While weaning is an exciting-satisfying time for the cow calf producer, it needs to be considered the most important time to evaluate next year’s calf crop. (Don’t relax now as next year’s calf crop is in the balance.) How the ranchman determines availability of pasture, synchronizing the cow herd numbers with the land resource grazing plan for the next 12 months, can be the difference between a ‘wreck’ and a productive-profitable-happy year. Sitting down and thinking through pasture quality and how to bring the cattle through winter with body condition scores that lead to a strong healthy calf crop and breed up. Doing this without having a feed bill that will cause financial stress to the ranching program can be a very daunting task. Simply saying we’ll do it just like we have always done, is probably not the best answer. Yes, that answer is the most common approach for many producers, but the time spent in the office planning where the program is headed is the most valuable time a ranchman can utilize for the consistent profitability and rangeland resource improvement of his operation.

Detailed planning isn’t the most ‘romantic’ part of a ranching enterprise, but it certainly leads to those romantic results that make a rancher proud.

Granted this picture is of only one calf, but he stands out as what our program is striving to produce. Healthy-productive-happy calves and grasslands that, in spite of a dry summer are capable of seeing the program through the winter season.