Primary Blog/Profitable Agriculture/Winter-Proofing Your Cow/Calf Operation

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Winter-Proofing Your Cow/Calf Operation

Ranchers in the Western United States have experienced 10 to 20% death loss on calves during this heavy snowfall winter season. I watched the news a few days ago and I thought to myself “How can my fellow ranchers sustain that kind of loss? And why do they think they need to?” Kit Pharo has shown time and again that there’s a better way!

Ranchers in the Western United States have experienced 10 to 20% death loss on calves during this heavy snowfall winter season. I watched the news a few days ago and I thought to myself “How can my fellow ranchers sustain that kind of loss? And why do they think they need to?” Kit Pharo has shown time and again that there’s a better way!

Asking For Miracles Means Preparing to Receive Them

Last year we participated in a region wide effort of fasting and prayer to end the three year long drought that we’d been experiencing. We prayed in our various churches, at rodeos, ranch events, dances, and almost every gathering we attended. And God, who is still a God of miracles, answered those prayers. This year we’ve received record snow here in Elko County and throughout the West. We’ve personally recorded our highest amount of snowfall ever this winter. We joined our faith in our efforts in petitioning the Lord to send us moisture and now it's come. And now, with that blessing on our mountains and on our fields, we're wondering how to deal with all of it.

Miracles can be heavy things, and sometimes hard to hold onto. Preparing to receive them is part of the work of good stewardship. This agriculture lifestyle that we lead is a relationship of faith, good works, and trust that offers us new ways of thinking, acting, and managing our blessings.

First of all, to anybody and everybody who is watching this, this message isn’t given to try to kick you while you’re down. 10 to 20% loss is a terrible thing. I have friends and family who have suffered terrible loss this year. This message is born of a desire to help share the knowledge that there's another way! We don’t have to risk such catastrophic loss when we pray for the blessings of rain and snow for our farms and ranches.



Pounds Per Acre Determines Profitability


I reached out to my friend Kit Pharo. As many of you probably know, Kit is the owner of Pharo Cattle Company and he has a reputation of raising high quality bulls all across the continental United States and throughout North and South America. But he’s not just selling bulls, he’s selling a philosophy. A philosophy that is changing the paradigm within the industrial agriculture system.

He’s showing, through his successful breeding programs, that bigger framed cows and calving in the winter in order to get bigger weaning weights,are NOT practices that equal profitability. Production does not equal profitability in all cases. As Kit explains “Pounds-per-acre determines profit, not pounds-per-animal.”

After watching the most recent news reports of our regional cattle losses, I reached out to Kit and asked him if he would be willing to speak on one of our Profitable Ag Webinars and he graciously agreed. This is information our fellow ranchers need NOW, so we’ve pushed our webinar date up to Thursday, March 30, 2023, at 9 p.m. Pacific time. He was willing to do this, even though he’s busy with upcoming bull sales and his own business, because this is part of his mission: to share this message of a new way of looking at our production and profitability.


I encourage you to jump on to our live webinar and learn this information, because even in a BEST CASE SCENARIO, of not having such severe winter weather, sometimes it makes a lot of sense to schedule calving in sync with nature. Are we watching when the wildlife are having their young in our area? Should we try to mimic that? Does it make sense to mimic that in our operations?

One of the points I’ve heard Kit make recently is that we are currently seeing record high calf prices, but no one is bragging about it because even with the high prices, many aren’t profitable in the end. I've seen many of those numbers. I’ve crunched numbers for ourselves, and what I’ve seen is that unless you're relying on drought relief, or subsidies of some kind, or subsidizing your own cow/calf enterprise from some other labor on your land, those operations are VERY difficult to put in the black right now; record high prices notwithstanding.


What CAN We Control?

We can’t control the weather, so let's look at what other things we CAN control this next year. Let’s look when we put bulls in, when we calve, and talk about the implications of what that would look like if we change that. Because there are consequences for doing that. What do you do with your bulls for that long? How do you get a breed up if you're in rough country? And all of the other “what-ifs”. And you'll need to weigh those out for yourself and decide if making a major change in your calf schedule balances out and could work for your operation.


It’s obviously too late to not have calves in the snowstorms this year, but do we need to repeat the insanity? Do we really need to do what we’ve always done, take the same risks over and over again, but hope for different results than we always get? Or can we consider some major changes, with significant, positive implications down the road for years and years to come? Time is important to ranchers, and the lure of high weights at weaning is tempting. And too many ranchers are operating only one bad season away from bankruptcy. But taking the time to join us and learn a way that could save you money and loss could be a game changer for you and your operation.

I appreciate Kit being willing to do this webinar with us and I'm honored that he's willing to take the time to offer some solutions to prevent crisis. I encourage you to jump on the live webinar, or if you can’t watch live, to watch the recording. We'll see you Thursday, April 30, 2023 at 9:00 pm Pacific. Register below for free to hear Kit Pharo, of Pharo Cattle Company.

See other posts like this one:

Monday, April 10, 2023

Winter Calf Loss vs. Profitable Ranching

Saturday, April 08, 2023

Can a Family Farm be Profitable?

Thursday, April 06, 2023

Where Have All the Farmer’s Gone?

Wednesday, April 05, 2023

What is Good Farm Stewardship?

Tuesday, April 04, 2023

Can Regenerative Agriculture Feed the World?

Tuesday, April 04, 2023

Profitable Ranching is More than Marketing

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

When Did Regenerative Agriculture Start?

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