Fernando “Fred” Mendoza needed a smoker, and he had some Longhorn cattle to trade. Mendoza owns M3 Longhorn Ranch, near Valley View, less than twenty miles from Oklahoma. Nolan Belcher owns B4 Barbeque, in Mabank, with his wife, Emily, and they had a five-hundred-gallon smoker for sale. “He wanted some Texas Longhorns, and I wanted a barbecue pit,” Mendoza told me. Belcher ended up with seven head of livestock in the deal, and he moved them to join the rest of the small herd on his land in Mabank, about 120 miles southeast of Valley View.Mendoza has grown his herd of Longhorns for years, using a breeding program to produce cows with exceptionally long horns. Whereas other breeds are prized for milk production or marbling,…
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