The forecast for 2018 beef production was lowered by 30 million pounds to 26.9 billion pounds. The mild revision is based on numbers at the closeout of the third quarter along with fourth-quarter expectations of slightly fewer steers and heifers to be slaughtered and fewer bulls in the slaughter mix.

Cattle producers attending the 2019 National Cattleman’s Beef Association (NCBA) annual Cattlemen’s College in New Orleans, Louisiana, Jan. 29-30, are in for a widely varied educational experience.

Lance Pekus is a rancher from Salmon, Idaho. He works on a 300-pair cow-calf operation with his father-in-law and, with the support of his wife and two children, competes yearly on the TV game show American Ninja Warrior, where he has become known as the “Cowboy Ninja.”

You raise your cattle for a lot of reasons – is profitability one of them? Agriculture operates on razor-thin margins, and sometimes those margins aren’t just thin, they are nonexistent.

“Company culture” refers to the shared values, attitudes, standards and beliefs that characterize members of an organization and define its nature. It is rooted in the organization’s vision, goals, strategies and structure.

In the fertile, black soil of Iowa, pastureland sells for more than $5,000 an acre, and rent isn’t much more affordable.

“Let’s try it and see what happens” is the motto at Mark Diederich Family Farms in Greenleaf, Kansas. Mark Diederich is a fifth-generation rancher with an operation located an hour north of Manhattan.

The weather across North America was extremely variable throughout the summer and fall of 2018, with some areas seeing extremely hot temperatures and drought and others experiencing excess rainfall or flooding.

For many years, ranchers have held to the conventional wisdom that time of calving could be influenced by the time of feeding.

Whether we’re talking human or cattle nutrition, it’s easy to get caught up in buzzwords and fads. But the reality is: A renewed focus on one simple philosophy can help address many of our nutritional woes.