How NOT to Manage a Ranch
Shaye Koester 00:05
Hey, hey, it's Shaye Koester and I'm your host and the founder of Casual Cattle Conversation, a global rancher education company that strives to bring honest thoughts in conversations from ranchers and leaders to other ranchers. Be sure to follow @cattleconvos on social media to have more in-depth conversations around the ranching business and lifestyle brought to you. If you're ready to take your operation to the next level and improve your lifestyle too, send me a message about my RancherMind group. RancherMinds are monthly roundtable discussions for ranchers to learn from peers and experts and leave the call with actionable advice to make changes on their own operations. With that, let's see who our guest is today, and what experience and advice they have to offer you to improve your own operation. Alrighty, folks, let's take a second to thank today's sponsor. Value-added programs are on the rise in the beef industry as input costs increase and margins remain tight. Enterprising producers are exploring new ways to improve their return on investment and open doors to new marketing avenues. The Red Angus Feeder Calf Certification Program, the most mature value-added program in the beef industry, is expanding and helping more producers earn premiums on their calves. The FCCP combines three important components into a single value-added program: genetics, source and age verification. Cattle producers recognize the value of the yellow FCCP tag and continue to see market-topping premiums for a minimal investment by enrolling their Red Angus-sired calves. And for those producers who seek age and source verification but are lacking the Red Angus-sired component, be sure to check out the Allied Access program which is eligible to age and source verify every calf born in the U.S., regardless of breed. For more information on Red Angus value-added programs and the FCCP, please visit RedAngus.org. Thank you Red Angus for bringing this show to my listeners. Okay, awesome. So thank you again for being on the show and to just get started, what is your background in the ranching industry?
Dallas Mount 02:17
Sure, yeah. Well, first of all, thanks for asking me. I'm excited to be on with you. So background in the ranching industry, I came about it probably from a bit more of a non traditional approach. I grew up not in agriculture and mostly cities. My folks moved around quite a bit. When I graduated high school, I was living in Park City, Utah at the time and I didn't really fit in with most of the kids that were living in Park City. So I went down the valley to a little town at the time called Heber. I guess Hebrew has now been taken over by Park City, but at that time, it was a little ag community. I found my my peer group down there in Heber and most of them were ranch kids. I kind of got interested in everything around ranching and got into high school rodeo a bit and left home went to work on a dude ranch for a couple summers as a wrangler, and then went to school for animal science. And that's really where my love of agriculture became and probably the thing that instilled the most of it in me was the opportunities I had to work on different farms and ranches. I made it a point every summer to go and identify a piece of the industry that I didn't know and go work there. So I spent about five years at a cow calf operation near Fort Collins, Colorado. I did a couple of degrees at Colorado State and spent a summer doing high mountain Hay, doing yearlings and spent just about a full year in a feedlot riding pens and looking at cattle there. So that's really where I feel like I learned most of what I used today is in those those work opportunities. After I finished with my master's degree in nutrition, I thought well, I I really want to help ranchers and help them in a meaningful way. I went to work for University of Wyoming Extension. It was a great 20 year career there and they really allowed me the opportunity to grow and to be around people that were thinking a lot bigger than I was. And that's when I found my way to Ranching for Profit. At the time Dave Pratt was owning and teaching the school and when I went to that it was like somebody turned the lights on. I mean, it was finally a place where they understood and could communicate well, the complexity of ranching, the system's thinking around it, the pieces that were really the underlying economic drivers of a ranch business and so when I went to Ranching for Profit, I knew that was what I wanted to be involved in and work at that level and a couple few years after I attended the school Dave asked me if I wanted to learn to be an instructor and of course I felt like you know Garth Brooks asking me to come sing on stage with him, right? So I was thrilled about that and said, Absolutely. And went and started working with Dave. And I spent about eight years doing that with him and then I ended up purchasing the company from Dave. So, now I am the owner and CEO of RMC ranch management consultants and we teach the ranching for profit school and facilitate the executive link program.
Shaye Koester 05:23
Well, awesome. That is a really neat background, I always love to hear a story about someone who doesn't grow up on a ranch, but does the work and really finds their way through the industry to understand it completely and still become involved in it. So with that, you talked about it a little bit, but can you touch more on what Ranching for Profit school is?
Dallas Mount 05:46
So Ranching for Profit is the business management school for people in agriculture. We do a seven day school that we teach. Right now we're doing about 10 schools a year, all over North America. And it's really based on the idea that knowing how to raise crops or knowing how to raise livestock is not the same thing as knowing how to run a business that raises crops or that raises livestock. They're two entirely different things and most people that grow up in agriculture, they grow up with the understanding of the you got to be good at raising the crops or raising the livestock. And as the results of today's agriculture shows, being good at that does not mean that your business will be successful. You really need to understand business management principles, and be able to apply those business principles to your farm or ranch. That's what will make it successful. It's not having the biggest calves. It's not having the most bushels per acre. Those things don't determine profitability of a business. It's a lot deeper than that and so that's what the Ranching for Profit school is. We've been doing it going on 40 years, so I'm the third owner of the company. I I'm confident and saying we have a reputation for excellence in this field and we're really passionate about the work we do.
Shaye Koester 07:07
Well, awesome. So you mentioned like 10 schools per year. So is that something where participants go on site to other ranches or how does that operate?
Dallas Mount 07:17
So we hold our schools at hotel meeting rooms and that's where we spend the seven days. Now, during those seven days, you'll visit ranches "visit", right? As in will, we'll look at what other people are doing with pictures, videos, interviews and you'll visit ranches, in all different types of climate zones from Texas, to Oklahoma, to Colorado to Utah to Canada. I mean, so our client group is from from everywhere in North America, Mexico even. And so you'll get to see a lot of different operations and how they've applied the principles. But we don't leave that hotel room, we stay right there. And for seven days, we dive in deep into the business management side. And the wonderful part about a school is generally our schools are around 40 to 45 people. So you've got all that experience that's also sitting in the room with you. And our schools are framed to intentionally take advantage of that. So we put people on teams of five or six other people, and you work at that team all week. And we have a lot of case studies that we look into we we run the numbers together, you'll leave that school having a pretty high degree of confidence with running economic projections for a farm or ranch business.
Shaye Koester 08:36
That sounds very intense, but also exciting. If you really want to get that thorough with your ranching business.
Dallas Mount 08:43
I think those are good words intensive, exciting. Yeah.
Shaye Koester 08:47
So what do you enjoy most about the program?
Dallas Mount 08:52
Oh, man. Well, I love teaching the schools and connecting with people and meeting with people from all over. I mentioned, the second thing we do is a program called Executive Link. And that's really the thing I enjoy the most. Executive Link is where we take graduates of the Ranching for Profit school and we put them on boards of directors for each other. So we'll form a board of five or six businesses and that board might be together for three or five years. That board meets three times a year and they look inside each other's businesses, right? So if you're on a board, you spend 5/6 of your time as an advisor to somebody else's business, right? You are looking inside their business, asking difficult questions, trying to point things out and pull things out of them. Then for 1/6 of that meeting, they look inside your business and they do that for you, right? So that group would would be together meeting these three times a year going through that process and the reason I think I enjoy that the most is you really get to know these folks at a deep level, right? You get to be there as they're doing the struggles to turn their farm or ranch into a real business and to get those outcomes that it's producing. You know, and we're all there together. Everybody's struggling together and it's really a pretty intense bonding experience when you go through that with a group. So that's obviously the part of the business I enjoy the most is being a part of the Executive Link program.
Shaye Koester 10:26
That's a really neat concept, especially to have, you know, you'd think of Board of Directors, yeah, for any business, but to think of having that for a ranch is very valuable, obviously, from a business standpoint, but it's not something you necessarily might think of right away. So what would you say is one of the bigger mistakes that ranchers make? In general?
Dallas Mount 10:50
It's treating your farm or ranch like it's not a real business is probably the biggest mistake farms and ranches make. You know, you often hear people say this, "Well, maybe I ought to run this as though it it is a real business." And in saying that they're admitting that, well, is it really a business? And so what I mean by that is let's let's dive in a little bit. So you come to farming or ranching oftentimes, because you love it, right? You love the animals you love being outside, you love working with your hands or maybe it's part of your legacy, right? It's a family legacy, or you want to carry on the tradition, right? So those are often reasons why people come into farming or ranching, it's often you don't hear well, I want to get rich, right? But then when they come into it, what they find is, so three years, five years, 10 years, 50 years down the road, what does it become? Well, it's something that takes an inhuman amount of work to keep going, right? I mean we pride ourselves in agriculture on working hard. And I don't think anybody's ever said, Well, you're just not hardworking enough, right? But oftentimes, we build these businesses that take 60, 80, or 100 hours a week just to keep the wheels turning, and things pushing ahead. Then financially and economically they're often not rewarding at all. I mean how many places that you know, have somebody that has to work in town just to pay the bills, right? And so here's a place that requires an inordinate amount of work, is not financially rewarding and it's no wonder why the kids don't want to be involved in it, right? So that's what I mean when I say that the biggest mistake is not putting business principles on to the farm or ranch. It's we come to it with the idea that it will if we just continue to do things right and maybe make 2% improvement here and 3% improvement there that it's going to create a life that we're comfortable with. I rarely see that work. it really takes a different perspective, to bring to that business to make it produce results that we are that we're happy with. So, you know, it's not about hard work and it's not about raising, the biggest calves and raising the biggest crops. It's about running a business that supports your life. And that can give you a quality of life and a good financial life as well. So maybe I feel like I've done some rambling on that. But that's the biggest mistake, I think is really just the mindset that people bring to their business.
Shaye Koester 13:33
No, I wouldn't call that rambling. You brought up a lot of good points. I mean, that's a concept that's becoming more and more talked about. I feel like at least for me, as a college student, that's something that a lot of professors bring to light and a lot of my mentors remind us of. So those are all amazing points. So going off of that, what would you say are some changes that need to be made in the ranching industry?
Dallas Mount 14:01
Oh, boy, we could go on forever on this one. Changes that need to be made in the ranching industry. I think it's time that we demand competence from those that are running these businesses. I think it's time that we say instead of, you know what, you're gonna have the reins of this because you're my firstborn, or because you share the same last name with me. I think it's time that we start saying, you know, what, if you're going to be in charge of making decisions with this multimillion dollar asset, which is what most of our farms and ranches are, that we're going to expect some basic level of competencies from you. I think those kinds of competencies are things like you know, we want to see a budget. Before we go through the year let's let's look at your plan for where the expenditures are going to happen. Where the income is going to go. We want to see your risk management strategy. Have a plan for, you know, when are you going to sell? What kind of prices are you going to be your target prices, right? What are ways you're going to manage the volatility of the markets? What about the employee management? How many people is this business going to take to run? What's going to be the overhead structure of this business? Why don't you submit that plan before we even start the year, so that we have some assurances that, you know, if things go as expected, we're going to be able to cover those overheads plus produce some profit for for the shareholders. So I think it's time to start demanding some some basic level of competencies in the people that are running these businesses. And you know, one of the things that we talk about, is working within your area of influence in your area of control. And I bet if you've had, we were talking before we went on the recording that Tom field is, is one of your advisors, teachers there. I betcha he's he's introduced you guys to Stephen Covey, and the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And Stephen Covey talks about these areas of concern, and your areas of control, right? That area of control being the smaller inner circle and you see so many people in ag, that all the conversations that we have are out here in this area of concern, right? And I don't know about you, but whenever I get together with ag industry, people, they want to spend all their time talking about the weather and the markets and what the government's doing, right? Well, how many things in your business can you really control that are related to those things? Right, the weather? Well, you can't make it rain unless you've got a whole bunch of center pivots that cover every every inch of ground that you own, right? But how can you position your business to take advantage of the rain, so when it does rain things are gonna grow? What's going to be covering the ground? Right? Even a bigger question, where do you choose to farm or ranch? Who picked that spot? You know, you did? Okay, so let's focus on those areas. You know, the markets Well, we could all sit around and gripe about the way the market moves. But how are you positioning your business to take advantage of high markets or the low markets? So I think that's probably another change to see in agriculture is let's let's stop playing the victim card, right? We all love to sit around and pretend Oh, woe is me, you know, and all this stuff is happening to me get off that horse. We're tired of that one, let's get on the one that says okay, I'm accountable for this. I'm the one that makes my decision about what enterprises I'm going to be in and what markets we're going to be selling into and you know, how my business, how my farm or ranch is positioned to handle droughts and all those kinds of things. So I think it's time for a change in attitude on that.
Shaye Koester 17:49
Alrighty, folks, let's take a second to hear from our friends at Red Angus. Mark your calendars for the 69th annual National Red Angus Convention, Sept 14-16 in beautiful Kalispell, Montana. The highly touted Commercial Cattlemen’s Symposium kicks off the week with a focus on heifer development and female marketing. Producer panels will discuss nutrition and marketing and extension specialists from the University of Missouri and industry stakeholders will keynote the event to share perspective on successfully developing and marketing heifers. The final two days of convention are full of high -uality education and entertainment with keynote addresses from Damian Mason – agriculture trends speaker and humorist, - Don Schiefelbein, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association President, Jessica Spreitzer, Director of Trade Analysis for the US Meat Export Federation, and Terryn Drieling (pronounced dree-ling), enneagram coach and podcaster. The wide variety of speakers, plus updates from Red Angus leadership and committees, provides a valuable lineup for every beef producer. Located near Glacier National Park, Kalispell is a prime location to visit with the family – attend the convention and stay afterwards for a great family vacation! Registration is now open for the National Red Angus Convention – visit RedAngus.org to sign up and book your travel for a can’t miss convention! So you've talked about mindset and change of attitude and controlling your controllables and not worrying so much about that concern circle. But where does that mindset change start?
Dallas Mount 19:24
Boy, where does it start? I guess is it too simple to say it starts between the ears? People have to be put into positions where they're hungry for that. And if you're going to allow yourself to constantly just do the same thing you've always done year after year after year and never stretch yourself then that mindset is going to start to just become very internally focused. So I think we have to create a culture in our businesses where we're developing people, right? And where we're saying, these are our key people running this, again, multimillion dollar business, what are they doing on an annual basis on an every six months to stretch themselves and to start thinking bigger and asking challenging questions, and then bringing those things back to the ranch and leading the team through that process. So I think it starts with a culture of we're not going to settle for status quo, we're not going to fall into this same old, same old thinking patterns, you know, so how do you start changing that culture in your business? I think it's by asking those questions and really listening to each other.
Shaye Koester 20:45
So what about like a scenario where you're say, say, there's two to three generations on the ranch and you're the youngest generation coming back, you want to change that culture? You want to change to have more of that business mindset, instead of just living the dream and living the lifestyle? What are some key things you can do as that younger generation to make sure you continue to have that hunger and can start making those changes slowly?
Dallas Mount 21:16
Yeah, that's a great question. You come back in and you pound your fist on the table and you say, We're gonna do it my way, get out of the way, you old codger? (laughter) That's not the way to do it, obviously. So what are the ways to lead that conversation in your business? So I think first of all, the business has got to be in a position where they're starting to be receptive to those things. If you bring those back too soon and maybe when the other generation is perhaps just taking the reins themselves, that's probably not the right timing to come in and say, hey, I'm going to start questioning the things that you're doing. And we're going to start, you know, changing the direction of this business. So the answer that might be you need to wait a while. You might need to go somewhere else for 5-10 years. Oftentimes, I see it where the current generation might have just gotten control of the business in their 40s or 50s. And at that time in their life is often when their kids are starting to whether they've gotten out of college or trade school or something, they're starting to come back in and starting to say, Well, what about this or why are we doing it this way, right? And so I think you've got the timing is one piece of it, right? So you've got to recognize that one generation might not be ready to hand over that strategic level control just yet. Now, when they are, when you feel like the time is right, the way to do it, is to start coming in with good questions. And to say, hey, you know, mom, dad, whoever the decision makers are, boy, I really love being a part of this, it's something I'm really passionate about. But I'd like to get an idea of where we're headed with this, right? If I'm coming back, bringing my family here, you know, we're going to set up roots here, I'd really like to have an idea of where the strategic direction of this business is going. So would you guys have some time, you know, that we could sit down and a half day here and a half day there, when we could start going through this stuff. I could start asking some of these questions and you can start helping me understand, right? I mean, who's gonna say no to that? Right. Okay, we've now got those times, and you're coming in, okay,now, that helped me understand the financials of the business helped me understand how things are moving. So I know that my family is living here, and we get a house and you know, we get our utilities paid. And this is the salary I've taken from the business. And I assume you and mom are doing something similar. So, you know, look, just right there alone, we've got $200,000 of overheads that this business is supporting. I am guessing with the land and with the machinery inventory, that's another two or 300,000. So there's a half a million dollars of money leaving the business on an annual basis, just an overhead cost. So help me understand where our revenue is coming and those things so you just start modeling those things out and pulling those out of them with some good answers. And what's so often going to happen is when you get to the bottom line on that you're going to say, Boy, that's really tight. I don't see so much value being created there to to cover these direct costs and have money left over to cover these overheads and for any profit, so So if we're going to make our lives here, I'd like to see this change. Do you have the ideas for ways we might change this right? And just start building that consensus and that team. Where you're going to turn people off is where you come in and you say, Well, here's the way to fix it, right? Because immediately when you start presenting solutions, what does the other party hear? They hear well, they think I'm doing something wrong and then they go into defense mode of, well, here's the reason why I've done these things this way, right? So it shuts that conversation down. So instead of come with solutions come with questions, and really strive for understanding each other. And then you'll start building that building that together.
Shaye Koester 25:34
I think that's really great advice about how to start that two sided conversation. And I mean, conversation, not a fight where both sides are defensive.
Dallas Mount 25:45
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Shaye Koester 25:48
So we talked about or there's talk about, you know, don't be the victim. be progressive, be proactive. What are those key actions of progressive and successful ranchers? What does being progressive look like?
Dallas Mount 26:04
Yeah, so I would say a few nuggets of those are. They make time for the things that are important and at the Ranching for Profit school, we make the distinction between working in the business, the acronym we use as WITB, Witby, and working on the business, WOTB, wotby. So making time for WOTB. So I know most all farms and ranch families, they have some form of what we call a Whitby meeting, right? Who's going to do what today? Okay, well, I'm gonna go out and take care of fixing this fence in this pasture. So and so is gonna go that way and fix that windmill or fix that? And so we're really good at doing the Whitby things. But the the progressive businesses, those that are having, the better outcomes are also going to make time and be very deliberate about getting the WOTBy done working on the business. And working on the business pieces are things like, well what enterprises are we going to run? Are we going to run cows? Are we going to run yearlings? Or are we going to, you know, custom graze cattle? Are we going to have sheep? Right? So asking those kinds of questions about what are the enterprises, other things that would be important, what the tasks are making sure that the end goal is clear, and that we all know what we're working towards. Now, some people might roll their eyes at this on a farm or ranch and say, Well, of course, we're just, you know, we're working to keep the thing going. So we can do it again next year and pass it on? Well are we sure everybody clear on that? Can all major players tell you exactly what what is the mission and the vision for your ranch? What what is the plan? And so getting clear on that shared vision, to where everybody knows where we're headed? And that's, those are some really good time spent on WOTB? You know, making that plan for profit. So how are we going to structure this business so that there's funds leftover at the end of the year? When those funds are leftover? Here's an interesting question. What are we going to do with it? Most farms and ranches, where does it go? 100% of it goes back into the business. That's usually everybody's response with profit. And I'll tell you right now that for most farms and ranches, that's dead wrong. Right, you should not pile 100% of your profits right back into the business. setting aside some cash for another day, right, doing some off farm investments of things that are not so subjected to market swings and droughts, right? So having those kinds of conversations about what's the plan for profit? Yeah, so I guess I'll stop there. But those are some of the key actions that that those businesses are going to do is to have that culture of what be in answer those those questions I've laid out.
Shaye Koester 28:58
Those are all awesome responses, and definitely kind of get the wheels turning on maybe some things to change or look at but what would you say the greatest challenge to profitable ranching is?
Dallas Mount 29:14
So I mean, do you really do you want to ferret it down to like, the farms and ranches that we see and what what's getting in the way of profit? Just some of the more nuts and bolts kind of things?
Shaye Koester 29:25
Yeah. So I see you have people wrote down on the notes.
Dallas Mount 29:26
Yeah. Yeah. So definitely, when you talk about what's the greatest challenge getting in the way of profit it, it's people and it's right, it's people's unwillingness to look at something else and to have those conversations and be real about what's going on with this business. What if you wanted a more nuts and bolts answer of what you know, so I get a look at probably probably three or 400 ranches a year I'll look at their economics of them. And most of our clients are in the ranching business. So cattle, cow calf probably being the most popular. So when I when I look at a cow calf business of what's getting in the way of profitability there, number one is going to be the overheads are too high. We've got too many people and too much stuff that's trying to depend on this business for to keep the wheels turning. So we built these businesses that are these complicated monsters that create a lot of things that they need. I mean, let's just like tractors to keep them going and feeders and hay wagons and barns and corrals and working facilities and all these things that we put on top of this herd of cows or whatever it is that didn't we ask those cows to service all the depreciation and repair bills of all those things. Plus, we tend to add too many people to a business than it could support. Right? So Jr wants to come home and we say yeah, great Jr. Come on home. And yeah, these these 200 cows are going to support mama and me and you and your spouse, right. And it's just not realistic not without thinking about it a different way. And without changing the structure of that so. So the people part would be one. The second thing when we look at cow calf businesses is the margins just are not all that attractive. So you'll look at quite a few businesses where the value of cow creates 50 to 60, to sometimes 70% of that value that she creates, is eating up indirect costs. Things like feed. Alright, so we're she creates maybe eight $900 of value. And there's many ranches that are shoveling it out $400 of that just to keep her fed for the year. Right. Well, that doesn't leave all that much to service the overheads on the business. So many of the businesses are economically not structured to succeed in the first place. But when you come down to it, why is it not structured to succeed? And and why is it not been addressed? Well, it's a people issue. Alright, maybe we've been letting ourselves off the hook on the WOTB, and not asking some of those hard questions about what could we do with this place? And how could we structure it to be successful? So I guess there's a nuts and bolts answer for you, and then a big picture answer for you, too.
Shaye Koester 32:20
So and maybe this ties back to what we talked about earlier. But you know, what actions can you take to fix the people? If that's a problem?
Dallas Mount 32:31
Yeah, yeah. So what actions can you take? Well, most of the people that work in this business are really smart, creative, energetic, hardworking people. But they need to be given that inert those energies need to be turned loose, right? And so many times the way we've structured our businesses, It's stifling that. And so how can we change the culture and say, gosh, you know, you're really good at coming up with ideas on creative marketing strategies, right, look, let's put you in charge of that part of our business. Here's the outcomes we want you to produce, here's some tools to support you in doing this now, you know, go out and develop some plans and come back together in a month and show us those things you've came up with, right? To help us solve those and, and maybe somebody else is just really good at the grazing part and right, and they're all about creating rest for the plants and capturing every drop of rain that falls and putting it to use so boy, you know, what, go out and develop that grazing plan. And if you can come up with some way to to increase the amount of Animal Unit days we're gonna get on this ranch and make the land healthier at the same time. We're going to support that and so how do you tap into those creative energies that you already have in your business and turn them loose? So I think that's the way to get it has to change that culture, that business so that you've got energetic, enthusiastic, exciting people that want to be a part of it.
Shaye Koester 34:03
Okay, so as we wrap up, is there anything else you would like to add? I know you've covered so much in just a half an hour, but is there anything else you'd like to throw out there today?
Dallas Mount 34:15
Sure. So I mean, you can engage with us in a lot of different ways. We've got a lot of free resources on our website that I'd like to point people towards. So our website is ranchmanagementconsultants.com, ranchingforprofit.com. Either of those will get you there. And we've got a twice a month newsletter that comes out, you just sign up for that by putting your email in, and that'll land in your inbox. And we're usually writing about something that's probably outside of the norm of agriculture. So it's not going to be your traditional industry paper that's going to tell you you need to use whatever fly control product or whatever on your cows, right? We're going to be asking bigger picture business management questions in those articles and diving into them a bit. So sign up for our free newsletter. While you're there, there's a program we called RFP first steps, which is 10 videos that landed in your email inbox about a week apart and they introduce you to some of the principles that we teach at the school. And just give you some things to think about how those principles might apply to your business and how you're doing them. We've got books, a couple of different books on our website that you can order. One of them is new, a new book written by Dave Pratt, he's the guy who I bought the company from. And it's called the turnaround and it is a story of a ranch family, that all these things we're talking about today. It's pretty well encapsulated in that book. It's the story of this ranch family that took their ranch from just being a bunch of busy jobs and a pile of assets and turn that ranch into a real business. And it documents all the different, you know, the fears, the worries, the concerns along the way, that that somebody that wants to make that change is going to have. So it's really a great read. That was called the turnaround. Another book there. We call it the healthy lands book. Healthy lands is a collection of essays about ranching families and different changes they've made to turn their businesses around as well. So both those books are on our website, we've also got a DVD or a video that can either be ordered as a DVD or downloaded from our website. That's a four hour workshop of the the work that we do, and really gives you a good introduction to what the ranching for profit school would be like. So if people want more information on those, any of those kinds of things would be great places for them to start. Well, awesome.
Shaye Koester 36:39
Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge, experience and insight and for taking the time to be on the show today. I'm sure my listeners will appreciate it.
Dallas Mount 36:48
Alright. Well, thank you for having me on. It's good fun.
Shaye Koester 36:52
The cow. No wonder they call her the “foundation female” – on her shoulders rests the genetic basis of any cow herd, so it’s critical she measures up to your expectations for stayability and fertility. How can you create more high-quality females while eliminating the guesswork and up-front costs that accompany heifer development? The Red Angus Association of America has launched Red Choice – a program designed to aid producers in developing the highest quality heifers through genomic testing, AI technology and veterinarian partnerships. Heifers that meet the criteria are more likely to stay in the herd, propagate the best genetics and make a positive impact on your bottom line. Learn more about Red Choice at redangus.org. And that's a wrap on that one. Be sure to let me know your thoughts on the episode and if you have any further questions around the topic, take care and have a great day.
