"If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business.” This quote is by B. C. Forbes, the founder of Forbes Magazine, and runs doubly true for farms and businesses with more than one key owner or leader.

Whether your veterinarian is coming out to examine a sick animal or for a herd working event, there are some simple best practices you can implement to help make their time on your farm as efficient as possible.

Succession planning is being addressed across the nation to help farmers and ranchers plan to pass down an operation to the next generation. These plans focus on the transfer of assets to one or more heirs, keeping land intact if possible, providing for retirement and so on.

If the local farming community’s coffee row were surveyed about the beef industry’s major players, the rancher, feedlot operator and packing plants would likely dominate responses.

In agriculture, uncertainty is a constant challenge, from unpredictable weather patterns to fluctuating market conditions. However, these uncertainties should not paralyze decision making or delay essential long-term strategies such as succession planning.

Whether they’re man-made or natural disasters, emergencies such as tornados, hurricanes, wildfires, floods, severe winter storms, severe dust storms, etc., may put people, property and animals at risk.

Beef production business and ranch managers have been anticipating and preparing for the fall busy season including weaning, selling calves, vaccinations, fall calving, etc., for weeks. Now it is time for managers to be doers. Right? Well, yes and no.

The cooler temperatures bring a flurry of activities on the cattle farm and ranch. From breeding time to cows ready to calve to weaning calves, there’s plenty of cattle production activities to keep everyone on the go.

Cow-calf producers are expected to make $709 per cow over cash costs, including pasture, in 2024. These levels are nearly identical to the inflation-adjusted highs experienced by producers in 2014 ($534 in 2014 dollars, $708 in 2024 dollars).

Imagine this: You get a call today from your video sale rep, and they say, “We can offer you $275.93 per hundredweight (steers and heifers) for your 2025 calf crop.”