History of the IBBA

by Past-IBBA Executive Vice President Roy Lilley

It is a privilege to write a short article about the history of Brangus cattle and the International Brangus Breeders Association (IBBA). When I was hired as executive vice president in 1964, many of the pioneers of the breed who formed the American Brangus Breeders Association in 1949 were still active. One of them, Jesse Dowdy, was the Executive officer that I replaced and he and his wonderful office manager, Emma Matney, were the ones that showed me the ropes when I took over the office in the Livestock Exchange building in the Kansas City Stockyards.

My background was with commercial cattlemen’s organizations, including the American National Cattlemen’s Association (National Cattlemen’s Beef Association) and New Mexico Cattle Growers Association. The American Hereford Association and American Angus Association were far and away the largest breed registries at that time; but were having problems dealing with the reality that although most commercial cattlemen remained amazingly loyal to them, they had been slow to recognize the importance of performance testing. Many of the pioneers in performance testing, such as Carlton Corbin, charter board member, and leading producers of registered Angus, like Essar Ranch, in Texas, and Wye Plantation, in Maryland, were leaders in turning away from the small-framed, early-maturing breeding stock, then in vogue in the show ring.

Fortunately, Essar Ranch, in Texas, and Frank Buttram’s Clear Creek Ranch, in Oklahoma, used the very kind of bigger-framed, good-milking Angus that had been neglected by their own organization as foundation stock. The first hurdle to getting a Brangus breed registry started was determining whether to go with half-bloods, as Essar wanted, or with 3/8 Brahman and 5/8 Angus, as Clear Creek had been raising. No one questioned the maternal merit of half-blood cows, but back-crossing them to half-blood bulls simply resulted in too much variation to establish a breed identity; the issue was settled in Clear Creek’s favor. Essar didn’t stay in the Brangus business, but when they sold their outstanding half-blood cows and bulls they found their way into the hands of ranches that used them as foundation stock for top herds including Clear Creek, which also had Wye Plantation cows. They also had a number of big cows that Raymond Pope bought from a Canadian breeder. (I thank Sammy Pierce who worked for Clear Creek in the early days for that bit of information.)

Some of the other early growing pains showed up in the official board minutes and others were sorted out by me after hearing from all sides. Frank Buttram was a very successful, hard-driving, independent oil man, and he sincerely wanted the organization to succeed. Not surprisingly, the organization’s first president was Raymond Pope, the manager of Clear Creek. Jesse Dowdy, the first executive vice president of the IBBA, told me that if the organization couldn’t agree on something Buttram wanted or couldn’t afford, Buttram simply picked up the tab. This created some resentment, particularly in Texas, but his unfailing support surely helped get the organization through its formative years.

When Buttram brought his son, Dorsey, into the operation, he and Raymond Pope were soon at odds. After some legal wrangling Pope resigned as manager and consolidated his operation on his own ranch called Clear View. Dowdy told me Dorsey’s side of the conflict. I soon learned most Texas breeders had a completely different slant on it. In any case, the association changed its name from the American Brangus Breeders Association to the International Brangus Breeders Association, moved the office from Vinita, Oklahoma to Kansas City, Missouri, and hired Dowdy to manage it. I was hired to replace him in 1964. I was fortunate that the office was running smoothly under Mrs. Matney, but I found, after my first trip to Texas, there was still serious regional tension within the organization that had the potential to rip it apart. I kept my own council about the family squabble the association was having as Dowdy was revered in the middle-west and had strong support among some breeders in the southwest and southeast.

I received a warm welcome at my first convention in San Antonio where we laid out an ambitious agenda to promote the breed. I continued to enjoy the full support of the board as the internal divisions faded. We had a loyal, diverse membership base of large and small breeders, and the breed had a strong genetic foundation on both the Brahman and Angus sides. We managed to increase our annual total recordings, which was about 80 percent registrations, from less than 5,000 head to nearly 16,000 by 1978. Along the way, we established a highly successful annual International Show and Sale during the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and a summer International Brangus Futurity Show and Sale in Fredericksburg, Texas. Thanks to Dr. Herman Gardner, we finagled a way to build a headquarters building in San Antonio with an investment of only $10,000, purchase a computer, print our own pedigrees, hire an assistant for me, and a professional staff to edit the Brangus Journal.

By the end of 1978, I had worn out my welcome and was let go, so the history from that point forward is for someone else to write. I am trying to get a memoir written that I waited far too long to start and the fifteen years spent working for IBBA while my family was growing up will be among the fondest of my recollections in it.