Hi I’m Mike and today we continue with the series, how to become a rancher and ask the
question, what kind of rancher do you want to be, coming up today on Our Wyoming Life.
So you want to be a rancher?
Its good to know and according to me, who in not at all bias, you have made a good choice,
although its one that is not going to be easy.
This is the second video in our series How do I become a rancher?
This series started because of hundreds, if not thousands of emails we have received over
the years asking me that very question.
It’s a very hard question to answer and its one that I am sure I’ll get wrong, according
to many, but one of my goals, as our Wyoming life continues is to not only show you the
ranch life, to invite you along to explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary, but
also to help you have it for yourself, if that’s what you want.
If you are happy to live through us, that’s great, but I have met many who aren’t content
just watching and want to live it, that’s what I hope to be able to help you do.
Please subscribe and come along for the ride.
In the first episode of this series, we took a look at what to expect as a rancher, from
winter storms, to the death of animals under your care, to the great joys you can receive,
watching a calf take its first breaths and the freedom you can feel, along with the stress.
A ranch by definition is simply defined as a farm where animals are bred and raised.
That’s it, its not too complicated, and by that definition, you can make a ranch,
out of dang near anything, and depending on the size and number of animals, a ranch can
vary from a few acres, to thousands.
Ranches are all over the world, in Australia, a ranch is known as a stations, and the name
refers to what kind of animals they carry.
So you would have a cattle station or a sheep station.
In most other parts of the world you will hear them referred to as just farms, but once
you head in Mexico, the western united states and Western Canada, now that ranch land, and
its not only cattle.
Ranches are used to raise all kinds of livestock from horses, sheep, elk, American bison, even
alpaca, ostrich and emu.
There are dude ranches, where you can go and pretend for a week or so and even working
ranches, offering ranching vacations, where you can actually head out and get some real
work done.
The ranch is part of the iconography of the wild west, but like everything now days, the
ranch is changing.
When we first came here, cattle ruled the ranch, now we not only deal with cattle, but
also pigs, horses, chickens, ducks and geese, with plans to add even more and diversify
the livestock of the ranch.
When you make a decision to get into ranching, you have to have a plan, unless you just fall
into it, in which case you might be working a bit backwards, but we know that can work
out for you too.
In the upcoming portions of this series we will be taking a look at all kinds of considerations
when you decide to have your own ranch, big or small, from financing to land choices.
An I’m gonna try to keep these videos in some kind of order.
The way I look at it, is this, you know what you are getting into.
Maybe you even took a summer to work on a neighbors farm or ranch, and you love it more
than anything and you want it for your family.
By the way, that’s something I really suggest that you do, if you are planning on heading
down this road, get some experience ahead of time.
Volunteer to help out, become a ranch hand for a while and realize that work you are
doing, is probably just the tip of the iceburg.
If you cant stomach cleaning the chicken house, you might have a problem palpating a cow,
or pulling a calf, just saying.
Once you know that you want to be a rancher, you have to decide what kind of rancher you
want to be, and be realistic with yourself, we are going to get more in-depth in this
in future videos but if you know that you are in an area that land prices are through
the roof, you might have to settle for a small 10 acre farm for a while, until you are able
to expand, remember Rome wasn’t built in a day, and a lot of these bigger ranches that
you see out here have taken sometimes over a hundred years to grow from small 100 acre
homesteads.
Your first stop, why not visit your local extension agent.
They will be able to give you some guidance on what kind of animals are being raised in
your area already, but more importantly they are going to be able to help you with some
grazing information.
Grazing land is a field covered with grass or some other fodder that is suitable for
livestock to eat.
You can call it pasture, or commons, or even grassland, and hopefully your future ranch
will have some.
It doesn’t have to, you may have to buy all your feed for your animals, year round,
but that will cut into your bottom llne very quick, so you are better off to think about
having some sort of pasture.
While you are at your extension office you can get a good idea for a stocking rate of
the land around your area.
Stocking rate is the number of animals that you can have on a given amount of land for
a certain period of time.
Look at it this way, your lawn grows during the summer.
If you had an animal out there eating they would only be able to eat so much until they
would kill all your grass, the grass can only grow so fast, and the animal has to eat so
much.
There has to be a middle ground.
That’s the stocking rate and every place is going to be different, and it can differ
from just a few miles.
Stocking rate is expressed as Animal Units per acre, or AU.
One animal unit is a 1000 lb grazing animal.
That starts to make figuring what kind of ranch you might want a little easier.
You know where you want to ranch and you know how much land you require for a 1000 lb animal
to graze.
So lets say, where you want to ranch, the extension agent told you the stocking rate
is 1 Au per acre.
One acre will feed 1 1,000 lb animal.
Like a small framed cow, or maybe a horse.
But you can also break that down.
A sheep that weighs only 200lbs, will eat 1/5 of that acre, meaning you can support
5 sheep, or maybe a goat, that weights 150lbs, now you can support 6 of them.
But this all really depends on your stocking rate, and this is what makes the question,
how do I become a rancher, a very hard question to answer.
Because each and every state, county and sometimes backroad, might have a different stocking
rate you have to do your homework.
So your ranch, might be a cattle ranch, it might be horses, sheep or even pigs but you
have to do the background work to know what will work where you are, and you may have
to be willing to compromise.
Find a rancher and talk less and listen more, always be willing to learn and get out there
and work at different ranches, not only find what you like but also to learn different
ways of doing the same thing.
You are going to work your tail off, and if its too much work to visit with county extension
agent, or other ranchers and farmers in the area, or too much work to go down to the local
feed store and put up a flyer saying you are willing to work for free just to learn the
ropes.
You have a long road ahead of you.
We may have lucked out, but for years I spent every extra minute I could learning everything
I could.
Even though I had this ranch to take care of, I went to other ranches in the area, to
learn from those that had been doing it a lot longer than I had.
The ranching community is just like this one, tight knit.
We look out for each other and we are willing to help each other in tough times.
I want to help you, I want you succeed in your dream.
In the next installment of our series, How to become a rancher, we are going to start
taking a look at how to find your ranch.
You know what you need, you know what you want to do, now you just have to start making
it happen, and I can’t wait.
Thanks for coming along, please subscribe so that you don’t miss a thing, because
we have a lot on the way for you and its gonna be a lot of fun.
Until next time, have a great week and thanks for joining us in our Wyoming life.