Category Archives: News & Updates

News and updates about Watusi cattle, the organization, and members’ farms & ranches. If you have news you would like to publish or would like to become a contributor, please email us at info@watusi.org.

RIP Joe Cocker

The World Watusi Association would like to express our condolences to the friends and family of the well known rock and roll artist Joe Cocker.  Those of us in our ‘twilight years’ knew Joe from his music and Woodstock from our teens, but more recently we at the WWA knew him and his wife Pam as lifetime members of the World Watusi Association.  Joe and Pam owned and operated the Mad Dog Ranch in Crawford, Nebraska.  The Mad Dog bloodlines and logo appear in much of the WWA lore.  Joe was 70 years old and had been battling cancer for some time.  He will be missed.

2015 Spring Fling get together

WWA Spring Fling will be celebrated at Lolli Brothers April 2015 sale. Will have a fun time of ‘survival’ stories of the Winter, good food, lots of watusi talk, WWA items, a fun auction and more on Wednesday evening April 8th at 7 pm at the Macon Comfort Inn meeting room. Registrar, board members and forms will all be there so would be a great time to ask anything and get paperwork updated. This will be the evening before the watusi sale on Thursday.   Save the date and plan to attend if you can.   Details to come as the date draws near. Motel rooms are already filling up so make your reservations now if you think you can join us.

Make certain to submit photos and information to the sale office lollibros@lollibros.com for inclusion in the catalog.  check through those closets and barns for any articles that you might like  to donate to our ‘fun auction’ the proceeds of which go to the association.Comfort InnMacon Comfort Inn

Election to Board and 2014-2015 Officers

The results of the 2014 general membership election of board members resulted in Benton Ellis of Dallas, Texas; Jefferson  Voss of Oakland, Florida and Cindi Darling of Sparta, Missouri being re-elected for three year terms.  We want to thank all of our members who voted and all of the candidates who participated.  We also want to encourage any members who would like to be considered for the Board to make their wishes known.  There will be three positions available again in 2015.

In addition to the elected positions the Board of Directors voted to fill the vacated positions on the board for the remainder of the terms of Derrick Passey and Rodney Barnhart.  We want to thank these two for their service and will miss them.  Garett Judd of Edmunton, KY has been appointed to serve the one year remaining of Rodney’s term and Tom Ward of Norman, OK for the remaining two years of Derrick’s term.

Last, but certainly not least the new President for the 2014-2015 term is Pat Burnett of Wills Point, TX; Vice-President is Jeff Voss of Oakland, FL; Secretary is Pam Jackson of Water Valley, KY and Treasurer is Joy Rider of Highlandville, MO.  We look forward to a productive year with these fine people at the helm.  We also want to give a hearty thank you to Vernon Base and Richard Jackson for their great service.

 

More Watusi History

Editor’s note: Recently Darol Dickinson and Maureen Neidhardt exchanged some information on Facebook about the history of the WWA and Watusi cattle.  We are reposting this here to share with others interested in Watusi Cattle.

Darol: In the early days of WWA everyone was encouraged to do the Watusi breed up program, mostly with Watusi bulls bred to Texas Longhorn cows. People raised half Watusi, then 3/4, then on up to a high percent Watusi. This created the greatest boom in the Watusi industry. In 1979 when we bought 15 Watusi from Rare Animal Survival Center in Ocala, FL, it was thought there were less than 50 original bloodline Watusi in North America. Many of these were owned by zoos. Nelson Rockefeller and I both bought cattle from RASC about the same time. He got 3 cows and a bull. The rest were in zoos.

Continue reading More Watusi History

New contact information

The World Watusi Association has been utilizing the services of the International Texas Longhorn Association in Glen Rose, Texas for our business office and registration work. Although we have been very pleased with the professional handling provided by the ITLA, computer programing changes have made it more viable for us to move our office. The good news is that the Registrar that you are all familiar with, Robin Hancock, has agreed to continue to provide us with her able assistance.

Please visit our contact page for the most up-to-date contact information.

Health problems

We wanted to keep everyone advised that our group is experiencing some serious health problems.  Both Angie Base (wife of our President Vernon) and Pam Jackson (wife of our Vice President, Richard and herself our Association Secretary), are fighting some serious health issues.  We want to wish them both well and let them know that they are in all of our thoughts.