What would Burke Teichert do?

Burke Teichert (left) and Scott Frescoln (right) walking cattle

Trying to operate a sustainable, regenerative, profitable cattle ranch comes with many rewards and challenges.  To address some of the challenges I find it helpful to sometimes ask "What would Burke Teichert do?"  For a couple days this August I got to find out first hand because Burke was here and helped us worked cattle and sat down for a visit.

Burke Teichert working calves

For those who haven't heard of Burke, I consider him the Yoda of ranch management.  He retired in 2010 as ranch manager for Deseret Ranches, the largest cattle ranch in the U.S.  He was interviewed recently on the Working Cows Podcast where he discusses training the next generation of ranch managers.  

During his visit Burke encouraged us to continue using high stock densities, gave some advice on raising bulls out of our maternal herd, and we also discussed marketing our fall calvers.  He was very complimentary of our South Poll cattle.
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I'll share a quote from Burke's visit "The problem with cattle breeding, grazing, and animal handling is that we can't live long enough to get perfect at any one of the three.  My dad used to say 'too soon old, too late smart'."

​Catch a great lecture here that Burke Teichert gave this Spring in Texas in which he talked about a systems approach to profitable ranching.

If you're involved in cattle ranching I recommend asking yourself "What would Burke Teichert do?"  And then do yourself a giant favor and read through the archives of his column on strategic ranch planning  that appears monthly in BEEF magazine.

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