Diamond S Cattle Company

I was out in the Weatherford area yesterday, heading down toward Horseshoe Bend.

Along the way I saw some parcels of property with gates marked "Diamond S Cattle Co". These properties had miles of 5-pipe (not four or three) fence, with posts closely spaced. It struck me as a bit odd, as most of the folks I know in the cattle business have operations evocative of those "Leanin' Tree" posters (example, one cowboy sez to another: "I reckon if I got a million dollars, I'd jes' keep on ranchin' until it was gone."), with either wooden posts or steel t-posts and barbed wire.

While I'm not in the agricultural sciences, one of my grandfathers was a farmer/rancher, so I innately recognized that this Cadillac of fences weren't built on livestock profits. Weatherford ain't the pristine valley meadows of Montana (though it does have a sort of beauty of its own).

So I Googled it, but that took me down a wrong path, then checked another website and found the ranch is owned by the [well regarded] Chairman & Founder of a Fort Worth-based energy company that, as of 2Q2009, was the largest natural gas producer in the United States. You'd recognize the company name, and also perhaps the individual's.

See, I got a business mind like a mousetrap - I knew those fences weren't from runnin' cows...