We have been at Rockhampton for Beef Australia 2012 week all last week and I started thinking about you both and thought I’d email and say Hi. . . . .

I realise you have a busy schedule but it is good to get in touch anyway.  We have passed Bud’s video round many friends in our area in the Lockyer Valley and they have all learnt much from them.

. . . .  often tells people about the time we visited you at Lloyd Minster in Canada and how Bud used to draft off the sick cattle each morning for treatment out of the mob into the laneway.

We admire what you both have done for the beef industry in Australia and just thought I’d like to keep in touch.

Ranch manager position is available on a 3700 acre grassfed, commercial, cow/calf operation in SE Kansas and NE Oklahoma.  We run approx. 350 red Angus cows and are in the third year of management intensive grazing.  Knowledge of and ability to handle all aspects of a cow/calf business, forages, holistic management, and marketing are needed.  Salary and benefits are negotiable.    Send resume to gilburnett@ckt.net or call 620-922-3141.

Bud will be writing some articles for The Stockdog Journal.  These will be reminisces of some of the dogs we have owned or worked over our lifetime.  You can find more information about this magazine on their website at  www.stockdogjournal.com.

We’ve received a lot of “OH, NO!” messages from my notice that we plan to close the Subscription Website next year.

Actually, we won’t be closing the website, we just won’t charge for it after April 30, 2013. Bud feels obligated to post something to the site pretty often. If we aren’t charging he won’t feel that he has to write unless something comes up that he feels is important. Also, it’s inevitable that at some point we won’t be able to keep it up, then we’d  have the bookkeeping chore of figuring and refunding the pre-paid part of the subscriptions. People who are paid-up at the time of the closing will continue to have access. I haven’t decided how to handle new people who want to connect after April 2013, maybe charge them a flat fee.  Since we leave all of the past postings up, a new person will have access to a lot of good stuff and Bud will still answer your questions.

To: Eunice@stockmanship.com Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2011 2:33 PM

Good morning Bud and Eunice & nbsp; &n bsp;  . . . . . I have been using the dvds that i have got from you to handle my cattle. It works so well that my cows walk every where they go now and will stay in the corral for hours with gate open chewing cud or laying down. I have worked with three different groups of cattle and they all handle the same. But i took me twenty to forty hours per group to get them this way. I am wondering if this is normal amount time to settle them for a first timer. Because i want to go to Alaska to gather cattle or maybe start a ranch there some day. I am working with the  . . . .   ranch . . . . to gather 150 head . They have not been handled in 25 years and the island is 33.000 acres. I heard you have done this before and if the handling was the same on wild cattle that had gone feral. I also started working my border collie pups on the cattle , once i could handle them to help keep them bunched. But now their getting bigger with more bite I want the dogs to work on their own but the cattle don’t like the amount of pressure they put on them. But i am trying to built confident in my pups to bite , only when they need to with out making a trial dog. I was wondering if going to . . . .  was getting in over my head or what i would need to do to make this happen to prepare my self and the dogs. & nbsp; &n bsp; &nb sp; &nbs p; & nbsp; &n bsp; I would be every grateful for any expertise that you would be willing to share. Thanks for time  *************************

Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2011 5:36 PM

The length of time it takes to work animals will be determined by the skill of the person doing it more than where the animals are at.   This worked with reindeer in Alaska where there were no fences and the area was 5 million acres or actually all of North West Alaska that the deer wanted to use.  It worked on the cattle on the eastern end of Umnak Island, Alaska  which had at least (more…)

You have one more year to take advantage of  Bud Williams’ knowledge of Stockmanship and Livestock Marketing concepts via our subscription website.

In July of 2009 Bud and I decided to add a subscription section to our website.  As well as having access to Bud’s thoughts on Stockmanship and Livestock Marketing, subscribers have unlimited access to correspond with Bud by e-mail.  If these questions and answers are of general interest they are posted to the site.  At this time (March 2012) there are over 800 items available.

Our $300.00 per year fee will be prorated so that all subscriptions will end April 2013.

Question: . . . . I moved a little bunch of cows from one pasture to another the other day. I moved em like I think Bud would. I gathered em first then just stay moving across them from behind and steered by moving out wider if the need arose. It went real well moving as it always does when I handle them like I think Bud would. I took them to a 600 acre pasture we had cleared and burned about 40% of before the drought. It got a rain the day after the burn and a start, but nothing for over a year until this past October. I want to graze the 60%of the pasture that was unburned and uncleared that has plenty of grass though it is low quality. I want the cows to graze the low quality forage and leave the burned area alone. I was pressed for time (my mistake) and didn’t settle them when I moved them. I went back friday morning and gathered them and walked them up to a little flat and took the time to settle them, and (more…)

We keep getting questions from people about the Bud Box.  The Bud Box is just a crowd pen that uses certain principles to help the people work animals easier, while allowing the animals to keep doing what they prefer.  It isn’t just a rectangular pen that can be put anywhere – at any angle – and still be a Bud Box.  How it is built and how it is used are very important.  It could be round or square if it is built properly and used properly.

The first rectangular crowd pen I ever saw was in 1961 at a ranch in California. The cattle came into the pen at one end and went out the other end with no v into a single file alley. When I first saw this I was sure it would be extremely difficult to work animals there. Everybody that was there said how hard it was to pen animals with this crowd pen.  Since I always wanted to pen the animals that meant it would be my job to figure out how to make this work. By this time I’d learned that when something looked difficult a person should start from where the animals had to go.  That meant putting the animals in the pen, then walking up to the entrance to the single file chute and pressuring the animals against the other end. When the animals couldn’t go that way they turned and went by me into the single alley. That was the beginning of the first Bud Box.  All it took was a few changes and the Bud Box came alive.

Now we have all kinds of people trying to build in changes to make it “better.”  What makes it better is just using the right principles, if the principles are changed then it isn’t a Bud Box any more no matter how it is built.

Testimonial: . . . . [husband] left the banking business two years ag o this month and we have been in the cattle business full time since then. My dad wanted to quit running cattle so we were able to lease about 1500 acres of native grass pasture from him to run yearlings. We also have cows and some yearlings on pastures that have been in [husband's] family. We had been running cattle on this acreage since 1985 . . . . .

The first year was a learning experience. We didn’t get any yearlings in until mid December as [husband] was still at the bank until mid January, the weather was bad, we had never done anything of this scale, we were together all day but we made it and before the second set of yearlings started coming in the fall of 2010, I had laid in bed at night with a small DVD player watching your DVD! It had belonged to one of our sons and was well used so it would not start from where you stopped but only from the beginning (more…)

Hi Bud and Eunice. I have been wanting to talk to you for a while but I thought I would wait and see how things shook out for us.

This has been an exciting winter. Everyone wants to talk about cows, I want to talk about feed. We have been working hard at saving our feed for the winter months to make it possible for us to carry dry bred cows if the opportunity presented itself. People were sick about seeing all the grass going to waste, and even asking if they could use it if we weren’t going to. We just told them we were letting it recover and the cows would eat it this winter. We picked up 80 or so bred cows this winter for $950, and put them out on that wasted grass. We had no idea our neighbors kept such good track of us until one said, (more…)