Producing for the Customer
Double J Ranch is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Operators Ronald and Will James of rural Mindenmines, Mo., recalled many family dinners put on hold to show bulls to customers, and the father and son duo laughed about a time when they were stopped one Easter Sunday, mid-egg hunt, to show a bull to an interested customer. The bottom line is, Double J Ranch tries hard to give their customers what they want.
Ride, Show and Win
For his parents, it was a babysitter. But now it’s become a profession.
A Hard Cull to Keep Them Tame
Raised on a farm near Urbana, Mo., Larry Glor said, “I never could quite get it out of my blood.” Although he milked before he was married, almost 42 years ago, he has been in the beef business since.
Feed Value
You can do a lot with feed supplements for your summer forage program; you can also tailor the supplements, depending on how you want your cattle to perform. University of Missouri Extension beef nutrition specialist Justin Sexten told Ozarks Farm & Neighbor it’s not always the case that supplements are used to maintain gains as forage quality declines in the heat of the summer; they can also be used to enhance gains, by producers who have chosen to manage risk by locking in a price for cattle at a target weight. “If they have forward contracted those cattle for sale in late July and August,” Sexten explained, “and contracted those cattle at 700 lbs and locked in a price, what they have done is minimize their price risk, but then they have potentially shifted the price risk to a production risk.” They can’t control the price, he said, but by manipulating the feeding program, they can control the weight of the cattle as they come off grass.
Farm Programs
Between the Natural Resources and Conservation Service (NRCS), the Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) and the Farm Service Agency (FSA), there are federal and state monies to be had by local producers willing to do a little homework and paperwork.