Yeah, I know they were driving them to sell them but one full grown cow or bull or whatever, (I'm not trying to get people to correct me on that aspect) has enough meat to feed a lot of people for a long time. Now they were driving 50000. A lot were lost in the river crossing or the stamped etc. But they were living on beans and meager portions of food. Had they killed one--ONE-- it would have fed them well for a long time.
shareYou can't survive just one beef. You need other nutrients and vitamins. Besides, what's the point of growing such a large herd if you aren't trying to make any money off the deal?
shareThey had other nutrients--whatever it was they were eating the whole time. The beef would have been a big plus. And did you read my post at all? One full grown cow can feed a lot of people for a long time. One.
share[deleted]
Actually, they were driving around 10,000. At the end, they estimate that they've still got a little over 9,000...
shareI understand your post, but HOW would you store the incredibly perishable meat? It would have to be eaten over one to one and one half days. I wouldn't have fed them for very long, AND it takes a bit of time to cook meat, and they usually only stopped to rest for a while. Then you have the natural scavengers to deal with (coyotes and other animals), so it wasn't very practical.
As one of the other posters noted, they were in it for the profit, and you ALWAYS lost cattle along the trial for a myriad of reasons, and that cut into profit.
Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway. John Wayne
Something else I was thinking about: they faced the constant risk of stampede. Would slaughtering cattle in the vicinity of the herd trigger a stampede?
shareFrom what I have read
During a trail drive the main staples were
beans
bacon
flour, for trail bread/biscuts
Dried apples
coffee
and beef from anuimals that died on the trail. a butchered steer would last about a weekor more, spoilage wasn't a big problemwith enough chilli peppers and gravy the standard crew to drive any herd was about 6-15
About the most a drive would travel in a day was 12-16 miles.
The cook wagon would travel ahead of the herd and would have time to cook a trail meal of beef, gravey, maybe rice,beans for sure,and a, cobbler out of the apples
It takes awhile to get a herd moving in the right direction, after a night of rest. Equally tough to stop them to bed down.
5:30am to 8:00pmand someone had to ride herd so little sleep for them lunch was whatever you could carry in your saddle bags or grub bag
Whe the drive finaly ended all they ate at the railhead were chickens
Breakfast was leftovers
I'd rather go hunting with Dick Cheney, than driving with Ted Kennedy
What the heck? Did nobody posting here actually watch the movie? Sorry, but they were pretty clear about the fact that they WERE eating the beef. But you get pretty sick of eating beef all the time.
Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'
+1 for funkyfry
In the scene where they are eating in the rain, Meeker complains that ALL they eat is beef and beans. OP, did you even watch the movie?
LOL this thread is a FAIL
how the hell did u miss that scene where one of the character complains about eating beef all the time.
I don't know how they do it in America but in Aust. the drovers always take along a few KILLERS for eating with no intention of selling them.
I had a fish named Sam he lived in a bowl........
In the American West it was usual for trail herds to eat stray animals picked up along the way. Everybody did it, so it wasn't really considered a bad thing. In the film though, with no other herds around, Dunson's crew is eating his beef.
"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's living!!!"
Augustus McCrae
>> how the hell did u miss that scene where one of the character complains about eating beef all the time
Maybe he went into the kitchen for a roast beef sandwich during that scene?
Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!
They WERE eating beef--and not much else. I suspect their salt was gone, too--and beef without salt isn't very tasty, especially if you have to eat it day after day. Too bad Euell Gibbons wasn't around to help Groot find some edible roots and tubers to perk things up.
sharewhy didn't they eat the cattle?They did.
I read a book half about black trail cooks. I had always thought the nothing but beans was a bad story
They ate beef and did not need to bring any animals especially for the purpose. On a big drive there was always animals getting injured that had to be killed and they ate those as long as they knew it was not sick or poisoned.
Almost every night they might have BBQ, Steak, Ribs and the beans had kidney and liver
Another source was calves, unless it was a short drive for a breed herd and/or they brought a "baby wagon" they ate the calves rather than let them slow the herd. And they could eat very well from the calves.
Mmmmmm Baby Back ribs, sweat meat pudding
A full crew of drovers couldn't eat a thousand pound steer in one day, and there was no refrigeration, so any meat left over would go bad.
Also, even the loss of one steer would cut into the profit of the herd and the men's pay.
"It's a hard country, kid."
The whole topic is moot because as several posters have pointed out, it's stated in the movie that the men were eating beef from the cattle every day. We even hear Wayne give an order to kill a steer for its meat.
Of course they couldn't eat an entire animal at one sitting and couldn't preserve it, so much would simply be left behind and go to waste (or be eaten by predators). But even if they ate beef every day (which they didn't -- not at the start anyway), they'd have lost only about 100 or so for food, out of nine or ten thousand. Besides, they certainly would have eaten some cattle killed along the way by other causes, as in the stampede. That was an accepted price -- the cost of doing business, as we'd say today. Even without using some for food, cattle drives always produced losses. The idea was to get the bulk of the herd in intact. You knew from the beginning some wouldn't make it.
I had to chuckle at the posters who mentioned the poor nutrition in eating basically nothing but beef. Yes, obviously, but who in the 19th century really knew anything about nutrition, the effects on people of certain diets or foods and so forth? Have you ever read what foods wagon trains carried on their journeys lasting for months? Lots of starch and little else. People ate what they could get at a time when most food production and consumption was little more than at the subsistence level. Even in the early 1900s the average family devoted nearly half its income to buying food. Ignorance about nutritional science -- we're still learning more today -- was irrelevant to most people, who didn't realize such issues even existed. They were concerned simply about getting enough of anything to eat.
Besides, compared to all the junk and processed foods we eat today, the men on that 1865 cattle drive were probably better fed.
The big complaint was eating too much beef...they were sick of it-eating only protein over a long period isn't healthy either-not having a variety of food 'cause they lost the other chuck wagon was the beginning of the crews descent.
share