Comment: . . . .we’re dry but cattle are doing amazingly well! Here’s some of the best numbers I have ran in a while. Sold 750# yrlng steers $1.38 – $1035hd Bought 688# steer and bull calves $1.255 – $863 cost of gain plus a dime profit – $1.06!

That’s $112 profit in 40 days in the worse drought with the highest feed cost ever!  I’m so glad you taught me to look for opportunity instead of complaining about stuff I have no control over.

Question: . . . . I live in South Africa and heard on a number of occasions about Bud’s work on livestock marketing.

Some questions from my side:

1. I see I can buy some of your DVD’s, but how do I pay for it if you don’t have a credit card facility?
2. Will the livestock marketing DVD be enough to start buying and selling livestock or will I need more training?
3. What is the difference or similarities between Bud’s work and the ideas of the KLR marketing school?

 Answer:    We have never seen one of KLR’s Marketing schools, but hopefully there is no difference between Bud’s work and the Ideas of the KLR Marketing School. Rod Knight, Jim Lindsay and Grahame Rees learned from Bud and have our blessing to teach his methods in Australia. We realize that there is some difference in livestock marketing in the two countries, but the principals are the same.

Some people have no problem learning Bud’s methods (SELL-buy Marketing, not BUY-sell) from just the DVDs, but for the people who have questions we have a Subscription Section to our website where, for $300 per year, Bud is available to answer unlimited e-mail questions. These Q & A’s (as well as other articles that Bud writes) are posted on the site anonymously for all subscribers to view. As of this date there are over 800 different postings on the site.

We don’t plan on charging for the website after April of 2013.  Anyone who is a subscriber at that time will continue to have access as long and Bud and I are physically able to keep the site going.

You can send payment via Western Union. Go to www.westernunion.com for a location for a local office or to take care of the transaction online with your credit card. You would then send me the “number” and I can use this to collect the money at our local Western Union location.

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…)

Following are excerpts from a letter that we just received from Grahame Rees.  Grahame is the “R” in KLR Marketing.  He, Rod “K”night and Jim “L”indsay are teaching Bud’s Marketing principals in Australia.  Many of you folks met Grahame when he was visiting us last year.

. . . . I am finally home for a little bit after travelling running schools. It has been an interesting time seeing many come along to learn everything they can, whilst others want a silver bullet and almost want you to tell them they are doing it right already. They will never change. . . . There are more breeders coming along and so we have developed more breeder examples. In many business’s the basic herd management is quite poor with low calving % and too high a costs.   I am going to Write an article titled “ Why high prices can send you broke !” not sure it will go down too well but that is ok.  It seems as soon as prices go up people spend more money, much of it long term commitments and then when prices fall those costs remain.  Queensland has been devalued by the banks by 32% (where it should be) which means many will be challenged.

After each school we run a mastermind day where about 10 – 20 members of our mastermind group will attend.  These days show how well some people are doing and who is still struggling.
Know and Understand yourself is always the biggest challenge, but if they get through that one, the sky is the limit.  Here are a couple stories from those days :

. . . . John shared how he stopped doing things that were not making money like spraying weeds or fixing fences and focused more of his time on marketing.  One guy stood up, angry saying “no weed gets out of place on his farm and no fence is going to be neglected.”  I was considering how I was going to pacify him when John said “Well, since using KLR I make enough money to pay a contractor to do those things so I can focus on the most important parts of my business”

There were 3 guys who traded the same sheep and made a profit.
1st guy bought dry ewes and joined them to the Ram
He sold them scanned in lamb to the 2nd guy
Who then sold them a short while later to the 3rd guy to lamb out.
It was only after the event did they all know they passed through 3 KLR guys but they all made a profit on the way through.

. . . . I host a discussion call every Wednesday night and I get everyone on the call to share their results challenges and questions.  She shared 1 night how she had sold some heifers for $2.40/ kg and managed to replace them with same weight hfrs for $.192.  The agent called on the way home and said he needed more so she let him have those before they came off the truck for $2.40.  Someone said to her “That doesn’t happen every day – she came back with no you are right but I am there every day and when it does they are mine”

The video that we took of our last Marketing School didn’t turn out as well as we’d have liked so I talked Bud into letting me video him just setting down and explaining the basics of his marketing system.  This 3-disk, 3-hour video is now available for $200.  This includes postage to anywhere in the world.  I must collect 7.60 % sales tax if I ship to a Missouri address.

Sorry, we don’t take credit cards.  Send your check to:

Bud Williams Stockmanship School
Eunice Williams
1519 E Erie Street, #206
Springfield, MO 65804

Question: Can you explain how the crush works or should I join your site for more information on this. I have a basic understanding of it but I don’t know how to play the commodities with it. If that makes sense. Maybe it is too risky but I would like to see if it work in the actual commodities market.

Answer: I guess you went to Ann’s class as I don’t use the fat cattle, feeder cattle, grain spread as a way to trade commodities  (I think she calls this a “Squash”).   We don’t talk about how to trade commodities on our site.  Since I’m not a bonded commodity broker I’m not allowed to do that.

I used the  information from that spread  when I was buying cattle for the feedlot in Canada as it really helped tell me what people thought the future cash prices would be.  Not what they would be but what they thought they would be. That helped me know when the middle weight cattle should be sold or kept as well as using over or underpriced.

A commodity broker really likes this spread as it generates a lot of commissions. If you were to study it for several years and knew some of the extremes that it will go to it would probably work alright. Actually there is less risk and more reward to just trade cattle or grain alone, not as a three way spread.

Bud and I just completed a 2-day Marketing School, and I’m still trying to catch-up.

People attended from Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kentucky, Illinois, Wyoming, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri and Kansas. As usual, after this school Bud and I decided that "This was the best group of students yet."

This will probably be the last Marketing School that we will do. Our daughter and son-in-law (Tina and Richard McConnell) videoed the school. We plan on trying to make it available for sale on DVD sometime in the near future. As usual, it will be pretty crude, but there will be a lot of good information on it.

We gave the folks attending a 2-month, complementary subscription to the website. We’re looking forward to receiving comments and questions from these new subscribers.

Question: Ross did a great job on his essay. Do you know how he did?

Answer: Not surprisingly, he didn’t place. Even though more and more “Individuals” are understanding the benefits of Bud’s methods of Stockmanship and Marketing, the “Livestock Industry” still isn’t ready for this.

Ross Wahlert is 16 years old and is one of our Stockmanship and Marketing students.  He entered a National FFA Risk Management Contest with the following essay.

Controlled Risks
Risk Management is just one crucial part of the agriculture industry that must be understood.  There are many risks involved in Agriculture, such as droughts, diseases in crops and animals, high fuel prices, and many other situations that could cause a loss of money or could cause you to be less profitable.  Identifying and minimizing these risks can make the difference between a profitable year and a break even year.

Among my Supervised Agriculture Experience (SAE) in which I trade thirty head of calves, several risks may be found.  The three risks that pose a large threat to me and my SAE are: sickness and death, cattle not gaining well, and not enough net dollars on a trade.  Managing and minimizing all three of these risks has required skill, determination, and the willingness to learn from my mistakes.

Sickness like foot rot, pneumonia, and other diseases in a calf can cause a large number of problems for the time you own the animal.  These diseases can lower the quality of the animal or lead to death.  My strategy for preventing sickness starts as soon as I bring (more…)

Comment from a student:     The last 4 months of the year were interesting with respect to the cattle markets and marketing. By focusing on the cornerstone of your marketing method [buy the under valued and sell the over valued and let the market tell you what to do]  we were able to replace our cattle off grass with lighter cattle.  Early in the fall the steer heifer spread was wide so we were buying   60% strs to 40% heifers.  As the over all price of calves went up that price gap narrowed and we went to 90-95% strs.   Calf prices continued to rise, we were selling calves and replacing them with lighter calves.  By the middle of November calf prices were high enough to let us sell calves and trade for solid mouth May calving cows[one for one]. This  let us still get the best calf buys and finish loads with cows.  Lately cow prices have shot up so it looks like we will sell cows and replace with calves , our winter fed bill paid and profit in the bank.  The moral of the story is to have confidence in  using the principles of Bud’s marketing regardless of price direction.   It can be just as hard to sell in a down market as it is to buy in an up market.  In the last 2 years we have become more willing to shift our inventory from  calves to cows and vise-versa, taking advantage of the price spread between the two. This year bred cow values lagged the price increase in calves.  Creating opportunity.            Thanks for opening our eyes, your friends . . . .