A New Texas Red Is About To Hit Town

Texas Red has meant a lot of things to a lot of Texans over the years.

It can mean a big bowl of chili with no beans.

Or a delicious amber lager by local brewers Rahr & Sons.

Or the no-count sidewinder who gets shot dead by the ranger in Marty Robbin’s classic ballad “Big Iron.”

And, of course, it’s the common name for sulforhodamine 101 acid chloride that’s “used in histology for staining cell specimens, for sorting cells with fluorescent-activated cell sorting machines, in fluorescence microscopy applications, and in immunohistochemistry.”

(But, then, you already knew that.)

Now a new Texas Red is moseying into town. And eventually he’ll be walking Fort Worth’s version of a red carpet — red-bricked Exchange Avenue — as the newest bovine member of the Fort Worth Herd.

Local law firm, Johnston Legal Group, is donating the 8-month-old, 500-pound steer to the Herd. He’ll be delivered at 8 a.m. Thursday at the Stockyards steer pen.

Texas Red is the youngest steer ever donated to the Herd.

Members of the Herd live the good life and are generally treated like royalty, even after they’re retired. So it’s doubtful that Texas Red will ever end up as the protein source in a bowl of Texas Red.