Scraping By
I received the following email from a young rancher last week: Dave, I am a young rancher and have grown my herd to over 100 cows over the last four […]
Read MoreThe Value of Gain & Grass
Wally Olson is a rancher from Vinita, Oklahoma. He has a profitable cattle trading enterprise based on the Sell/Buy marketing principles popularized by Bud Williams. At the foundation of Wally’s operation is an understanding of the value of grass and the value of gain. Wally is quick to point out that he doesn’t limit his […]
The Nine Calf Cow
I just read an article written by an ag economist on the value of bred heifers. He wrote that a crossbred heifer producing 9 consecutive calves in her lifetime is […]
Read MoreStocking Rate Rant
A Ranching For Profit School alumni sent me a paper published by the Society for Range Management on calculating the optimum stocking rate. The authors crunched 14 variables through 1o equations to reach the conclusion that the optimum stocking rate is somewhere between a low rate that maximizes per/head performance and a higher rate that […]
Top 10 Challenges In Ranching
In the last ProfitTips I asked you to share the challenges you face in ranching and share you did. Here is your list of the top 10 challenges facing your […]
Read MorePay The Damn Taxes
In The Ultimate Legacy, Dr. Don Jonovic says that the most critical issues in an estate plan are: Who will run what? Who will own what? How will you make sure you have the capacity to pay the taxes so that the first two things can actually happen? The transfer of authority can be […]
Surgery with a Chainsaw
Ranching For Profit School instructors work with people in the evenings after class to help them apply the tools they learn in the school. A lot of people take advantage […]
Read MoreYou may own your job if…
In the last ProfitTips I asked you if you owned a business or a job. I offered Robert Kiyosaki’s criteria from his book Cash Flow Quadrant: Could you leave for a year and come back to find your ranch working even better than when you left it? If so, Kiyosaki says you own a business. […]
What’s Your Profit Target?
A Ranching For Profit School alumnus was talking to me about his financial goals. I asked how much profit he wanted to make. He told me he figured he needed $20,000 to live. I reminded him that his salary or draw must be deducted as an overhead cost before calculating profit. I asked […]
Ranching with Nature
North American livestock producers are the most productive in the world. We are also the least profitable. Could it be that our battle to increase production is the reason for […]
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