We have recently moved the Castle Rock bison herd, [ 547 head], down country some 30 miles to the prairie. This was our first time to try this migration, and all went very well. We have brought them to our working facility for processing then they will return to the mountains. Thanks again for all your help, and hope to see you sometime.

Bud and I will be holding a 2-day Stockmanship School May 20-21, 2010 at the

Holiday Inn, 204 West Fox Farm Road, Cheyenne, Wyoming  82007
Phone:  307-638-4466

Rooms will be available there at a reduced rate if you tell them that you are attending the “Bud Williams Stockmanship School.”

School hours will be from 8:00AM to 5:00PM.
Cost is $500 per person
Lunch will be furnished

If you’d like, you can stay over for a day of casual conversation on May 22 at no charge.  Lunch will be on your own.

I’m requesting payment in advance to simplify the bookkeeping at the school.  I will gladly send you a refund if you can’t attend.

There have been a lot of articles written about the “Bud Box” for loading a processing chute or trucks in the last few years.  Though Bud has often stated that he “would like to live long enough to see every crowd tub replaced with a Bud Box, or at least with some other system that is more animal friendly,” we view these articles with mixed emotions since unless you understand the right way to work it, it doesn’t work as well as it should. I used to try to discourage people from building a Bud Box unless they had been to one of our schools or had seen the DVDs that we have for sale, but there has been such wide-spread coverage (including some information that is not correct) that I decided to post some information here on our website.

When designing a Bud Box (more…)

I had a phone call this morning from the man who asked the January 22 question about his dog over-working.  He said that by following Bud’s answer, in a very short time  the dog (and cattle) was doing what she was supposed to.  He said he went back and re-read the material from the webpage and realized that he had misread it.

Question:  I’m working with a 17 mo old dog .She pays close attention to my position and balances well. I try to say as little as possible or nothing at all.  She has a lot of push to the point of nipping heels after she has gathered and has them coming. ( she is a border collie) I’ve started to let her know I’m not happy with nipping and she catches on quick but I want her to learn to pace on her own. I’ve been letting her push them ( 10 yearling heifers) past me and then make her bring them back but the heifers seem to ware out before the dog so I’ve been doing this a little more through gates so she doesn’t get the continual thrill of just getting to blast on past every time.  So two questions.  Pacing and nipping.

Answer:     You want to be careful about making the dog quit nipping because if you make her quit she may not nip when it is necessary. What you want to do is let the dog learn when to nip and when not to.

You wrote “I’ve been letting her push them past me and then make her bring them back.” When trying to get the dog to slow down and start thinking, don’t let the dog push the animals past and then make the dog go get them. This will wear out the cattle and not slow the dog down as this keeps the dog excited to keep working fast.

When the dog is bringing the animals walk toward the back and this will push the dog to the front.  As soon as the dog gets the animals turned and coming walk to the back again and this will push the dog to the front again. If you do it this way the animals will not get tired and the dog can learn to slow down and start thinking.

Don’t let the dog get the thrill of blasting on past you, that’s why the advice on working a dog is to “push” the dog not to work in such a way that you are actually encouraging it to blast on by you.

When you read what is written try to do close to what is written, otherwise the result may not be even close to what you want. Remember “push” the dog to get some things not just “send” them for everything.

When I write something it always makes me wonder why anybody would read it and why  I wrote it in the first place. Then after reading what other people are writing it makes me even more confused about why anyone writes anything. Maybe it is like the person said “Isn’t it amazing that there is just enough news to fill the newspaper” as he noticed that every page was full.

What brought this on was  reading an article on the DTN (Minding Ag’s Business). Its title was “Buckle Your Seat Belts For 2010.” I’ll include some parts of the article so we can understand the thinking of people who are doing the writing. It starts out with “As the recession spreads through farm country, profits seem to be vaporizing. At these commodity prices, very few operations in either crops or livestock can project profits.” 

Then it goes on to explain how hard it will be to get credit or credit extensions. Then the solution that is given is to “Unlock the cash in your land as today’s interest rates will be the lowest in your lifetime.”  Why do we  think the solution to a problem is more of what caused the problem?  If there is no profit to be seen, why borrow on the (more…)

The dairy farmers are having problems just like a lot of people are now. At a meeting with the Justice Department’s antitrust division the issue was whether or not the largest players in the dairy industry were to blame.

It is always bad when businesses have problems but now, instead of realizing what actually caused the problem, there is the desire to blame someone else. Later in the article this is what they wrote.  “Dairy farmers nationwide are coping with historically low milk prices after a 36 percent drop in the past year to the lowest level in three decades. In 2007 and part of 2008, (more…)

I’ve always heard the term “If you don’t like the weather around here, just wait a few minutes” but this is ridiculous! 

Wednesday, the weather was beautiful, probably about 70 degrees.  Thursday morning (Christmas Eve) we woke up to freezing rain which quickly changed to snow.  It “blowed and snowed” all day.  Road conditions were so bad that nearly all of the Churches cancelled their Christmas Eve services.

We woke up to a beautiful White Christmas this morning.  It is clear and calm and about 20 degrees.  With as much wind as we had yesterday we have drifts over 2 feet deep some places and only 3 or 4 inches in others.  The Bowie kids will finally have enough snow to make a proper snow man!  I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

No matter what the weather where you live, we hope you are having a Wonderful Christmas!

Comment from a student:   Take a look at El Reno this week.  There is report of 6 #1 LM 558 pound steers that sold for $93.00  (Fleshy)  Just above them was the 557 pound steers at normal flesh that sell for $104.50  The fleshy calf cost $518.94 and the other cost $582.06   This market would have paid me $63.12 to take one pound off the fleshy calves.

This is where I totally get the “cost to keep.”  I have numerous trades where I take fat bawling bulls and turn them into thin yearling steers and loose weight doing it by putting them on cheap, mature grass.  Although I lost weight, I still made a profit.  It still cost me money to take off the weight in grass, time, skill, labor, freight and vet supplies.  But when I took them back to the sale at a lower weight than I bought them, they paid me for negative gain because I replaced them with a heavier, fat bawling bull. 

This may not make sense to anyone but me.  But there is real, spendable cash left over after each trade.

Keep smiling!  I know you mean it.

Question: . . . . after our visit to you. . .  we went home , and put your stockmanship to work for us, we are very happy for it.    We did not talk alot about marketing, but I was wondering about using cost of keep, verses BPCOG in the winter months? Ann has a article on here Q&A section that says cost of keep is bad, if your creating positive cashflow is this not what you want?

Answer:     Ann doesn’t understand Cost to Keep therefore she thinks that it has to be bad. The example she used had nothing to do with marketing.  The loss was because several died and there was only enough money left to buy what they bought.  We had nothing to do with the trade, didn’t even know it was happening. There are lots of things that don’t fit with the sale barn ticket. 

The BPCOG is just cost of gain with a profit. Cost to Keep is just what it cost plus a profit. They are exactly the same except the BPCOG is using per pound gain in weight or difference in weight and the Cost to Keep just uses the total cost whether there is a weight gain or not.
Use what works for you and makes a profit.