I'm about to graduate soon and my entire life All I've wanted to fo was own my own ranch, I have a little bit of experience with animals and such but not much, I am planning on just trying to dive straight into getting a job as a ranch hand so I can get some experience but I was wondering if instead I should go get a business degree or something like that first, could someone lend me some advice?

Hi, I’m a woman, late twenties, with no experience with riding. I’m not afraid of horses though. I’ve always been interested in the ranching life, but I’m from the East Coast. I have no idea to get into that world. I’ve looked for summer ranching jobs but they seem to be more for riding resorts for family vacations, not working ranches. Maybe it would be a good idea to take one of those jobs just to get some horseback experience?

Looking for advice about finding a way to work in this area when I have no experience. I am pretty sure of my mind so I think it would suit me. I want to work hard, be outdoors and around animals.

Whelp, woke up this morning exactly one month before I plan to go into calving mode to find a calf on the ground (May 11th is the start). First time heifer, and I only saw a wee bit of nursing on my way out. Can’t confirm that there was even a latch, and then she kept facing up to him once I was watching. Went ahead and brought him in to give him a bottle, but I hadn’t bought any new colostrum yet and didn’t have any leftovers. While my wife went to buy some, I got momma in the chute to milk her, and she only had a weak flow of milk and no colostrum. So, we were late getting it in him, but he’s doing pretty well now. Warm, only slightly elevated breathing and suckling off the bottle nicely. We plan to put momma in the chute again this evening and see if we can get him to nurse on her.

Any tips, thoughts, or criticisms? It’s been a learning day for me.

Good morning, I am a graduate student based in Texas looking to increase the rate of a survey I have developed.

My research involves using different rates of pelleted biosolids vs. conventional fertilizer (urea) to assess its effects on nutritive value, forage yield, and make some assessments about the sustainability of the two fertilization methods.

Furthermore, I have developed a survey to evaluate Texas-based producers' perception on utilization of biosolids and how we may better inform their knowledge on biosolids as a feasible alternative to chemical fertilizers.

I am not sure if this is allowed in this subreddit and wanted to ask before attempting to post the link to the Qualtrics survey.

Thanks for any responses or advice!

Thanks for the interest and input. Here is an update on action taken to date

• called the game warden; got voice mail and left a detailed report as instructed (still don’t know of ours are deployed to the border)

• bought a large quantity of purple paint - more than a mile of the most likely point of ingress are purple posted

• bought a large quantity of signs some were “posted no hunting, shooting or trespassing” and some were “24 hour video surveillance, not trespassing or hunting” installed these

• called my neighbor who is on the lookout now

• called my ground lease farmer who said he’d seen tracks across the hay fields he doesn’t like poaching anyway and now they have damaged his crop

• put up several hidden cameras

The neighbor and farmer are better plugged in to the local network than me. I’m hoping word will get out.

Considering some other actions but that’s what’s done so far…

Going back & forth. Have 140ac, 80% wooded, gradually clearing brush and small trees over time. I'll have a couple horses, a few cows eventually. Need to mow occasionally, blade road, etc. Looking used. Skid steer/track loaders are considerably more expensive.

For example - JD 5300 w 2,000 hrs for 14K. Skid steers starting at 18-20K with 3-6,000 hrs on them. Bobcat T190 w 6,000 hrs for 17K. Anyway, wrestling with whether the skid steers are worth the extra money...

Do bucking bulls fall under the usda loans and such?

If you want to skip the context of this request for help; scroll down to the paragraph titled “meat and potatoes:”. Thank you in advance to anyone that can share some knowledge.

Hey all, second gen farmer and small business (restaurant) owner, but first generation rancher just east of Austin, Tx running solo (27M) now. After getting out of the military I moved back home to help my dad with stage IV cancer run his olive orchard with my mom. Well, the big Texas freeze a few years back froze all 1,100 olive trees to the root resulting in a complete loss of 5+ years of work. With his cancer we decided that replanting and trying again just wasn’t in the cards, so we switched to grazing cattle and raising Hampshire pigs for our own use and it went well for awhile providing us with great meat for our own use.

Well, fast forward a bit and his condition took a turn for the worse, and he ended up passing peacefully (as much as one could) surrounded by family. As small business owners and landowners, we (the family) were left scrambling to fill his shoes and utilize the skills we had learnt throughout life to keep the show running. With that, family bbq’s, pig roasts, and our consumption has decreased leaving us with a lot of extra cattle and pigs and it’s led to overgrazing with the cattle and more pigs than I can personally sell (I’d sell individual pigs for locals), but at the rate of reproduction I just can’t keep up while working a full time job in commercial real estate and running the family restaurant. Not to mention I was struck head-on driving home from work shortly before he passed and have been recovering from burst fractures in my spine and ankles that temporarily left me in a wheelchair.

I refuse to let our way of life die, but in all honesty I need help. Due to his deteriorating condition we never were able to take any animals to market and frankly beyond loading them I have no clue how I would go about taking animals to market.

Meat and Potatoes: Could anyone give me some tips on how I would go about taking pigs (I just had a litter of 12 born a few days ago) to market? If you’re local to the Bastrop/Travis county area and could share specific locations that would be great. If you’re not local, any help would be appreciated. As it relates to cattle, I assume the process would be the same, but feel free to educate me otherwise.

Thank you in advance to anyone that helps save our operations. I don’t want to abandon this way of life, but with only myself (27M) and my disabled mother. I do have to make the decision that both realistic and best for us and the animals, and if that means dropping the whole operation, then, as sad as it would be, then so be it.

Also, if you’re local to Bastrop/Travis county and are looking for part time ranch hand work. Please feel free to reach out. I can’t promise you a full time job, but if we can get an efficient system in place to regularly take animals to market. I’d be happy to explore sharing of profits and even equity in the business if we can actually get a profitable operation going.

Thanks for reading and have a blessed day y’all.

What about net wire

Australian lowline/American Aberdeen.

You may remember my post from a few weeks ago about me and my wife buying stock at a show because the buyers were screwing the kids. I got back from my granddaughter’s county show. I spent too much on a smoker/grill. But the kill price of the show animals was stupid low. I didn’t let a single a buyer get away with any of those prices they wanted to pay. $1.10 for steers and $1.30 for heifers. Only one buyer left with calves. We aren’t hurting or broke but we budget our revenue. These buyers are screwing the kids at these shows. Damn but I was pissed off. We bought em all but 11. How can we solve this so the kids can at least get fair market? I appreciate any input. FFA or 4H presidents please speak up. Thank you.

howdy /r/Ranching. I am 34, I am a first generation farmer, and I am looking for a place in east Tx to begin my sheep farm. I am going to be using regenerative practices including daily animal moves and extensive use of electric fence to manage the pasture in a way that will improve it over time. I was born and raised in Tx. I have been out of the state for a couple of years and I have gotten an Agribusiness degree in Iowa. Now I am looking to come back to Tx and start my farm business. Has anyone got any good suggestions on how I can find 100-200 acres of pasture to lease, anywhere east of Dallas and north of Houston can work. Iowa, where I am currently, has some groups and programs designed to join land owners with farmers looking for land, and I am not finding any program similar in Tx. How is a new farmer supposed to get in? Remember, I am a first generation farmer. I don't have family connections or any kind of farm inheritance to start me off. It is just me looking for some land to get started.

So a miracle has happened and my 72 year old dad has finally decided I can start making changes to how things are done. Long story short what does everyone do with their feed sacks. My dad insists "we might need them" so we store them like this in the picture until they're too old to do anything with and then I have to haul them off to the trash. It drives me insane. So anyone got any ideas or suggestions? I would like for them to be actually useful for something. But ideas for better storage would work too 😭

I'm in high school right now and am looking to get a summer job as a wrangler next year, ideally at a place where I'd be riding a lot. However, I'll be 17 and many of the ads I've checked out for various ranches either go from May to September/October or require a high school diploma. If I were 18 and it were my senior year this wouldn't be too much of a problem, but since my school year is from August to June I can't really opt out of it.

Yellowstone is very appealing. National Parks in general are great, though I assume they'd be stricter about age and season availability since they're more popular.

If not a job as a wrangler, is there a suitable and similar alternative? I'd consider a ranch hand but I prefer to have some riding time. Experience and distance aren't an issue.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/09/secret-successful-rewilding-not-trees-people-conservation-land-restoration/

When spot treating huisache and other nuisance pasture plants I’ve been successful mixing remedy/credit 41 with diesel and spraying that way. It’s effective but expensive. Should I anticipate similar results when mixing with water or will that reduce effectiveness? If water will reduce effectiveness is there another solution I can mix with that will achieve what the diesel does? Letting it soak in/avoiding evaporation/additional killing power etc.

Later this month I’ll be closing on a place tucked back in the woods on 10 acres in south Louisiana.

The previous owner trained horses, so it’s set up nicely for horses.

I’m not interested in raising horses.

I’m considering keeping a few head of beef cattle for me, my family and friends.

I was told a few years back to start with 1-2 momma ‘s that are carrying babies.

We’ve got 3 acres of open pasture, a rectangle 1/2 acre with a wooden fence, 2 rectangle 1/4 acre corrals/arenas and a round pen that’s 30’ across.

Assume good grass and consistent growth, how many head could I reasonably run without spending too much money on hay and feed?

Is it realistic to break even on a small enterprise like that?

What kind of time commitment am I looking at to raise the cattle right?

What are some of the must have pieces of cattle equipment that a rookie should have?

Are there any books you’d recommend?

So many questions.

I’ll probably need to fence off the 3 open acres.

Should I split the 3 acres in 3rds so I can rotate them in and out?

I’m lucky enough to have a mentor that’s spent his life raising beef cattle in S. LA.

But I haven’t talked to him in a couple of year and don’t know if he’s even still with us!

I have a call into our Parish Ag rep. “Parish” is what we call counties down here.

And I’m going to call the LA Cattlemen’s Association at some point.

Oh and one of my previous neighbor/friends owns the local livestock auction.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Hi all. New to having cattle. I have 4. 2 steers 2 heifers, all 500-650lb weaned.

Per advice I got from the rancher I purchased them from, I feed a tiny handful per head of basic cattle feeder to get them used to coming up to me, in the same spot, to make it easy to load them at some point.

Very minimal amount of feed.

However, one steer I’ve got, he’s the biggest by a bit, he was recently banded. Nuts haven’t fully falllen off.

He gets very aggressive or so it seems. Again I’m new to cattle for the most part beyond working on larger ranches.

When I come in the 4 acre pasture they are in now, the steer will start running at me very fast when I have the bucket of feed. He does not seem like he is going to stop until I put my hands up and calmly say “easy easy” and still he pushes forward until I drop the feed and is aggressive. His flight zone seems nonexistent…all 3 others don’t do this, they just walk up and stop 3-4 feet away until I give some feed.

Am I doing something wrong? Is he still hormonal with the balls not falling off yet? It genuinely looks like he is not going to stop running at me very fast, he will get within a foot and then I raise my hands up and he stops but still pushes on.

Please advise. Thanks!

What short term impacts are you all preparing for or seeing already on live cattle prices? Do you expect live cattle prices to drop, stay the same, or go up in the next 6 months and why? Any worries about H5N1?