08/24/2026
Facebook Team,
👉👉 This post is about one of our steers named Chance. 👈👈
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First, we realize that our Facebook communications are overdue. Life, work, hot weather, more work and more hot weather have dominated our time.
One of our State Herd staff was traveling and doing programs for a big part of this last month.
One of our big projects has just been completed. We now have electricity in our barn! (I’m sure that’s more exciting to us than it is to you👈👈)
So our tardiness in posting is not because of a lack of things to post about. If anything, we have too much to post about.
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So…. on to today’s story.
In the first photo, you’ll see our steer, Chance.
His name is well deserved because when he was young and his horns were developing, they didn’t look like the other steers. Most people wouldn’t have kept him for a trophy steer because, quite frankly, his horns looked similar to those of a Jersey cow. They came out and turned sharply in … (see the second and third photos of a Jersey cow to see how Chance’s horns were growing.)
Well…..
…. our Herd Manager, Will Cradduck, saw something in this steer and said, “Let’s keep him and give him a chance.”
And (you guessed it) that how Chance got his name….., and the name stuck.
Very early on, Will said that his horns may turn in …. then flare to the outside…. and develop into lyre-shaped horns.
For those of you not familiar with this term, it refers to the shape of a musical instrument, a lyre. (You can see a drawing of a lyre in photo number four.)
Well, the photo of Chance, taken yesterday, shows the ends of his horns beginning to twist and flare to the outside…. just as Will predicted.
This lyre shape will develop more and more over time as Chance’s horns grow and continue to twist.
Every so often, we’ll update Chance’s horn story.
…
It’s worth noting that lyre-shaped horns are very rare, especially in the modern Longhorn show cattle that are being bred for maximum tip to tip horn span.
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A great way to end Chance’s story is to tell about another steer, perhaps the most well-known steer with lyre-shaped horns…., Bobcat Twister.
(The last three 1930s photos below are images of this steer.)
Read this historical account written by historian Alan Rogers:
The Story of Bobcat Twister
Outside of the small town of Deer Trail, Colorado is a sign that claims the nation's first rodeo was held there in 1869. It's easy to imagine the cowboys and livestock of that day and what it all looked and sounded like. But I wonder if any of the performers were like Bobcat Twister. ��He was part Longhorn and part Brahman. Born in 1923 in Louisiana, he is said to have killed a young man in 1926. Somehow, he made his way to the Kansas Flint Hills where he was found by Monte Reger of Buffalo, Oklahoma. Reger and his father-in-law, George Crouch, were rodeo people and established the famed rodeos at Doby Springs, Oklahoma in the 1920's. Monte traveled to Kansas in search of rodeo stock and purchased several head. Among this bunch of cattle was a stand-out steer -- the one with terrific horns. As it happened, there was room on the railcar for one more head, and the fancy steer was on his way to celebrity. Somewhere in his life, the steer lost the lower portion of his tail. Because of this feature, and along with his high twisted horns, he was named Bobcat Twister. Monte trained him to pull carts, to be ridden, and to jump. He was highly skilled at jumping. So much so that he easily jumped over a 1930's Chevrolet convertible, which he did for many attendees at rodeos and public performances, including Madison Square Garden in New York. In the 1990's, I spoke to Monte's widow, Opal, a pleasant lady who recalled selling postcard pictures of Bobcat Twister for a nickel. She died in 1998 at age 92. ��Being a collector of old steer horns since 1972, I like to study early pictures of horned cattle. I have dozens in my collection. They have been my schoolroom. Evidence of the steer's Brahman bloodline is the shape of his poll section and its shorter hair. Also, notice the acute angle at which the horns first leave his head, which accounts for this unusually high horn. In addition, we find an elongated-type ear, common to the Brahman, without the long hair so commonly found on early Texas cattle. He was narrow framed, having a high ground clearance at the belly. Typical of his Longhorn ancestry are his generously twisted horns. Now almost lost in horn discussions is the old term "lyre-shaped," so named after the ancient stringed instrument. Decades ago, this term was used when referring to horn shapes of cattle painted on the walls of Egyptian tombs. Bobcat Twister is a classic example of the lyre-shaped horn. An elderly Texas rancher with whom I became well acquainted tells me that among the most beautifully shaped horns he saw as a young man were those on Longhorn-Brahman crossed steers.
Bobby, as he was often called, died in 1942, and his head was mounted. At last report, he was still in the Reger family. Like any form of entertainment, the American rodeo circuit has its own stars and celebrities. All things considered, it might be a while before we see another star quite like Bobcat Twister.
Copyright: Alan Rogers
