Crop Failures

A person learns a lot about herself when she is in business.

When I sat back and thought about it, I realized that I often have to deal with crop failures.

I started direct marketing beef more than 25 years ago with a crop failure.

I had a single heifer that didn’t breed.

I knew I would be robbed if I took her to the auction –buyers are always sure that something is wrong with a single animal that walks through the ring.

So I thought about what I had, drove to the local natural food store in the next town and asked if they could use grass-fed beef that had no hormones or antibiotics.

Suddenly I was in the grassfed beef business.

After we bought the Graham Ranch, we decided we needed to raise sheep because the Grahams always ran sheep here.

The heritage of the ranch should be honored.

Sheep are often profitable, too.

That first lambing season certainly was not profitable.

It turns out that new lambs need a lot more care than calves.

I charged that pile of dead failures as tuition.

Eighteen years later, my flock pays the bills and I still pay tuition sometimes.

About 12 years ago, yet another crop failure led me to expand my business.

One day, an upright freezer door came open, partially thawing the entire freezer-full of beef.

Maybe I could salvage it.

I called my brother-in-law who knows everything about preserving food.

He told me to can the raw meat in jars, adding a little salt, pepper, onions and garlic.

Forty-five minutes later, I pulled delicious, ready-to-eat beef in gravy out of my pressure-cooker.

I wondered if other people might enjoy tasty, convenient meat, too.

All I need to do is produce shelf-stable, ready-to-eat meals.

The other day, I realized I have yet another crop failure on my hands.

The replacement heifers I choose will influence my cow herd for a long time so I hold them to high standards.

By the time a replacement heifer weans her first calf, I have invested almost three years of ranch expenses in her.

She will need to raise a calf for another five years to pay back that investment.

Across the cattle industry, about 85 percent of heifers don’t wean a calf as a two-year-old.

Of those that do, on average 85 percent breed as three-year-olds.

So if I kept 100 yearling heifers, I would end up with 85 calves the next year and sell 15 dry heifers at a loss.

Of the remaining 85 heifers, only 72 would be pregnant the next year.

Red Tag 25 exceeded all of my criteria and she had one of the first calves of the season.

I was excited about her potential.

When her calf was about four days old, I turned her on to fresh green grass.

Red Tag 25 headed straight for the county road and crawled through the fence.

I put her back into the pasture and our pattern began: She crawled through the fence. I got her back in.

When I put the bulls with my breeding groups, I wondered whether Red Tag 25 would climb through the fence and out of bull range.

Last week, I moved the cows to my best grass at the west end of the ranch.

Four hours later, several were in my neighbor’s spring wheat.

Those cows had to walk past fresh water and salt, through knee-high grass and up a steep hill to climb through the fence to his crop.

Red Tag 25 led the way.

I will lose money on my investment that exceeds all of my standards when I haul her to the auction next week.