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Joseph McCoy had promised the Texan ranchers that if they brought their cattle to Kansas, where they could be shipped by rail, that he would pay them well for the cattle. The ranchers received three times what they could locally for their cattle, which greatly increased the profitability of ranching.
Open land, no fences, and they could have large herds of cattle.
So they could sell it to the city folk
So they could sell it to the city folk
The growth of cities meant there was less land to raise cattle and less grass for cattle to feed on. The railroads helped the cattle industry by allowing ranchers to be able to deliver cattle to areas where they could not be transported on foot.
They herded them using horses and the best herding practices they could use to move cattle with and keep them together.
Cattle ranching became profitable because ranchers bought land cheap and when they did they bought a lot of it. They could have thousands of head of cattle and could ship them East by the railroad. People in the East needed and wanted good quality fresh beef and would pay good money for it. Ranchers could have several thousand head of cattle because they had enough land to keep them and they could hire men easily and pay them only a small fraction of the profits from selling the cattle,which left most of the money to the rancher.
The railroads significantly opened the cattle industry to sales and sales meant ranchers could expand their lands and herds. Ranchers from even Texas could drive herds north to meet the railroad, and both factors helped develop towns in the Great Plains.
The open range came to an end because barbed wire was invented and was incredibly cheap, this meant that cattle ranchers could fence them in cheaply. One reason they wanted to do this was because the cows could roam all over the place which led to confusion when one persons cattle ended up on another ranchers farm. The demand for beef also fell meaning that cattle ranchers found it harder and harder to sell the cattle that they were breeding and many cattle were dying and going to waste, one reason for this was the hard weather conditions and as the business was not as good anymore and people were not making as much money anymore, they moved onto other things which were easier or made them more money.