R.A. “Rob” and Peggy Brown represent the fourth generation of a historic Texas ranching family—a family who first began ranching in the state right after the Civil War, and in 1903, moved the operation to its current headquarters in Throckmorton County.
Rob took over the ranch at the age of 29 after the unexpected death of his father in 1965. However, he didn’t just maintain what he had inherited, but built the family’s business into one of the most substantial diversified ranching and farming operations in Texas. All along, a priority of Rob and Peggy was to assure the family continued ranching into the fifth generation and beyond.
“Generational transfer is a lifetime job and not something to be done at the last minute, especially when someone has passed away and the family is grieving.”
With the goal to “keep the ranch in the family and the family in the ranch,” Rob explains, “Generational transfer is a lifetime job and not something to be done at the last minute, especially when someone has passed away and the family is grieving.” With this in mind, Rob started preparing for his four children to inherit the ranch from the time they were still young.
Rob and Peggy taught their children four main priorities: work; earn; save; and invest wisely.
[inline_image file=”62836fb23305b96b8a037af391a5bae1.jpg” caption=”Rob Brown’s 2018 Saddle and Sirloin portrait by Chicago artist, Richard Halstead. Photo courtesy of the Saddle and Sirloin Portrait Gallery.”]
The four children—Betsy, Rob A., Marianne and Donnell—were all expected to go to college, which they did, but were required to earn the money to pay their own way. Each of them was given cows when they were about 9 years old, and then were expected to grow this equity to have sufficient money to pay their way through school.
They made their own breeding and marketing decisions, and generally marketed their cattle through the ranch’s annual bull sale. From this initial gift, each grew their own cow herd enough to successfully pay for their higher education.
“Embrace science, but respect tradition.”
Another straight-forward lesson that Rob lives by and taught his children was to be “progressive, but still practical,” as well as to “embrace science, but respect tradition.” This was how Rob ran the R.A. Brown Ranch, and the values his four children have had in their own careers.
Also, Rob and Peggy’s primary focus was to instill love in the family and foster family relations. A faith-oriented family, Peggy is quick to recite from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, “These three things remain: faith, hope and love, and the greatest among these is love.”
Succession planning
In anticipation of transferring the ranch to the next generation, Rob and Peggy formed a Limited Family Partnership in 1983, with the maximum tax-free gift given to each child each year for almost 30 years, until over 90 percent of the land was signed over to the children.
Rob remained president of the company, so in terms of the practical management of the ranch, nothing changed. Rob and Peggy wanted to make sure that if anything happened to them, they could minimize the tax burden to help keep the ranch in the family.
[inline_image file=”cfff2709d13ff47189e3fac0c73e8b97.jpg” caption=”The men of the Brown family. Photo courtesy of R.A. Brown Ranch.”]
All the children were welcomed back to the ranch as employees, but they were encouraged to be innovative in growing the business so that it could provide enough income to feed another family.
Daughter Betsy and son-in-law Jody were the first to return, and in partnership with Rob, they expanded the farming and developed a stocker cattle business as their way of growing and diversifying the family business.
Rob’s son, Rob A., and his wife, Talley, grew the family business by partnering with his parents and his sister and brother-in-law to build an outstanding commercial cow herd.
They diversified the business by buying an interest in a feedyard, and he also bought a ranch in the Texas Panhandle. In addition, Rob A. has always taken great interest in breeding outstanding Quarter Horses like his father and grandfather before him.
Daughter Marianne and husband Todd McCartney worked for the ranch for a few years and then moved to Nebraska to work for the famed Haythorn Ranch. They later returned to the Fort Worth area to work for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association before eventually returning to the ranch in Throckmorton. Their primary interests are in the commercial cow-calf and hunting aspects of R.A. Brown Ranch.
[inline_image file=”55f997c296fdfaa19a7b3f977069a3cb.jpg” caption=”Herding cattle along the banks. Photo by Kelli Brown.”]
After graduation from Texas Tech University, Donnell, and his wife, Kelli, returned to the ranch to work in the seedstock segment of the business. Both Donnell and Kelli had served as national FFA presidents, so they had already gained an excellent national reputation before their return.
Donnell and Kelli expanded R.A. Brown Ranch through a cooperator program where farms and ranches would follow the R.A. Brown (RAB) breeding program. Their bulls are then developed at the ranch headquarters near Throckmorton, and then marketed under the RAB prefix through the R.A. Brown Ranch bull sales. This grew the bull sale from 250 bulls per year to over 800.
Rob had slowly been turning more and more responsibility for the day-to-day management of the ranch over to his children, and by 2012, with Rob and Peggy in their mid-70s, they felt it was time to retire and turn the operation fully over to their children.
Rob had achieved about everything you could do in the industry. He had bred some of the finest Quarter Horses and seedstock cattle in the country, and had exported cattle, semen and embryos to every corner of the world. Starting with 18,000 acres in 1965, he had grown the ranch to where, at its peak, it encompassed 66,000 acres with an interest in a 50,000-head feedlot.
[inline_image file=”3bc24dd7dc4febbd71a116618c42020c.jpg” caption=”Peggy and Rob horseback with kids. Photo by David Stoecklein.”]
The ranch had diversified into all aspects of agriculture, including a storied Quarter Horse remuda, seedstock cattle, commercial cow-calf, stockers, commercial feed yard and farming, as well as hunting and fishing. Rob had also served the industry over the years in about every way possible.
His career would culminate with the honor of having his portrait added to the Saddle and Sirloin Gallery, which is considered the highest honor in the livestock industry.
The children had come into their own and had themselves become national leaders in agriculture.
Therefore, the timing seemed right to retire. The children had come into their own and had themselves become national leaders in agriculture.
Additionally, due to the property being sold, Rob had lost the lease on one of the ranches they had rented for 37 years, and the family also sold its interest in the feedlot. The ranch was also experiencing a drought, so the commercial herd had been largely destocked with many of the registered cows farmed out to grass across several states.
This made dividing the remaining assets less complicated than if it had been a few years earlier. Rob and Peggy had also been successful enough that they had accumulated a nest egg sufficient to live comfortably in retirement without dispersing the ranch assets to provide for funds for their retirement.
Dividing up the ranch
At first, Rob laid out a plan to split up the ranch based on the interest of the four children, but Peggy put her foot down, saying that was not going to be the way it was done. Instead, they put the onus on the siblings to divide the ranch in a harmonious way.
The siblings agreed to meet once a month with the first assignment to divide the ranch holdings into four equal parts based on value. To divide the assets of the substantial seedstock operation, a dispersal was planned for 2013 with each child having the opportunity to purchase out of the sale the cattle they wanted to have for their own operation.
In exchange for managing the entire dispersal sale, Donnell and Kelli were allowed to produce embryos from the top cows in the herd, so they could carry on the famed R.A. Brown Ranch bull sales without interruption.
Selling all of the cows also allowed the land to heal from the drought. As for the Quarter Horses, they were divided among the family members, with Rob A. getting more than the other siblings, as it was an area of particular interest to him.
[inline_image file=”c3a19746e1fab01da3ed6e44a2a7a1d7.jpg” caption=”Peggy and Rob Brown. Photo by Kelli Brown.”]
The siblings decided that Rob would maintain his own herd of brood mares, “as they just couldn’t imagine their father not owning any Quarter Horses.”
When it was all said and done, the siblings had divided the ranch much as Rob had originally planned. That they were able to come to agreement among themselves made for a very harmonious transfer of assets.
The children came out of it closer to each other than before the process, which was the ultimate goal. Rob and Peggy had also achieved their other main goal of turning the ranch over to their children without saddling them with unnecessary debt.
That Rob’s children are taking the torch from Rob in terms of industry leadership would be an understatement. Over the years, the members of the next generation have served on the boards of directors for the American Quarter Horse Association, the Texas Wheat Producers, Red Angus Association of America, Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, Texas Cattle Feeders Association, Texas Tech Equestrian Advisory Committee, National Ranching Heritage Center, and Beef Improvement Federation.
To the thrill of Rob and Peggy, their grandchildren, who represent the sixth generation of Browns to ranch in Texas, have also returned to the business, ensuring the ranch will go on for another generation.
After living at the ranch headquarters for 41 years, Rob and Peggy now live in the house in Throckmorton that Rob grew up in, and they are enjoying seeing their children and grandchildren make their own impact in agriculture. They have also left behind a model of successful generational transfer for both their children and other farming and ranching families to emulate.
