Ranching Returns Podcast

Vannie Collins just got started in the ranching business in 2016 and because he had no previous paradigms he had to break, he started immediately down the right path. He attended Ranching for Profit and with what he learned there along with help from mentors like Ian Mitchell Innes and Greg Judy he has since grown his herd to 2000 cows which over tripled the previous stocking rate of his families...

Craig Fischer and his family have a long history in agriculture in South Central Minnesota. They have a background in crop and dairy production, but chose a different route by raising pastured hogs, poultry and bison on their family farm. He talks about how he got into it, and why as well as some neat facts on the bison industry and building a direct market.  Resources Mentioned: Minnesota Bi...

There are plenty of things we can blame for a lack of profitability in our farm operations but at the end of the day it's our decisions that impact whether or not we are profitable, no excuses. Kit and I talk about this idea and how using excuses and blaming others can be what keeps us from recognizing our role in our business profitability and keeps us from making necessary changes to our busines...

Aaron Bradley farms with his wife Nicole in Bostic, North Carolina. We’re talk briefly about grazing operation and discuss in depth his marketing enterprise and how they hope that their brand can be a marketing outlet for other farmers passionate about raising regenerative meats but don’t have the market themselves. Resources Mentioned: Dirt to Soil - Gabe Brown As always, check us out at Herd Qui...

Chase Jones recently had the opportunity to take over his families generational farm in Southwest Wisconsin after his father decided to back out of the farming business. Recognizing the capital requirements of getting into the cow/calf business of equipment and cows but also wanting to keep the land in grass he went the route of custom grazing. He shares with us in this episode his first 3 years o...

Colter DeVries is a ranch broker in Montana, Wyoming and Colorado and is host of the Ranch Investor Podcast. Today we discuss the increasing ranch values over the past several years, who is buying it, and what that means for those of us trying to make a living on the land. We also discuss the need for turnover in the ranch business, people willing to think differently and bring new ideas and techn...

Doug and Wally are experienced sell/buy marketers as well as educators. They join me in this episode to answer your questions! You can listen to episodes  17 & 18 where I had some initial discussions with Wally Olson and then episodes 28 & 37 with Doug Ferguson. As always, check us out at Herd Quitter Podcast on Facebook and Instagram as well as at herdquitterpodcast.com. You can also...

Dale is a sales agronomist for Green Cover Seeds as well as a speaker, consultant, author and experienced grazier! He shares his experience building a grazing farm and dramatically improving grazing productivity, and profitability as well as soil organic matter and soil health. We talk about the advantages of a grazing system as opposed to a row crop system. So much value in this conversation, and...

Ben Beichler always had a dream of being a farmer, but with no farm to inherit, he set out to build one of his own. After apprenticing with Polyface Farms under Joel Salatin, he bought and built a dairy selling raw milk directly to 1250 families through a herd share program! His story is inspiring, and while I wouldn't recommend everybody go out and get a mortgage to incentivize you to be successf...

This is the second part of our conversation with Joseph Hubbard. If you haven't, I would highly recommend going back and listening to part 1 before listening to this episode just for context but also because there is a ton of value in that episode! Joseph is doing some pretty impressive things! Resources Mentioned: Herd Quitter Podcast Working Cows Podcast Ranching Reboot Podcast Grazing Conferenc...

This weeks episode is part one of my two part conversation with Joseph Hubbard of Olsburg, Kansas. Joseph has a large diversified ranch made up of 450 cow/calf pairs, 800+ stockers, and 2000 sheep managed on around 10,000 acres of Kansas prairie! In part one we discuss his sheep production model both on pasture and in a feedlot setting. We discuss the EZ Care breed and rambouillet sheep and why ea...

Kim Maloney returned home to her family farm in Quebec, Canada to work as their day-to-day operations manager but also to build a direct marketing enterprise! Over the past 3 years of her time on the farm they have greatly expanded their beef production and marketing, added sheep and pork and have succeeded in marketing all their product direct to consumer! She shares the strategies they have used...

Riley Shay is a friend of mine and inspires and impresses me whenever I hear his story! From a young age Riley has had an entrepreneurial spirit from trying to start a cow herd with four bottle calves to buying a tractor and starting a custom haying business at 16 years old. Today, at only 26, Riley has built a ranch of his own, purchasing a property not far from his family in NW Kansas and has de...

Derek started his farming journey immediately after high school when he decided he could learn better through experience and self-study than college. He gained experience working for several farmers, studied books, magazines and YouTube and used this knowledge to build his own dairy. Today he and his wife run their dairy in central Minnesota. They are impressive grazing managers and are using thei...

I just got home from my week long trip to Oklahoma attending the Ranching for Profit School. Each night I tried to do a quick update on my day to summarize some of the topics they discuss each day to give you an idea what the school entails. I really enjoyed my experience and if you've ever considered attending a school, hopefully this helps and I would definitely recommend attending a school when...

In Episode 11, we talked to Jenny Drake. Today we talk to her husband to get more details on their story of moving from Indiana to the mountains of Tennessee and building a large successful grazing based and direct marketing farm there. He shares the stressful times, along with the successes and how he prioritized his marriage over his business and how that has helped lead to a long and successful...

Paul always had a love of cattle from a young age! His father recognized it when Paul could put together cattle family lines in a commercial herd when he was just a kid. However, the opportunity to take over a large family ranch was not in the cards, but this didn't stop him from building an operation of his own. In this episode we talk about his journey to building a ranch by focusing on low inpu...

Tyler Burkey and his wife Megan have a unique story of seeking out new opportunities and not being afraid to change course when those opportunities arise and the numbers make sense. Their start in agriculture was producing hay, they grazed covers after seed corn harvest, raised cow/calf herds in barns and today they are implementing sell/buy marketing of cows and stockers and raising them in barns...

Jordan Meyer and his wife Rachelle haven't been afraid to dive into new enterprises when opportunities present themselves. Over the years they have raised organic crops, conventional crops, dairy, beef cow/calf, stocker cattle, goat production, pastured hogs, turkeys, broiler chickens and laying hens! Today they still remain diversified raising dairy cows, beef cow/calf, stockers, goats, broilers...

On this weeks episode we take questions from listeners and ask them to Kit Pharo. A few of the questions he answers are: - If you were starting from scratch today, what would you do? - Why don't more producers use composite bulls when most are not breeding registered cattle or show cattle? - AI or Bulls - Heat tolerant bull program - Cactus Feeders calf buy-back program - What percentage of bulls...

In a recent PCC discussion group there was a conversation around where is the ideal location to run cow/calf pairs in the United States. Overall, every area has advantages and disadvantages, but Jim Gerrish who has a unique perspective having worked with ranchers in 43 states and visited ranches in 49 states has his views on some of the best places. We discuss this as well as why it's important to...

In 2019 Landan took over his family's ranch which had been managed in a high input, low profit manner for a number of years. He immediately worked to make changes improving grass management, buying low input genetics, reducing direct costs and overhead expenses and as a result has shown a profit every year since starting. Definitely an episode worth listening to if you have the desire to make a mo...

Brian Alexander, also known as the Red Hills Rancher on social media joins me to discuss his history in ranching and his ranch in the Red Hills of South Central Kansas. We talk about fire, grazing management, succession planning and much more! If you haven't heard of it, be sure to check out his podcast the Ranching Reboot Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts!  Resources Mentioned: Nationa...

To often people are convinced that finding success in agriculture is impossible because they can't find opportunity in their back yard. Andrew and his family were unwilling to accept that they couldn't run a profitable ranch business and did what many of us would never consider and sold their land in Ohio and moved to Oklahoma to start a new ranch in a new environment that was more suited to their...

Will Harris is one of those people that I have looked up to as long as I've been involved in this regenerative world. He's got an amazing story of transitioning his farm over from commodity livestock production to a regenerative, diverse, direct to consumer business. The market millions of dollars in grass fed and pasture based meats and poultry raised on their 3200 acres in Bluffton, Georgia. The...