The Delfino Trail

Jim Delfino's cowboy boots are old and scuffed. His Stetson is sweat stained, and his jeans are dirty from the hard labor of running his family's $10 million cattle, farming and packing business in California. He is a taciturn, hard-bitten cowpoke, but he has the U.S. livestock industry in an uproar. Cattle and sheep associations throughout the West accuse him of everything from anti-Americanism to stealing away the livelihood of the U.S. rancher. Jim Delfino, fed up with the marginal profits of the domestic livestock industry, has gambled $500,000 that he can make more money by importing cattle and sheep 7,900 miles across the Pacific Ocean from Australia and New Zealand to U.S. markets.

Last week, as his latest shipment of sheep was okayed by federal inspectors, U.S. sheep raisers called for quotas, higher tariffs, or anything else that would stop the shipments. Said rival California Rancher Clay Broadbent: "Either we stop the Australian sheep--or regulate the flow of them--or it will mean the end of the American sheep industry."

Delfino agreed. "The growers are right. In five years, I do not think that there will be a sheep industry in the U.S. With rising land values and labor costs, it is pretty tough for a rancher to raise a sheep and make much over $1.50 on it." Delfino, on the other hand, can buy Australian sheep for $5.50 or less each, net $3 per head minimum when he sells them in the U.S.

Over the Bounding Main. Delfino became intrigued by the possibilities of Down Under livestock in 1957, made a deal with the New Zealand government to ship 1,500 steers to the U.S. He chartered an old coal-burning British banana boat with a Panamanian registry, a Filipino captain, Australian officers, Chinese crewmen and Indian and Filipino herdsmen to handle the cattle. But he was in trouble before he cleared port.

Powerful Australian and New Zealand meat packers as well as the packing unions sought to stop Delfino because shipping of beef on the hoof imperiled Australia's frozen-meat export trade. Delfino cleared this hurdle after conferences with the government, paid Auckland dock wallopers triple and quadruple wages to load coal, and then got steaming. Twenty-eight days and one hurricane later, he landed in San Diego, minus 107 cattle and one crew member who had died on the way. There he was greeted by the A.S.P.C.A., U.S. Bureau of Customs, and the Public Health Service. The Chinese crewmen were confined to ship, and they refused to unload the cattle from the boat, which by that time was two feet deep in month-old manure. Delfino, one of his partners, Clarence Peavy, and their employees pitched in and got the cattle off the boat. In all, Delfino lost about $30,000 on the first trip. "But it was well worth it," says he. "If I could go through all that trouble and still make out with the cattle in good shape, I knew it would be a profitable operation with good equipment and proper care."

Hi Ho Delfino. Delfino next turned to the Australian sheep market because he could pack more sheep onto a ship, realize a greater dollar profit. Last May. Delfino leased a 9,600-ton Australian passenger vessel, renamed her Delfino. and converted her to a livestock carrier capable of transporting 25,000 sheep. Despite his many troubles. Delfino is moving steadily into the black. Although the ranchers will continue to try to regulate the import of livestock into the U.S., Delfino will land another shipment of 25,000 sheep at San Diego about Jan. 15. His success has already inspired imitators. Three major sheep growers have started to convert ships that will soon join him on the Delfino Trail.

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