The Master Showmen of King Ranch

Texas’s King Ranch has become legendary for a long list of innovations, the most enduring of which is the development of the first official cattle breed in the Americas, the Santa Gertrudis. Among those who played a crucial role in the breed’s success were Librado and Alberto “Beto” Maldonado, master showmen of the King Ranch. A true “bull whisperer,” Librado Maldonado developed a method for gentling and training cattle that allowed him and his son Beto to show the Santa Gertrudis to their best advantage at venues ranging from the famous King Ranch auctions to a Chicago television studio to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. They even boarded a plane with the cattle en route to the International Fair in Casablanca, Morocco, where they introduced the Santa Gertrudis to the African continent. In The Master Showmen of King Ranch, Beto Maldonado recalls an eventful life of training and showing King Ranch Santa Gertrudis. He engagingly describes the process of teaching two-thousand-pound bulls to behave “like gentlemen” in the show ring, as well as the significant logistical challenges of transporting them to various high-profile venues around the world.
His reminiscences, which span more than seventy years of King Ranch history, combine with quotes from other Maldonado family members, co-workers, and ranch owners to shed light on many aspects of ranch life, including day-to-day work routines, family relations, women’s roles, annual celebrations, and the enduring ties between King Ranch owners and the vaquero families who worked on the ranch through several generations.

Author Biography

A retired educator, Betty Bailey Colley taught school for twenty years at the elementary, secondary, and college levels and was in administration as a public information officer. While a teacher and also as a school board member for nine years, she became aware of the absence of information, in the Texas historical record, on the contributions of minority groups. She collaborated with Jane Clements Monday on the books Voices from the Wild Horse Desert: The Vaquero Families of the King and Kenedy Ranches and (for young readers) Tales of the Wild Horse Desert.

A former mayor of Huntsville, Texas, Jane Clements Monday has served as chair of the Texas State University System Board of Regents and was Texas Public Commissioner to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. She currently serves on the board of the Texas State Historical Association and is a former president of the University of Texas at Austin Texas Exes and a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin. Her previous books include Petra’s Legacy: The South Texas Ranching Empire of Petra Vela and Mifflin Kenedy (with Frances Brannen Vick) and From Slave to Statesman: The Legacy of Joshua Houston, Servant to Sam Houston (with Patricia Smith Prather).