characteristics enumerated above, she will also tell you their marriage has lasted for a simple reason. “We love being together.”
Jane first laid eyes on Hayden during the summer of 1960. She was at a friend’s house and saw Hayden from an upstairs window as he drove up in a yellow ’58 Corvette. She was almost sixteen and a student at John Tyler High School. Hayden, who was nineteen at the time, had been a student at the old Tyler High School when Robert E. Lee High School was built before his senior year. Half the students transferred to the new Robert E. Lee High School, and the other half remained at John Tyler High School. Hayden scored the first two points ever in a basketball game between JT and Lee. “We beat Lee in both basketball and baseball in my senior year,” Hayden says with the pride of an athlete who was part of the beginning of the now-famous cross-town rivalry.
“The night we met, we found out we had a lot in common,” Jane remembers. “I told him my father had a farm and raised cattle off the Old Overton Road east of Tyler. He told me his family had a farm with cattle and roses on the west side of Tyler. We had a mutual attraction that night and started dating after that. Three years later we were married.”
Hayden Moore will turn eighty-two on October 11, 2022. “I’ve been involved with agriculture my whole life,” Hayden boasts. “The only time I ever had a paying job was in the United States Marine Corps, $89 a month. I’ve always been self-employed. Jane worked at several different jobs, and that allowed me to farm and ranch.”
It was their partnership in marriage that enabled their partnership on the farm. “I had several jobs over the years,” says Jane. “I worked at First Federal Savings and Loan up until our daughter Jennifer was born. Then, for a while I was a stay-at-home mom. But even then, I helped in the rose fields. I worked in the office at Consolidated Nurseries for two winters during the shipping seasons. Then, in 1977, I earned my real estate license and had a short career before going back into the rose fields after Hayden’s father passed away. I was always helping on the farm, no matter what.” Jane later worked at the Tyler Rose Museum; then CBS19 before retiring.
As a third generation rose grower, Hayden grew up on the family farm west of Tyler. “My family had twenty-seven Jersey cows and a dozen acres of roses. It was my grandparents, my mom and dad, my two sisters and me. My daddy grew crops for the government during World War II—peanuts and cotton. We also sold milk and butter that came from our cows … all on a hundred-acre farm.”
One of the earliest experiences Hayden remembers took place when he was about six years old. “My daddy bought a three-day-old Jersey heifer that we raised on a bottle. Her name was Star, and I helped take care of her. We raised several calves from her. That’s when my love of farming and ranching began.”
“My earliest farming experience happened when I was about six,” says Jane. “When I was growing up, we lived in town where my daddy had a full-time job at McMurrey Refinery. He had his farm as a sideline. My brother, Jim and I would help him feed the cows and follow him around while he did all the things that were necessary to keep the farm running. I loved going to the farm with my family. The farm was always fun for me; not so much for my brother who was charged with doing chores.”
By the time Hayden was nineteen, he wanted his own place and bought fifty-one acres from W.D. Dyess, a prominent nurseryman. “Rose production was at its height in the early 1950s. Local nurseries built cold storage units and packaged roses grown in the Tyler area that were shipped all over the United States. By the 1960s, our family was still in a co-op growing roses. I wanted to get into the wholesale business, and around 1967, I managed to get a Federal Land Bank loan to build a cold storage and packing shed.”
Hayden always had a good head for business and immediately saw that selling rose bushes and only making five cents per bare-root bush was not a good business model. He knew he needed to do something different if he was going to make his rose business worthwhile financially. “That’s when I got the idea to get a list of all the nurseries in the southeast. I made a price list for the 200,000 bushes I had on hand and Jane sent it to every nursery on the list. I sold my entire crop from that list of nurseries,” he remembers, smiling broadly. “John and Clay Ford and Otis Tate were the only other growers who were selling wholesale bare-root roses at that time. We had over one hundred customers, buying between one hundred and two thousand rose bushes each. I did that for twenty-five years, but toward the end, it was getting harder to make money on the roses.”
There were several factors that spelled trouble for the Moore’s rose business. One was the problem of getting labor to work the fields. “When you plant a rose bush, your money goes into the ground for at least two years. You must buy all the things (equipment, fertilizer, chemicals, etc.) needed to make that crop grow. By the time the rose bushes are ready to process, package, and sell, you’ve invested two and a half years in the crop before you can sell it.”
The other factor, which was more detrimental, was brought to Hayden’s attention when a customer from Biloxi, Mississippi, called one day, “Hayden, Walmart and K-Mart are selling rose bushes cheaper than I can buy them from you wholesale!”
“Our last rose crop was in 1992. That was the year we decided to concentrate on cattle,” Hayden explains. “The same year I started in the wholesale rose business, 1967, I consulted with experienced Brahman breeder, Dean Blackwell, and purchased eight mature cows from Mr. E.O. Doggett.”
Doggett was a local businessman who dabbled in a variety of business interests. He was a land developer, known for the Tanglewood Addition, and owned a local bottling company. He was also involved in cattle breeding and was one of the men who developed Red Brahman cattle in East Texas. “By the time my rose business was no longer profitable, I had been learning the cattle breeding business for twenty-five years. I had to make a choice, and I chose to stick with cattle breeding.”
The single thing that made East Texas a good place for breeding cattle was the introduction of Coastal Bermuda grass. As Hayden explains it, W.D. Dyess and Paul Brush made a trip to Tifton, Georgia, as members of the East Texas Farm and Ranch Club in 1955. They returned to Tyler with sacks, stuffed with sprigs of Coastal Bermuda grass. “It is a hybrid variety developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the 1930s,” Hayden says. “It is a cross between the Bermuda grass found in Georgia and a hay-type grass from South Africa. The grass is different because it doesn’t produce seeds and must be propagated by discing sprigs into the ground.”
By providing enough forage to sustain a cow on one to three acres of land, the Coastal Bermuda grass became a major commodity throughout Smith County. Today, Hayden’s 275 acres are covered with grass that came from those original sprigs, brought back when he was still a teenager. “We had common Bermuda grass, but it wasn’t drought resistant like this is,” Hayden says. “We couldn’t run a cow to seven or eight acres. Today, I run slightly more than a cow to two acres.” He says, that in a good year, today’s producers can get up to five cuttings. “But I prefer to do two cuttings, because the hay made before August is more palatable. After my second cutting, I let the cows come in and graze the meadows.”
Moisture is the limiting factor for today’s cattle business. “You might say that we are in the grass business, not the cattle business. And we need rain to produce enough hay for the cattle to eat.” Hayden cautions that we need an inch of rain per week in East Texas. Because of the lack of rain, he says, “We are in big trouble now, and this drought may last into next year, which will be as bad as it was in 2011. Ranchers having to sell off will take a beating. Without a lot of rain, the price of beef will skyrocket in the next two years.”
E.O. Doggett was a major influence on Hayden, particularly in terms of breeding cattle. “I’d drive him to visit other ranchers, and later he sent me out of the country, to Brazil, looking at cattle … He got three bulls and three heifers imported from Brazil. Because of that trip, I became familiar with the leaders of the cattle business in Brazil … I met the Premier of Brazil and the Minister of Agriculture, who took me all over the country … It was a ‘once in a lifetime experience,’ something I’ll never forget … It helped me in my future breeding business … they were master breeders of cattle at that time (1981-82).”
Hayden returned to Brazil on another venture for Doggett, to bring back more cattle. “On this trip, the Brazilian government would not allow us to buy the cattle we selected. They said they were too good, and we could not bring them out of the country—it would ruin their market.”
Despite the missed opportunity to purchase the cattle, Hayden says, “I got a lifetime of knowledge about breeding cattle, things I applied to my own breeding.” One of the first things he learned was it takes the same effort to breed a bad cow as it does to breed a good cow. For that reason, Hayden has specialized in the genetics of breeding.
“I took a particular line of cattle (Red Brahmans) and produced a blood line. The reason I have the demand for my cattle is because I have the genetics that other cattle breeders do not. That makes my cattle more valuable.” When a customer buys from Hayden, he can provide detailed evidence of the animal’s pedigree. That is extremely important in cattle breeding. “When I was in Brazil, one of the master breeders, from a great family that had been breeding for generations, showed me how to breed these cattle,” Hayden says, “I’ve studied that and applied everything I’ve learned. As a result, my cattle leave a stamp on their offspring, you can tell by looking at them.”
It is a tough business to be in. “The only way to survive, to make a profit, is to be extremely efficient in your operation,” Hayden advises.
“You have to make do with what you have. For instance, I have a tractor that is fifty years old. I take care of it to keep it running. A tractor used to cost about $3,200 fifty years ago; today a similar tractor runs about $25,000 or more.”
“The most exciting part about being in the cattle breeding business is developing cattle that other people can use to improve their herds.” The first seven years that Hayden was breeding were learning years. “We bred the best cattle available at that time,” he says. Around 1975, Hayden saw Gyr cattle at some of the Mexican shows. This was a new breed that had recently been introduced in the United States. “They caught my eye. I knew I wanted to produce beef. My goal was to breed a beef animal and hang all the best features I could on it. I decided to try getting a half Gyr, quarter Indu and quarter American Red Brahman; without any Gray Brahman in the animal.”
Hayden took a calculated risk, starting with his original herd, which were red Cherokee Ranch cows, that were big cows with good pedigrees. He took his best heifers from those cows and bred them to Gyr bulls. He built a cow herd with the best ten heifers produced from that breeding. Next, he decided to try breeding those heifers to a 5P bull. He bought the 5P 381 bull for $5,000. He sold the first calf out of that bull and one of his Gyr heifers for $5,000. The first six calves ended up grossing $16,000. Hayden sold more herd bulls that year than he had in all the previous years that he had been in business.
What Hayden learned through this experiment was that good cattle will sell for a higher price. “It gives you a good feeling to visit another breeder’s ranch and see one of your cows in the pasture, doing a good job. The important thing to remember is that foundation. If you create the right kind of producing cow herd, you can market those top-quality heifers, because the factory at the ranch is always producing more.”
Hayden believes in the strength of cow families, particularly for small breeding operations like his. “The small breeder should be the most critical about the herd he is producing, because there is no margin for error. When you breed quality cattle, you will get fifteen to eighteen years of good production from your heifers. If you can average a conservative $1,500 on each calf, then you have a good return on your investment.”
The business has changed drastically from when Hayden and Jane were first starting out breeding cattle. Fertilizer was $60 a ton then. Today, it is over $1,000 a ton. The cost of land has increased. “If I were to change anything I did, knowing what I know today, I would have invested in more land. Some people think I’m crazy for not selling my land to housing developers. A lot of people use farming as a tax write-off. I farm to make my living. Because of the technology from good breeding, we can produce twice the meat from the cattle we have today than could have been produced sixty years ago.”
What about the future? “American farmers can produce more food, more efficiently than any other country in the world. We have the technology and the know-how. China can manufacture all kinds of products, but they can’t produce food the way we can. They have to import beef. Exports are way up, and American cattle ranchers are helping to provide meat to countries all over the world,” Hayden says.
Despite the current drought and the effects world politics are having on the industry, Hayden and Jane have no regrets about living a life in farming. Jane says, “It’s a family business in many respects, especially during the birthing season, branding, hay baling, fencing, vaccinating, equipment maintenance . . . in every season. We still depend on our children, Jennifer Moore Gaston and Cleve Moore, to come when we call. They always step up to the plate and we could not manage without their support!”
Hayden says, “It can be a mean business and sometimes a hard life. But I wouldn’t want to do anything else. It’s in my blood. I love it, as much today as I did when I was a child raising Star!”
