Recently a herd of Texas Longhorn have moved to the area, embracing a foothill free-range lifestyle, and happily calling Copperopolis home.
J-Bar-H Ranch, located on 1200 acres of rolling hills in SE Copper butting up to the lake, is home to approximately 80 head of Texas Longhorn cattle. While longhorn are most notably utilized for show or ornamentation on Texas style Cadillac’s, up here, they are known for their lean, delicious, healthy meat. Texas Longhorn beef has less calories, less fat and less cholesterol than chicken. For a 3.5 oz serving, Texas Longhorn beef has 114 calories, 3.7 grams of fat (mostly saturated) and 48.0 mgs of cholesterol.
Owner, Jim Hix, never pictured himself as a cattle rancher when he was working in the real estate industry for the better part of his life. Then one day he says he made “the worst decision of my life.” He asked a friend that was traveling to Arizona to bring him home some longhorns because he thought they looked “pretty.” 2 ½ years later he knows each steer, each bull, each cow in his herd. He hand feeds them and walks about among them as if he belonged with them. He points to the ones that he will utilize for beef, and tries not to get too friendly and points to other that he says he will never be able to slaughter, they are his friends. Case in point, his favorite bull ‘Kill Kindly’ (affectionately called Killer) standing 67 ¼ inches at shoulder height and a horn span of almost 6 feet, Killer is anything but a cute puppy dog, but to Jim that’s exactly what he is. Jim stands at just over 6 foot, yet extends his arm fully above his head to hand feed special treats to Killer. He can point to each cow or steer in the herd that was sired by Killer and boasts about Killer's achievements like a proud papa.
