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Operational characteristics
- Owned by conservation-minded individuals, communities, or countries.
- Day to day management is left up to professionals who have years of experience and demonstrate exceptional management ability.
- Operation is private or public owned, large-scale, well-managed, natural resource conserving, ecological responsible, vertically integrated, highly diversified, and optimum profit-motivated.
- Operation utilizes large areas of rangeland with an optimum amount of labor and and a minimum amount of financial input and risk.
- Management works with local and regional ranchers having common goals and objectives.
- In time, operation becomes largely self-supporting.
- Managers take a very conservative, low-input, low-risk approach toward ranch management.
- The ranch is stocked at a very light stocking rate.
- Livestock are grazed according to a proven, low-cost, rotational grazing plan.
- The day to day grazing of livestock is controlled by trained cowboys on horseback.
- Management prepares in advance to survive times of drought and depressed market conditions.
- Prescribed burns and spot applications of herbicide are used to control weeds and brush, enhance forage quality, and obtain optimum livestock distribution and grazing efficiency.
- Operation does not incorporate the use of irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, and farm machinery to grow forage for livestock.
- Strives to maintain the herd in moderate to good body condition on a year-round basis.
- Provides the herd with necessary supplementation when the forage in their diet does not meet minimum nutrition requirements.
- Manages the health of the herd according to practices recommended by local and regional veterinarians.
- Considers business, livestock, and climate cycles when making financial management decisions.
- Dislikes government policies and programs that contribute to beef market oversupply, lower livestock prices, higher feed costs, overloading ranchers with debt, and rangeland degradation.
- Ranch is operated with a MINIMUM amount of debt.
- Emphasis in beef herd management is directed toward developing a closed-population of range-adapted, functionally superior, high-prepotent, general-purpose beef cattle.
- Emphasis in livestock marketing is directed toward optimizing financial returns through the direct sale of top-quality range-adapted breeding stock and top-quality range-aged grassfed beef.
- Enlists the use of a REGISTERED TRADE NAME when promoting the marketing of breeding stock and meat products.
- Top-quality range-aged grassfed beef is recognized as tasty, juicy, healthy meat processed from cattle that have reached maturity and are no longer growing additional carcass, and have been born, grown-out, and fattened on native range.
- Beef herd improvement is viewed as a PERPETUAL process of identifying and culling the influence of inferior cattle; and identifying and extending the influence of superior cattle.
- Ranch's primary breeding objective is to produce better bulls than their sires were and better cows than their dams were, and do so within the boundaries of a closed population of cattle.
- Rigid objective selection and closed-population breeding are used as tools for the eventual development of the type of cattle that will meet the ranch's breeding objective.
- Ranching operation is vertically integrated all the way to the consumer and includes standardized operating procedures at each step of the process.
- Diversification is used as a tool to improve ranch income.
- Primary emphasis in diversification is directed toward contracting with a private or public organization to improve the ecological buffering capacity of the ranch's native grazing land for the benefit of society and wildlife.
- Other methods of diversification include:
- breeding, training, and marketing horses for general ranch work as well as recreational riding
- raising and marketing sheep and goats as breeding stock, meat, and other valuable products
- providing suitable land sites for generating wind and solar energy
- marketing arts and crafts products, such as landscape art, leather tooling, wood working, weaving, knitting, as well as rug- and blanket-making
- providing public recreational opportunities, such as get-away lodging, ranch-style dining, chuck-wagon cookouts, wildlife viewing, managed hunting and fishing, working cowboy vacations, trail drives, and cowboy song and poetry concerts
- Management is constantly seeking out new alternative sources of income that are compatible with current operations.
- Includes sound financial management in every phase of the vertically integrated production and marketing process.
- Owners and managers are prodigious readers and aggressively pursue useful information that will give them a competitive edge.
- Ranching is viewed as a slow, steady, low-risk, long-term, generation to generation investment; not as a quick short-term speculative venture.
Ecological characteristics
- The conservation of rangeland resources -- soil, water, vegetation, and wildlife -- play an important role in the ranch's ranching approach.
- Ranch's ranching approach emphasizes the benefits of attaining and maintaining their native grazing lands in good to excellent ecological condition.
- The use of corporate by-laws, permanent trusts, conservation easements, or the sell of development rights permanently protect the ranch's native grazing land from man-made degradation and fragmentation.
- Ranch people (i.e., owners, managers, cowboys, and other community members), livestock, vegetation, and wildlife coexist together in harmony within the rangeland ecosystem in which they are apart.
- Whenever possible, operation minimizes the use of petroleum and other carbon based energy, and optimizes the use of solar and wind energy.
- Owners and managers are constantly seeking out more environmentally efficient ways to reduce energy and water consumption, and dispose of waste materials.
Social characteristics
- Ranching operation is viewed as a community where people live and work together for each others common benefit.
- Employees of the ranch live in a way that is personally rewarding, socially acceptable, and in ways that does not negatively effect the agricultural and ecological condition of the ranch's grazing land.
- Ranch employees are hard-working, peace-loving people that live life according to a strict code of moral, conduct, and land ethics.
- Owners, managers, and employees have a common vision of purpose, and work hard to achieve their common goals.
- Ranch provides basic needs of employees and their families -- functional housing, clean energy, clean water, healthy food, home schooling, health care, etc. -- from generation to generation, at the lowest feasible cost and financial risk.
- Ranch employees are financially rewarded for working hard and doing exceptional work, and for safeguarding ranch's infrastructure investments and livestock from physical abuse.
- By participating in producing their own food, owners and employees develop close ties to the land, water, plants, and animals they depend on for their existence.
- Ranch employees receive encouragement to improve themselves intellectually, artistically, culturally, morally, and spiritually throughout their life.
- Owners and managers of the ranch view natural resource conservation and environmental groups as consumers and concerned citizens, rather than adversaries.
- Whenever possible, owners and managers attempt to educate and inform individuals or groups about the role properly managed rangeland ranching can play in
- providing healthy food, natural fiber, and valuable by-products for human consumption
- conserving our country's native rangeland resources -- soil, water, vegetation, and wildlife -- for the common benefit of society
- serving as an ecological buffer against man-made climate change and resulting increases in global warming.
- Under worst conditions, the ranch serves as a refuge from the poverty, hunger, and anarchy created by a devastating disaster -- either agricultural, economic, climatic, political, or religious.
- Ranch owners, managers, and personnel strive to preserve their simple, peaceful, tranquil culture for present and future generations.
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