handle disruptions in feed supplies due to inclement weather, unexpected replacement cost for cattle culled due to disease or non-productivity or increases in sup- ply costs or taxes.” Determine your pasture and forage capabilities,
he and other specialists say, noting that “successful forage management is key to managing your cattle business. Determine the type of soil your pasture has by having it tested.”
Plan for a catastrophe Jay O’Brien, long-time Amarillo rancher, cattle feeder
and industry leader, has massaged ranch business plans since the late 1960s. He has been part of management of the XL Ranch north of Amarillo since then. O’Brien, Dale Smith, and Teel, Tom and Mark Bivins operated the ranch. He is also part of the management team
at the monumental JA Ranch, which sprawls beside and within Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle. The legendary ranch, once operated by Charles Goodnight him- self, remains a major cow-calf and stocker producer. O’Brien is mentor to Andrew Bivins,
Jay O’Brien, left, and Andew Bivins, Ama- rillo, have had to work fl exibility into their ranch planning. O’Brien says, “We ran into a grass termite problem in 2011 … I was counting on that as my safety pasture — and it was basically gone. You have to be ready for situations like that.”
son of the late Teel Bivins, who along with Panhandle ranching and other enterprises, was a former state senator and later am-
bassador to Sweden under President George W. Bush. “The whole thing about planning is you must have a
sense of your mission, where you want to be,” O’Brien says. “That’s normally to make a sustainable profi t, while improving your assets. That’s important for any long-term business.” However, O’Brien has learned from much experience
to have a plan that can handle the worst. That means not pushing resources to their limit. In the dry, semi- arid Panhandle climate, that includes babying grass. It’s a message he has repeated to Bivins. “I’ve learned a lot from Jay about running a ranch
enterprise,” Bivins says. “He reaffi rmed to me that when developing the plan and looking at the country you’re going to stock, you determine the carrying capacity of the country — then cut that in half. “We stock at 50 percent of what could be normal
cow herd and stocker numbers. That has allowed us to maintain the cow herd and keep a little grass.” He emphasizes the need for a conservation stocking plan. “It must be part of our ranch plan and should