Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, episode 96.
be careful with buying things if you think you need something. just start without and buy what you actually do need
You're listening to the Grazing Grass Podcast, helping grass farmers learn from grass farmers, and every episode features a grass farmer and their operation. I'm your host, Cal Hardage.
On today's episode we have Jared Luman. You have probably listened to him before as he's the host of the Hard Quitter podcast. We talked about his journey going back home to the farm where they have Red Angus and he ran Herefords for a little while. And how they're managing their cattle as well as utilizing some alternative methods of grazing for, so that he doesn't have to feed as much hay.
It's a wonderful episode and if you've listened to The Herd Quitter, I I'm sure you'll want to hear more about Jared and what he's doing. However, before we talk to Jared, 10 seconds about my farm. And today on the podcast with Jared, as well as a few weeks back when we had Jordan on, talking about that warm weather. Up north in Minnesota and thereabouts. We're warm here in Oklahoma, northeast Oklahoma. The forecast is looking like really nice weather through the end of February.
Grass is starting to peak out. I mentioned that last week. It's just continuing. You can see some clover out there green, fescue is green. Lots of things starting to green up. In fact, when you drive down the road, you can look out on the pastures and see some green. That's besides the wheat pasture. So, it's always an exciting time. I think springtime on the farm is most people's favorite. It's always one of my favorites. Just the, the opportunity to try what I've learned since last year.
What I messed up on last year. And see if I can improve upon it. It's almost like a clean slate in some ways. Soon, cows will be calving. We have hair sheep lambing right now. Not on purpose, but they are. I've got about 30 ewes with lambs right now. The goal was to lamb them in May, but obviously I had a ram or two get out. I knew that was the case and was expecting it, so it didn't surprise me, and I'm not sure how many is going to go ahead and lamb early, but right now they're doing good.
We've had really favorable weather. Which is really nice. Don't forget, if you're not part of the grazing grass community on Facebook, hop over there and search for grazing grass community and join it. Also check out our Patreon. We have a bonus episode with Eli Mack coming up on there shortly, but that's enough about my farm and the rest. Let's talk to Jared.
Jared, we wanna welcome you to the Grazing Grass Podcast. We're excited you're here today.
Oh, thanks Cal. I, I'm excited to be here. It's, uh, an honor to join you on the Grazing Grass Podcast. You put out great content, so the fact that you considered me means either you're maybe not as smart as I thought you were listening to your other podcast, or, or maybe I'm, I've got something to share, so I appreciate it.
Sadly. I, I think it's both, so, but we'll, we'll move on.
sure.
Jared, to get started, tell us a little bit about yourself and your operation.
Yeah, sure. So I am, uh, oh, gosh, you know, some of those people have these great answers. I'm a fifth generation farmer. I don't know how many family's been farming here in southeast Minnesota. Uh, when I asked my grandpa that back in the day, he said, we've been farming since we got off the boat that brought us here. So we've been farming
Oh yeah.
and, uh, we've got quite a few lumen here in southeast Minnesota, but I, I farm with my dad and, uh, both our wives, my dad's wife Terry and my wife Valerie. Um, we're running a little bit of cropping a few hundred acres of row crops, some conventional no-till and some organic row crops. And then our primary grazing based enterprises, our, registered red angu seed stock herd. We, we raise bulls for Pharaoh Cattle Company.
And so we've got about 230, uh, registered red Angus cows that, uh, that we're running here in southeast Minnesota. Um, I guess something about the context of our area is we're primarily in row crop country. And so the pasture that we have is, it's, uh, mostly. the ground, that's not good enough to be farmed. The stuff that's too rocky, too wet, too hilly, too
Oh yeah.
And so there's 30 acres there, 40 acres here. And so we got like 550 acres of grass, but it's spread over eight different sites. So that's one of the challenges of our context is we're kind of spread out. And that's from 10 miles west of the home place to 13 miles northeast. So that's, uh, part of the challenges we get to deal with.
But also because most folks are crop farmers, uh, we're, we're maybe able to be a little more competitive in the grazing business 'cause there's not as much competition. So it's a, it's a pro and a con.
Oh, very good. I, I've got some questions on how you're managing those smaller acreage with your herd, but before we get there, did you always know you wanted to be a grazier?
No, actually that's a good question because when I grew up, I wanted nothing to do with the cattle. my least favorite thing of it all. I, uh, when I, I grew up, I loved sitting in a tractor. It was my favorite thing to. be doing row crop work or I enjoyed making hay. Uh, and then wasn't actually until I was done with college and I realized because of our farm, we have a few pastures that will never be farmable.
I was like, we are gonna have cattle so I might as well buy some cattle and get into the business. Once I got into the business of grazing and, and beef cattle and cow calf and managing a herd and seeing what they can do on the land, that was where my love of cows really and grazing really came from. It's relatively recent and now it's funny 'cause I graduated here just over 10, just like 10 years ago.
And uh, so in most of my life I wanted to be a crop farmer, but now if I could have my way, we would have everything in grass and we wouldn't be doing crops at all anymore. So definitely changed.
I know when I went through college, which was. In case anybody's wondering more than 10 years ago, um, one of my good friends, we, we both won to dairy, but he was very much about row crops and he, he used the dairy as a way to farm more, you know, because he could, he could grow grain for the dairy and, and make it more effective in actually using the dairy to, you know, process or value add to the, the grainy grew, which I came from it.
I wanted to graze, I wanted to do the New Zealand style grazing animals, and I just, we didn't get there, but it was very interesting, his philosophy on that. I need to check in with him and see how he's going with that, because he loved nothing better than to spend a whole day planning or, or something I've never farmed. So whatever he's doing down there.
Yeah, no, that's funny. I mean, your mindset's very much like what my dad's was. We actually, my, I grew up on a grazing dairy and I never wanted anything to do with it until, again, here lately when I kind of found a passion for grazing and now looking at the numbers, the grazing dairy has some of the most potential to generate revenue in a grazing enterprise, especially on smaller acres than like anything else. And so it's a really
Oh yeah.
especially for someone getting into the business of grazing, to generate enough revenue to make a living off of, on a relatively small acreage. The grazing dairy's got a ton of potential. And every now and then, I'm just like, dad, Val, my wife, what do you think? Should we get back into the grazing dairy? And they're all, well, my wife doesn't, she's maybe not so excited about it. And dad's kinda like, that's gonna be you if you, if we do that, it's all on
Oh yeah.
I'm not that excited yet. So we'll see.
Well, I, I am, I've mentioned this numerous times. I am dying to buy a milk cow. Or some dairy goats. 'cause I, I just loved that. Um, I grew up on a dairy and I knew I wanted to dairy. Now how I was going to get there, lots of debate. But the, the thing that's keeping me from pursuing that more, the old dairy barn that used to set right here behind my house blew down in like 2016.
We had a, I don't think it was, it wasn't a tornado, it was straight line winds, but it lifted that whole barn off the foundation and threw it across my driveway. And so now I've got a slab out there and I don't have a dairy barn. If I had a dairy barn, the conversation would probably, or not a whole dairy barn. I mean, I'd have the structure, I wouldn't have the equipment, but sure, it would make me much more tempted to, to be going there.
Yeah, no, that, that, that's the big investment, like the grazing business. One of my about it is the low upfront overhead costs that you have But the dairy, that's the one downside of the dairy part is there is a bit more upfront cost to get that parlor set up. But, depending on what your goals are, it could be worth it.
So when you got those, so you came home from college and got some cows,
Yeah. So I mentioned we're cooperative producers for feral cattle company, and we've always been, I shouldn't say always, time ago we had Cemental, but for the last like 30 years of our farm or more, we've been registered Red Angus cows. And, uh, when I was. The, the fall before I was graduating, it was fall of 2014, there was another cooperative producer in Company who was selling his herd of Herefords.
And, uh, so they were kind of similar, low input, forage based Hereford cattle, and they wanted to keep 'em within the Pharaoh Cattle Company program so they could keep marketing bulls. And I was thinking, you know, maybe this would be an opportunity for me to have something of my own. And my dad had just purchased a little more land, so we had a little more grass and we needed to expand somewhat. So it seemed like a logical option.
long story short, it wasn't too long and we decided to get back out of the Herefords pretty quick and just focus on the Red Angus. They just weren't quite to the level of where our reds were. And it was like I could spend the next 10 years trying to make our herefords as good as our reds, or I could just have the reds that we already have and not deal with 10 years of headaches. So we,
Oh yes,
we made that shift to a hundred percent reds again. But yeah, that was it. It was a great way to start. Anyway, if nothing else.
I know one thing that I see, I don't know if I'd say fairly often, but I do see this happening. A um, son or daughter comes into operation and. They adjust that breeding program of livestock. So, so for your case now, you were starting your own, but you were going with Harford's your parents had done Red Angus. I've seen it where the family has always done limousine and now they're doing some other breed or, or they've, they've always had to red version, now they're going to the black version.
And I know coming outta college myself, you know, I wanted to, to push the dairy more towards grazing. And dad, dad was more, we're bringing in the grain. If you can do it without costing us any money than we'll go with it. But I was still learning it at the time.
Yeah. Yeah. No, it was, it was probably mostly just a decision out of, not even thinking that the Herefords were better or anything. It was just like, if I'm gonna have my own cows and you're gonna have your cows, maybe it'd be simpler to
Yes,
with a color difference. And, and also there was however many, 30 producers within feral cattle company and like only one or two Hereford growers. So I was kind of
Oh yeah.
some potential here to diversify our income a little bit and not be a hundred percent reliant on the Red Angus breed for our income. Because there's always that fear of will there be more Red Angus than by bull buyers? And so maybe by diversifying we
Oh yeah.
against that. So that was the
Right. Makes sense.
behind it. But those Herefords, they just hadn't had quite as long as the Red Angus had had in moving in this direction. And they had a few issues that I just, yeah, they didn't. Didn't seem worth the hassle to spend 'em all fixed, so.
Now, you mentioned there before your dad became a, a cooperative producer for Pharaoh Cattle Company. He had Simmentals.
Yeah. So my grandpa, our, our farm as a whole, and I don't know if this gets into more detail than you want on our farm history, but has totally changed.
think it's really interesting, so,
good. Well then I'll see if you feel the same way afterwards. My grandpa, uh, back in like the sixties, seventies, eighties, uh, was farming very much progressive, high input, everything, and he was milking a couple hundred cows. In a high input scenario, a few hundred registered cemental, big frame cows and hundred sheep all registered and seed stock sheep and, and every, and farming over a thousand acres. Him and his brother were farming together.
And, um, it was a very high input, very progressive scaled commodity farm at that time. And, uh, we had an exchange student, they had a lot of foreign exchange students for labor to help with all that work and the hang and the milking. And there was a guy from New Zealand that came over and told my grandpa that everything you're doing is wrong. You're doing wrong, and you're, it's just totally outta whack. And you're 15 years behind us over in New Zealand.
And, uh, I just give so much props to my grandpa because he could have been so offended. And he's like, what? You know, progressive farmers, and everyone looks at us with respect and, and, uh, but he didn't, he, he said. To my dad. You bet you should go over to New Zealand and figure out what they're talking about, what this guy's talking about. And so my dad went and spent eight years in New Zealand and and or not, excuse me, eight months? Not eight years. Eight Very different.
Either way. Still impressive.
And learned he worked on a two stations, a dairy, a grazing dairy, and then a grazing beef and deer station and brought that home. And in the meantime, while my dad was in college, my grandpa and his brother split off farms and, and grandpa was no longer a dairy, he was just kind of a commodity beef and crop farmer. And so my dad went off and started a grazing dairy of his own. And ever since then kind of focused all of the grazing more on a low input type grass-based animal.
And my grandpa got rid of the ALS and switched to Red Angus. And um, and yeah, so that's kind of where the shift came from. He just didn't see the in that. Super tall, lanky, gutless, cemental for the, the right type of animal. And, and that shift came out of there. But yeah, it's weird to think where we could be if that New Zealander had never came to us, our
Oh yeah.
we could be broke or we could still be farming the same way as everybody else. I don't, I don't, I dunno.
We do not have any CTAs here, but CTAs were my first love as breeds of cattle I can remember. Um, so my grandpa dared and he AIed like all dairymen do. And when those exotic breeds started coming in, in the late sixties, early seventies, he started breeding cows, two to those breeds. And um, and Semial was one he'd used quite a bit. And I remember as a kid, probably. I dunno, four or five. I had a bottle calf that was half semial, half hosty, a nice charcoal color.
I loved, I loved the color of it and stuff. That was my calf. And then shortly after that, my dad had went to a, an auction and purchased a semial bull auction and he purchased a three quarter semial bull Quarter Horned Hartford Bull. And, um, we used that, that for years, of course, we're talking the seventies. I guess we sold all those cows when we started dairying because we started dairying when I was 13 and we moved out with my grandparents.
But during that time, I found the, the cattle of the world book and, and Simmental has always fascinated me. It's just that they don't fit my model.
Yeah. Yeah. And well, it's funny now because, well Kit, and I've heard people say like Kit Pharo that Angus have out Simmental the Simmental, and now Simmental considered the more moderate breed as opposed to some of the Angus. And I know people with are probably better graziers than a lot of the Angus and Red Angus out there. So yeah, the But as a whole, as a general, the breed, yeah. Wasn't exactly known for.
Its, I don't know, its moderate grazing efficiency kind of an animal, that's for sure.
And, and then the exciting thing is they've started bringing in the milky or the milk versions of Simmental of course, they go by different names, the Mons or the Fleckvieh and
Yeah.
the other, which, which I think is fully fascinating. And actually that's where I lean towards, I'd love to get some Fleckvieh heifers graze and to milk, but I. That's enough about me. I'm, I'm talking way too much. This is about you and your journey.
Well, we'll, we'll save that conversation for when you're on my podcast, so.
Oh, okay. That, there we go. That works. Yeah. So when you got these heifers, these herefords in, sorry, got these herefords in, y'all were already grazing Red Angus, uh, for PCC. So did you have your infrastructure in or did you have to go in and do anything to, to get started with it?
yeah. No, we, we pretty much were already set up for grazing, uh, part I did mention how we picked up a farm, uh, that we, was part of the reason why we got more cattle, so there was infrastructure going up there. that would've had to be done whether I got the Herefords or not. But, uh, my, I, I benefited largely, again, from my ancestors, my grandpa and his not being too prideful to change. And my dad, in the early two thousands, he put in a ton of infrastructure on our main farm.
is perimeter and even interior fence with railroad ties and high tensile electric and
Oh yes.
lines running with winter waters at several points, and then above ground water is running off of them. So we had waterline infrastructure and fence infrastructure throughout our farm. uh, improved and increased some in my time, but most of that, the, the backbone of it was already in place before I came home. Uh, so I was fortunate for that. I remember a lot of that being done when I was a kid, but couldn't, there's hundreds of railroad ties that.
That, I don't know if you've built a railroad tie fence, that's, those things are heavy and uh, grateful to have missed out on a lot of that. And now when we build new fence, most of that's done with fiberglass fence posts instead of
oh,
and that makes life a lot simpler. But yeah, I'm fortunate to have benefited from the work of past generations for sure. On the infrastructure
oh Yeah, And those interior fences you're using High tensile wire.
yeah, yeah,
And then for the exterior fences, what kind are you doing? High tinsel there as well.
all high tensile. And we actually, we started with interior and everything being like, I think at one point when dad built it early two thousands was like six or eight wires for sheep. He went big and
Oh yeah.
and then got outta sheep a few years later. And, and since then we've been pulling wires off of old fences and using 'em on new fences and stuff. So we don't have six or eight wire anymore, but it's all still, you know, two or three wire high tensile electric, on the main farm, which is nice. Yeah.
Now I know in your area it's mainly farm ground, but do you see on, on the marginal land, do you see more high tensile fencing in your area?
Yeah. Yeah. I would say most of the fence, especially new fence, is high tensile electric. There's
Oh yeah.
barb wire. There's a lot of old barbed wire I would say that's falling down and stuff, but most new build fences going in high tensile electric and, but there's of pastures that sit vacant for a year or two. They just don't have anything on it. Not a lot, but there's still a few that don't even cattle or do their hay off every year or something like that. But yeah, the ones with fence are mostly high tensile electric.
Which I find interesting in my area. You don't see any high tensile fence.
and I talked
Uh, it's all five or six strand barb wire fence.
there's a guy, Colton Munger, who I've had on, he's a son of a cooperative producer out in Nebraska. He is a fencing company and he says everybody builds New is still Barb Wire. Everybody Brand is a guest, maybe a popular
Oh yeah,
A red brand, barbed like It's
Is it red top brand, red brand, like that. Because actually, I know because, or I don't know the the correct name, but we're putting up some goat wire and, um, that brand's always a little bit higher. It's really nice, but it's a little bit higher than some other brands we look at.
That's what it sounds like. But, and I guess people want quality and that's maybe fine, but I don't know. I've talked to some folks who are doing stockers and like backgrounding yearlings and stuff like that, and they've had trouble with barbed wire. They'll just sit and rub and, but high
Oh yeah.
like it's more effective for some of those guys too. So, I don't know. Seems to me like, but, and then high tensile electric has its challenges too, no doubt. But yeah, I, it seems like the logical and much cheaper and simpler option to build for
Oh yeah. I, I think it's just a paradigm shift for people. Um, my dad. We, we tried, and this is my bad, I put up a few, a two wire high tinsel fence and it didn't work. But that's not on the fences part. That's on my energizer here at the home place. And the way I had it ran, it kept grounding out on me. I just didn't do a good job with that. So I take full blame for that. But now dad thinks it's crazy, even consider it, which in that context it was, it didn't work.
have to do some things better.
Interesting. goat fence you were talking about, is that like woven netting then?
Yes. With like 12 inch stays. So that's, that's enough of a hole or wide enough that a goat with horns can pull its head out getting it stuck. Because if you are using real regular field wire with what, six inch stays, they'll get their head in and if they've got horns, they can't get it back out.
That makes sense. Yeah, no, that fence, I, I like the thing that scares me about sheep is, and, and goats and stuff too, is the perimeter fence and keeping 'em on the property. I mean, they said it, I've always heard people say, if, if the fence will hold water, it'll hold a goat. I'm like, well, that's high bar to set fencing, but that fence is kinda like barbed wire. It's tough to install and expensive.
And it, my experience with goats, it's true now. Sheep are much easier, but that's a different topic. But
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sure.
Now one thing you mentioned about your properties, you're grazing, smaller acreages in general, are you moving the whole herd? So you're doing whole herd and managing like one mob, or do you have multiple herds spread out you're managing.
no, and that's something we've questioned what the right thing to do is. I think I had Alan Williams on my podcast, I think it was him that had said that, oh yeah, you should run everything in one group and move them from site to site. And I just, I just don't see that being efficient, uh, with such a
Oh yeah.
with calves trying to move cow calf pairs from farm to farm to farm, and we'd bring 230 pairs to a 30 acre field and be off in a couple days and have to move 'em onto the
Oh yeah.
and they're 13 miles one way from home and another is 10 miles another way from home. So we've mostly got groups on different farms. There's one like cluster of farms close to home that we might have. three farms and we might have one or two groups that we move between those three farms, and then there's four farms and a cluster over on one side that we might have two or three groups. We move between those farms. And then that's north 13 miles that we just have one on that farm.
But, uh, so we're probably running five or six different groups at a time, but, uh, which saves a little bit, but is, not, it's not ideal. I would love to have everything in one contiguous group that would make life so much easier. But, and, and then with management, like the home farm, we'll move 'em one or two times a day 'cause they're right there.
But those ones that are away or more, we're maybe only moving them every two or three days just because it, we can't justify the drive time and the labor to do daily moves.
Right. Yeah, I, I completely agree with that and I, I struggle with that. Um, one mob or multiple mobs, uh, I've got my herd. Dad's got his herd. We keep them separate, I've got some lease property, and what I'd love to do is walk 'em between everything, because mine's not spread out as far as yours, but. Th there's just some limitations there that I'm not able to. So it's a debate I have in my head too, except I'm working with much smaller numbers.
And, well, I don't know about your area, but a lot of those grazing based areas are still, like all the farms and all the fields, are they fenced? So like roads are pretty much like alleys?
Yes. Basically, yes. Out outside of just a, a handful of properties, like, um, moving to one place I have to fence a or I have to run a polywire a quarter of a mile, but outside of that, I'm just doing driveways.
that's really nice. 'cause ours, everything is corn and soybeans and fence rows were pulled, fences were pulled out many years ago for most. So
Yeah.
get 200
It's really,
corn field, that's a real miserable day. But yeah.
That would be, We, yeah. In our area, if you go and.
Hmm.
And then if you go west and west, probably at least two hours before you hit some farming.
Okay. Sure.
we're all pasture here
that's nice.
or hunting
Neighbors are
a big, big thing.
than than a row crop farmer, probably.
Yes. I would assume that is the case because Yeah.
Yeah. it's gonna happen, if it happens to them, it's only a matter of time before their cattle end out, up, end out on somebody else's property, and so you kind of gotta be a little more understanding.
Right. Um, I hate to admit this, but just yesterday, was it yesterday day before my neighbors called me, they're like, Hey, your sheep's out in the road. So they put 'em in for me and then I moved pastures with them
Yeah.
once they were in. But yeah, they're very understanding and, and like you said, we. We told one neighbor, he may drive his cows over to us because can't get into his, um, working system because of the mud. So, and we can get into ours. So I don't know if it's gonna happen, but they work really good together and they're really beneficial. I have neighbors that's not doing row crops. I'm sure that would be a whole different topic then.
yeah. No, we've had some bad situations, but that's gonna happen, so
It is, yes. Let's talk about your, your Red Angus, because that's what you're going with now and PCC and how you're breeding those and selecting breeding stock.
Yeah. Yeah. So Red Angus just happens to be the breed that we've been in, but I guess I've always been a believer that what's far more important than breed specific is the breeding program and like selection and the management system that the farm raises them on.
And so it's, it's kind of funny, like feral cattle company, we have Black Angus, red Angus Herefords, and I would say our Red Angus are far more similar in type and, and you know, traits than with the other Pharaoh, black Angus and the Pharaoh Herefords than they are with the vast majority of the Red Angus Association cattle. Like we're just running of cow.
so essentially we're just selecting for the cows that can thrive in an environment within their environment as opposed to needing to adapt the environment to the cow. when you start adapting environments to cows, that's where costs go up significantly. You've got buildings, you've got tractors, you've got, you know, feed wagons and feed harvesting and overhead goes up and labor and expenses all go up when you start doing that.
And so we've just tried to focus on a cow that thrives in our environment, and that's kinda what the whole Ferro Cattle Company program is about. And so our cows, I guess, now have kind of. type I guess we have is mostly a 11 to 1200 pound moderate frame, three, four frame score cow, that's deep bodied, easy flushing, low maintenance. You know that cow that, every cow had animal living being, has a certain level of maintenance energy requirement just to live.
uh, so a lower maintenance animal can more rapidly meet their maintenance requirements and more quickly start diverting energy towards putting on body condition was, which results in getting rebred. So we have a high fertility rate in our cattle. We're getting bred back with low quality feeds and low supplement and all of this. Being the hope being to reduce costs.
And, I, I was just having this conversation with a, a podcast I'll release in a few days with Alan, Alan Williams, who was saying now his cost to keep a cow, managing a cow herd like this is like 350 bucks or 400 bucks a cow for a year, as opposed to the national average of somewhere around a thousand dollars.
yet people are focusing on buying bulls that get them maybe a little more growth or carcass traits or a little better, you know, meat quality traits and stuff like that, that might add a premium of $50 to the value of their calf. And they think that's winning. Well, the type of program that we're selecting for, and that all Alan's talking about may not add $50 in value to the calf, but it saved them $700 or $600 in costs.
And so that's kind of how we focused our genetics on trying to increase profitability through. Matching an animal to its environment as opposed to maximizing its production and, and carcass trait potential, if that makes sense.
It does make sense to me and I do hear, um, in fact where, where I used to work, one gentleman there, I talked to him about his cattle, but. You know, and I hate, it's so cliche, but he talked about his weaning weights and how big he was. He was selling calves and he was running, what was he running, I wanna say Charolais Simmental cross, but he had some big animals and um, yeah.
And, and to me that's just focused on the wrong, well, you, you wanna maximize is never the, the correct term you wanna optimize. So we wanna optimize that income we're bringing in, but we have control over those expenses. So if we look at that and figure that out, and actually, and this is something we can talk about when I visit your podcast, but sheep a very interesting thing when you start considering low cost versus our cattle. So.
absolutely. You know, we, that's all, you're right, that's a whole nother conversation that I've been thinking very much more seriously about with sheep and the numbers that they, bring in. But yeah, no, you're, you're right on. Um, and, and there's like, I think optimizing is the perfect word.
I think so many times in the history of any industry, but cattle industry has always been about maximizing something and going all And we can go all one way on the efficiency and maxim maximizing low input and low efficiency too, and, and end up with cattle that look like sheep. But what we in then as a calf that's not marketable.
And now we've that's, we're losing profitability because we focused on maximizing grazing efficiency, but we have an unmarketable calf and our dockage is so significant that we've lost profit. And so we've tried to optimize like, what is this optimal cow that is, is optimum in terms of its efficiency and grazing efficiency. But also still provides a marketable calf.
'cause the vast majority of our producers that are purchasing, I mean Kit Farro, farro cattle company sells to a thou 1100 bulls a year. of those producers are still marketing through some sort of a commodity channel. Either or they're finishing them out themselves and and marketing beef. And so we can't produce an animal that's not gonna provide a quality marketable animal. They'll end up, you know, upset and leaving.
So there still has to be optimum's a perfect word, you know, that Americans in general probably have this very good thing at when they set a goal, they just go past where
All after it. Yeah.
a hundred percent.
Now, when, when you consider your cows and where you're going with them, what do you think's the, the, the thing that has the most room of growth for you? The most? Yeah, the most room or the most potential would be a better word for growth in that area.
That's a good question. And you know what? know if it's a cow genetic type specific thing because. Like we just talked about, this idea of optimum is that there is a point where you've reached it and if you keep going for you're just moving past. And I'm not gonna say is perfect, but we've been breeding towards what this optimum is for close to 30 years. And I'd say we're getting pretty close to the right type of our environment.
That being said, the big thing that I think we want to try and figure out is, that we've been making some pretty big strides at in the the last couple years, is our winter feed costs. And we don't have to talk too much about that now 'cause that kind of gets into the, what we're gonna talk about for the overgrazing section, but is kind of that winter feed cost and how we can reduce that. 'cause in an upper Midwest scenario.
I mean that is our biggest challenge is when most people are feeding hay up here for. or seven months, and that's, that doesn't work. You talked about dairy earlier. And a dairy cow has a gross revenue of like four or $5,000 a cow. They can afford some overheads and some feed costs, but that are dairy retirees move to beef cows and they try to run a beef cow like that, there's just not the gross revenue to start covering those costs.
And so we gotta figure out a different way to make it work up here. And that's what we're trying to figure out.
Right. Yeah. and that, um, winter grazing, I'm, I'm excited to have that conversation in a little bit. For your summer grazing, are you, um, broadcasting or drilling in anything for summer annuals?
Yeah. So we have done some, we've, we've messed around with different uses of annuals and stuff like that. Um, where annuals seem to do a really good job is a few things We have mud season up here this march, April timeframe where the ground is the top down and uh, and it just turns into a muddy mess and they rip up some ground. every year we'll have this area that we kind of turn into a sacrifice area that we'll we'll do that with.
And, uh, we find sorghum, sedan, grass, and kind of planting a summer annual is a really good way to help rectify that soil and bring it back.
Oh yeah.
the other beautiful thing that I really love about sorghum sedan grass is, is using it essentially as like a forage supply chain balancer. Like we've got all this cool season perennial grass that we have a massive summer or spring flush. This 60% comes in like 60 days. And then we have this summer slump where we have a deficit of grass and warm season annuals like sorghum, Sudan, grass. They just keep growing without kind of going rank like cool season.
We can't just stockpile our cool season grasses and expect them to be there and, and available for us in August and high quality feed, they're, they're gonna have lost a quality. And so that's where the warm season annuals are really nice tool to help balance where we can that spring flush, kind of match our cow herd to our spring flush capacity.
And then when the summer slump comes and our cool seasons slow down and we're not ready to start the next rotation because the grass isn't recovered, we can move to those warm season annuals to kind of balance that cool season deficit. And that's been nice. And, and also it's just really productive. We're seeing in the summer and fall when we're grazing before snow comes, we can get like 180 to 200 cow days per acre of that.
Oh wow.
and so the, when we can get that much production on an acre that really, that really helps keep the cost down and, and we can produce a lot of feed and balance that, that. Summer deficit with a relatively small amount of acres, which is really nice.
Are you going in and drilling that in?
yeah, yeah. And if it's really torn up from mud season, we might even have to do a little tillage before to kind
Oh yeah.
kind of level out the soil. And I mean, there's big tractor ruts and you know, you can
Oh, I imagine so.
two feet deep tractor ruts and stuff. So we'll do a little bit of that and, um, and stuff just to fix it up. But then yeah. We'll, we'll drill. We don't do a lot of broadcasting because in our environment up here, there's people who have tried broadcasting annuals into a cool season perennial, but we're so far north. Our cool seasons never really go fully dormant on a very hot, dry year. The cool seasons might be slowed down enough to get some establishment from a warm season annual.
most years it probably doesn't. So really the only place the annuals can go is on a, a tillable acre. That's purely set aside And then broadcasting, we, we wanna make sure we get a really good establishment and good production. 'cause this tillable acre is worth $250 an acre, so we need to maximize the production out we'll drill it just to make sure we get a good stand and good out of it.
yeah. Those opportunity costs on a tillable acres is a lot different than when you're talking about pasture.
Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
that's the big one. The land cost is, it's rough.
Oh yeah. I, I talked to someone not too far from me and they've used sorghum, some Sudan, and they broadcast it where they fed hay and it, it's came up good
Really?
and yeah, they, they just broad broadcast it in those, they just, not necessarily bell grazing, but they were feeding bells out. And where those circles of hay that you've got left over, that takes two years for it to recover. They were broadcasting it in those areas, which looked interesting. In fact, dad and I was talking about that other day. We may try a little bit of that. Uh, I do have a, a old grain drill I could try using a little bit. I don't know.
I, I know your context being that far north, much different than mine, but any, um, any advice you have on sorghum Sudan grass?
Yeah. Well, like you said, your context is different. So one of the, the learning lessons that we had, I guess, was we stockpiled it to graze in late, late winter one time, to try and graze after cornstalks, and we ended up with this. 75 acre field of corn, corn, or excuse me, of sorghum sedan grass that ended up buried in snow And we were, instead of able to get 200 cow days per acre, we maybe got 30 or 40.
you that got 300, if you got $300 in acre into cost and you only get 30 cow days per acre, that works out to $10 per cow day. so that's a really, really expensive feed source. So that's like one learning lesson we had is you're gonna produce it, struggled with stockpiling that because we weren't able to utilize it that year. Now that happened to be on a farm that is a no-till crop farm and we couldn't go back and graze it in the spring 'cause we didn't wanna mud up his farm.
If it was on the we could have, you know, captured some of those days back in the mud season or after the mud season in the spring potentially. But, you know, that, that was a challenge. otherwise. That, that sorghum, it's a fantastic crop. It's been amazing for soil structure. There's, I, I don't know if you've ever heard of the Soil Your Undies test thing?
Actually, I think I have, but I can't. Well, I went to the Noble Research Institute in Essentials of Regenerative Grazing, and it was brought up there, but I can't remember it completely. So why don't you share that with us?
So essentially the idea behind the soil, your undies thing, it, it's kind of silly, but, uh, you take a bunch of white underwear, cotton underwear that are carbon based and you bury them out in the soil
That's right. Yeah.
biological soil, biological activity test. And the idea being that your more biologically active soils will decompose and tear up that underwear and all that you'll be left with is the, uh. The, uh, uh, what do you call the stretchy, the rubber band part of the, of
Right. Yeah.
And in a very biologically dead soil, it'll just be pretty much intact. It'll be dirty, but it'll just be intact. And so I've done that on our farm just as a trial. And that sorghum, was interesting when I was digging into that sorghum field, I had never seen more earthworms than in a square foot of that, that sorghum
Oh
and the soil structure just in one year of an annual, it was this beautiful chocolate ka granular kind of, uh, uh, soil structure and, and aggregation was phenomenal, even better than our long-term. Perennial pastures. Not, not all of 'em, but it was right up there. And so I've been amazed with what sorghum can do for soil in just a year. Also, in kind of a cropping context, which it sounds like you're not, but maybe somebody might be listening.
Uh, it's been really good for, in our organic crop rotation, because.
Oh yeah.
sorghum plants grow 10 feet plus tall and just smother out all the weeds beneath the, beneath the canopy. And so it's a really aggressive, fast growing plant that can really do a really good job of, uh, breaking the weed cycle and smothering out a lot of weed pressure underneath it. And so we like it for that. It's a really cool, versatile, multi-benefit, uh, beneficial plant. the challenge is it's expensive.
Uh, and it challenges, trying to graze it when you're dealing with 10 foot tall plants, but those, you can, you can work around.
yeah, we are, you are the second person in just a matter of weeks. It's just sung the praises of sorghum Sudan grass. So it really, in fact, um, on my desk here have, um, Dale Strickler managing pastor book. I was looking it up earlier, trying to, to gain more knowledge about it.
Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm, yeah. He's been a guest a couple times on the podcast, has a, uh, that fantastic resource. And he knows a lot more about cover crops and different plant than I'll I'll ever know.
I agree. Well, Jared, it's time to transition to the overgrazing section, and today on the overgrazing section we're gonna talk about something that I know even less than I usually know about stuff. Cornstalk Grazing.
Yeah. Yeah,
Just just to start, I'm assuming it's cornstalks and you're grazing it,
that's
can you give us a little bit more context there? Oh yeah. Right. Yeah.
that's spot on. Yeah, so of things, like I talked about my context here in Minnesota. Uh, two challenges slash opportunities I guess. Uh, biggest challenge is our winter winters are rough. We get a lot of snow, and the snow is, isn't even so much the issue is the ice that comes, but uh,
Oh yeah.
um, winter feed cost is expensive and most people in this area are feeding hay six or even seven months a year, and that's really expensive. And we just knew if we were gonna be in the cow calf business long term. though we have this premium market being seed stock producers, we could continue to chug along and potentially make a profit. But to really be sustainable or competitive, we have got to figure out how to reduce our feed costs.
And, uh, I kinda mentioned both the challenge and opportunity also of our context is we're surrounded by crop farmers, lots of corn and soybeans around. And so all of these corn fields have what a lot of people literally refer to as trash is their crop residue, their corn stalks they call trash. And that's a concern for a lot of 'em. They have to figure out how to remove that crop residue so that the soil can be warmed up earlier in the spring.
Most rectify that challenge with tillage, they turn it over, the soil black so that it can start decomposing that stuff and, and the soil can warm up in the spring quicker. But, uh, we look at that as that's a huge resource for us for savings, uh, because if we're like. to $3 a day or even more, but we can do it on cornstalks for 60 cents or even, uh, a little less or more depending on how much infrastructure and work we have going into it.
But, uh, essentially cornstalk grazing has been the thing that has really changed our business to know where we we're grazing in our context until the end of January or even into early February, where most people are done grazing October, uh, first or end of October. And so saving three plus months of feed costs, $2 plus a day in feed costs by grazing corn stalks. And, that's been a huge asset to us, and it, it really isn't that. Challenging.
It's pretty similar to grazing, grass grazing anything. You just need fence and water and uh, and, and
Right. Yeah.
do the rest. Big part of that conversation is having the right type of a cow that can handle it. If you don't have the right type of cow, you have to be ready to supplement with some sort of protein because corn stalks are essentially dormant. I mean, they're dormant, warm season forage. They're just the grass, the leaf of a corn plant. So it's not a super high quality feed. And so two things.
One, we've shifted our calving season back to April, may, June, so that that aligns their period, non lactating, low nutritional requirements with when we have, when we're grazing corn stalks. And then the right type of cow to be able to adapt to the, and do well on those corn stalks. But yeah, does that make sense? Hopefully.
it, it does. Now are you using, are you only grazing your all's land or are you able to, to lease some land to do that as well? I.
So we, we do not have enough land of our own to just graze our own cornstalks at this point. So we're grazing on a few other farms. We kind of have two farms that we work with primarily. And one of them it's, uh, it's interesting, one of 'em is full tillage and he wants the ground tilled before the ground freezes. the other one is a no tiller, and he doesn't want cattle on the ground until the ground freezes.
So it, out actually pretty well for us that we just go to the one tillage guy and we'll graze corn stalks on his as late as we can until the ground starts to freeze. And then when the ground's frozen, you know, or just before we'll move 'em, off and, and he'll come in and do the tillage and we'll move the cows to the no-till guys
Oh yeah.
And so we kind of balance that. Now, the challenge with that, again, is fence and water. we're fortunate that the one, the tillage guy, he's right next to our farm so he can water off of our farm. But the other one is 10 miles away. And so we'll drink outta creeks or drink outta streams or tile lines that he has at his farm, and that fixes the water issue. But the fence issue is the challenge.
And it, see, it can seem pretty daunting to put up a fence around a farm, like, I mean, building up a fence and then we'd have to take it down before the following spring so that they can plant their crops and everything. And that seems pretty daunting. But realistically, we've been able to put up a single wire, high tensile electric fence around a, we did 180 acres one year, I think two days we built it and we took it all back up in one day in the fall or in the following
Oh yeah.
And so really it was three days of time, that saved us $2 per day on 200 cows. So $400 per day for close to three months. I mean, we're talking. Thousands of dollars, well worth the time to build the fence. that's been the tr the challenge is the infrastructure, but if you're willing to put in a little work, it's worth the cost in my opinion.
It sounds like it. Now I have a question for that. You tearing down that fence, so you put high tinsel wire, are you using like a spinning ginny to
Yeah,
reel it up some way? Because that wire can get pretty crazy.
Your arm would be burning by the end of rolling up that.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
have, we have a, a hydraulic roll reel reel that we reel it up with, and so
Oh, okay.
in the posts, we'll have our loader tractor, just a front wheel assist loader, a bucket full of posts. My dad will drive the tractor, I'll be up front and he'll walk. I'll grab a post, and then he uses the bucket to just push the post in the ground. we just kind of just walk right along and posts in and then we'll pull the wire off the back of the tractor and we just pull the wire out and so we can build it pretty quick. And then rolling it back up is the same thing.
We just roll it up with our hydraulic reel and then dad's in the tractor and I'm going out front, putting the chain around the post, pulling it out, throwing it in the bucket, and moving on to the next one. So it's pretty efficient with the right tools and the right two bodies, two bodies and the right tools. And you can build or take
Oh yeah.
pretty quick.
Would you or would use the wrong start to that question instead of using high tensile wire and posts like that, would poly braid and tread in post not work in that context?
Yeah, that's a great question. So we have used that. Uh, we, we pretty much just do high tensile wherever there's a road. this 180
Makes sense? Yeah.
that. 180. a mile of that was road frontage and we put up high tensile around that and the other was just neighboring a, a neighbor's farm. And I don't know why it probably really isn't any difference 'cause if they break, if they break through the wire along the neighbor's farm, they can just walk to the road anyway. So it's not for some reason there's more of a sense of security with that high tensile along a road I
Oh, yeah.
But
Yeah. Well, I, I can see that. Yeah.
but we put the high 10, we put the polywire around the rest and probably would be just fine. Even with Polywire along a road,
Oh, yeah.
would be just fine. There's about a sense of security and that's one thing Solberg has always said about fencing is that you build the fence that you can sleep at night with. And there's a lot of truth to that because realistically we all could make do with less fence than we have oftentimes well, a good fence with good electricity and good grounding and right space wire spacing. It doesn't have to have a bunch of wires or the right or, or something like that.
But uh, yeah, it's just something personal comfort.
Yeah, I, I completely get that. Yeah.
Mm-Hmm. Yeah.
When you started that, or those agreements with those other landowners to, to graze their corn stalks, were they receptive to that or did that take us some time to get 'em on board?
Yeah. Another fortunate relationship thing. One, the early, the tillage guy, he is kind of views the corn stalks as trash and that he wants them gone. And so
Oh, yeah.
have us graze them because he generates a little more revenue. both of 'em generate a little more revenue of, uh, I mean, roughly saying if we get 60 cents. If we pay 60 cents per cow day and we can get 60 cow days per acre, that's an additional $36 per acre that they're generating off their cornfield that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. it's taking care of a problem.
The no-till guy, he actually, he learned about kind of soil health and was excited about the idea of integrating livestock and using that to turn into nutrients. So that one was even less work. But not everybody will be receptive to that. We just happen to find two people who are in the right mindset towards it. All that, you know, saw it as a good thing. So that that
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
And I think you mentioned something there right at the beginning that like finding land to lease is always. S always difficult finding them, but it comes down to relationships and, and those relationships, however they get started. Um, whether that's asking to lease the land, start of that relationship, but that relationship will determine how far you can go with that much of the time.
Agreed. Completely. There has to be an element of trust and understanding and yeah. All of that comes through building relationships. It's huge. Yeah. You're
right. Yeah.
Yeah. Mm-Hmm.
Jared, that's really interesting about the cornstalk grazing. That's, like I said, it's not something we do around here, but I think that's a, a great way to help lower those winter costs and, and to utilize something that's trash to someone else.
yeah. And like you just mentioned something that brought something to mind of you. Don't utilize it around there. I, I didn't remember I had, I had forgotten, but there were actually two years where we sent our cows down to Nebraska to graze corn stalks too. And
Oh yes.
Cows can travel to do this as well. Um, you know, we don't, it, it, we, we sent them all the way down there and paid a custom rate per day and paid the trucking. And between the trucking and the custom rate, the cost worked out to maybe a dollar 50, a dollar 60 per head per day, which was still saving probably a dollar compared to feeding hay at home.
Oh yeah.
hassle of having all the cows at home. you know, you know, that's, uh, another thing, relationships. We happen to know somebody who knew him and stuff, and that
Oh yeah.
you know, if this is something that's not in a particular person's neighborhood, it doesn't mean it's not an opportunity that couldn't work and we sent them 500 miles and it worked. Maybe you're a little closer, maybe you're within 200 miles of a cornfield that it could work on. And, and that good opportunity for somebody. So,
Yeah. That's, that's great. Out of the box thinking there. Yeah.
Yeah.
When, when you did, when you do the corn stock grazing, are you, you, you're, oh, stumbling on my words. Look at that. You're making it so far into winter without feeding, feeding hay, but you're still having to feed some hay to finish up the winter.
yeah. Usually like four out of the last five years, we've much been able to hit that last week in January, right up until the February. So we're feeding still February, March, April, and then early May, depending on how early the grass is ready to grow. So three months, three and
Oh
months, we're feeding hay. And
are you buying hay and bringing it in? Sorry about that.
problem. Uh, we, we make some of our hay and we buy some of our hay. this year is actually our first year trying bale grazing corn stalks. So
Oh,
if we'll be we'll like or not, but like I said, usually the reason we're getting off of corn stalks is because the, uh, snow and ice get too deep. This year we had to take 'em off of corn stalks 'cause it was too muddy 'cause it's so warm for some reason. uh, but we're, we've actually made some cornstalk bales off of a neighbor's cornfield and we're feeding that to our cows now, which is the first time trying this. And so far it seems to be working pretty good and it's cheaper than hay. So
Oh yeah.
continue to do that in the future. We'll see.
Interesting. Yeah. Be excited to learn how that, um, wraps up for you all and how it
I'm as well.
Jared, it's time for our famous four questions. Same four questions we ask of all of our guests. And as we were talking about, um, before we got started, I stole that off of the BiggerPockets podcast, so don't tell them
I won't tell anyone.
our first question. What is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource?
so there's a bunch of 'em, but you ask for the one. And my favorite is, uh, the turnaround, A rancher story by Dave
Oh yeah,
And it's not specific to, of it is grazing grass ecology, but a large business, uh, of a ranching, a Grazing Grass business. It's just a fantastic WR written book. He wrote it in a story too, so it's not like a textbook. It's super readable. I'm, I really enjoy reading when I get time. I don't often get time, but this was a book I picked up and I just read and just kept writing, reading 'cause it was just really, really good.
I think, I think everyone who wants to run a grazing grass based business should read that book.
I, I think so. I think anybody who farms probably needs to read it.
Yes. Yeah,
too often the business side of farms is forgotten, so, you know, ranching for Profit does a great job with that. Um, I, I probably was introduced to that book from a guest on the podcast, but I really enjoy that book and the information in it. I, I wish it got a little bit deeper, but it definitely gets a, gets you thinking about it and,
get
and some of the things
If it was too deep, you
I, I know. I need to go and I haven't, uh, it's just,
Oh, right
maybe soon
so you wouldn't even have to travel too far. That's where I went to my City.
Oh yeah. There's one coming up in Oklahoma City. Not too far in the future, so, yeah. Yeah. So, so you came down to Oklahoma City at Go to your school,
I did. Yeah. Yeah. Not that it's too and I shouldn't be promoting 'em. They get enough promotion and plugs through different podcasts, but that has an open bar in the evening and fantastic food. So if you want to go to a good one, they was just a good venue.
Well, that is an excellent resource, Jared. Our second question, what is your favorite tool for the farm?
yeah. And I don't know if you consider a four-wheeler to be a tool, but that makes life so much easier to get around and pasture and, and whatnot and haul all your posts and reels around. So I'm, I'm gonna have to go with four-Wheeler.
I, I think that's an excellent answer. In fact, I don't have one right now. Um, I use my pickup and I walk, that is on my short list of things when I decide I shouldn't buy any more income producing units anymore, ewes, um, a quad, a four wheeler would be great to have.
Yeah,
I browse the listings occasionally, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet. 'cause I'm like, well, I could buy a cow or two more.
And well, you could buy several for, especially if you look at things like the side-by-side. I say 'cause like the side-by-sides are like cars for a the, the actual mileage you can get out of them.
Right. I, I agree. I struggle with that because my parents have a side by side and I love using it, and I think, oh, that'd be so nice. But then I look at the prices. I'm like, A four wheeler will do what I need it to. Of course, twice a year, three times a year when my wife goes out with me, a side by side would be really nice. But, but she, she is not going out there to help me work. She wants to go out there and look, and probably the pickup serves that purpose better.
yeah.
It,
you're right.
I look at those prices and I think, well, maybe I should look into a used Jeep to give me some of that functionality. Um, I haven't, haven't got far enough down there to, to start that process, but that's where my mind goes because those prices are in my mind, outrageous.
absolutely. I mean, I drive a special. 2008 F-150 I bought for 7,500 bucks and I'll get a out of that thing based on the miles I bought it at. And that 7,500 bucks is like a third of the price of a base model side by side. And, uh,
Yes.
by side, you'll maybe only get 10 or 15,000 miles out of it, and you can't drive down the road legally too far with it and stuff. I mean, man, there's, yeah, there's a lot more. If you're looking for fun and it's a toy, that's one thing, but I'd say it's pretty hard to justify as a tool in a grazing based business.
Our third question, Jared, is what would you tell someone just getting started? I.
Yeah, this is something I, I think one of the best things of a grazing grass business is the fact that you can run this business with little to no overhead. And I just talked about a four-wheeler being one of the, my favorite tools. So I get that, that that's maybe a little hypocritical. But if you compare to like any other business model in agriculture, like row crop specifically, or feedlot or something like that, you got so much money in buildings and equipment
Oh yeah.
tens of, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars where you can get into a grazing business with a few hundred bus bucks and posts and reels. And
Mm-Hmm.
And you can walk, I, we have a couple farms walked. 'cause we have these eight different farms. We don't have a four-wheeler on all of them. I do some walking too. You can start like that with just a few hundred bucks and post some reels. And if you want to get a little crazy, you can buy a four-wheeler for a couple thousand bucks and you know, you can expand your fleet over time if you want.
But a lot of the things that you think you need to get into a cattle business, like a big tractor or a truck and a trailer, you need a one ton dually and a 30 foot gooseneck. I mean, those are things that are nice, but you can make do without for a long time. Uh, hire a lot of that work done pretty reasonably. Um, especially starting out. So I'd say be careful with buying things if you think you need something. just start without and buy what you actually do need.
Find you need in a couple days or a little bit. And, and over time, use profit to buy things that maybe make your life a little bit easier. But don't, put yourself in a hole that you can't dig out of. 'cause you wanted to buy something that you probably shouldn't have at the start.
Oh yeah, I completely agree. Um, I love the Profit First Book by Mike, uh, Chu. I can't even say his last name. I practice it because I know I bring it up every once in a while. Uh, and then I'm reading a book, A Million Dollar Weekend right now. And one thing he's big about is you gotta get that profit initially, but yeah, you get, you gotta start turning. Profit and Grazing has a very low bar for entry. On materials, you gotta have some knowledge and you can get that knowledge.
But, you know, some wires tread in posts and poly, uh, and a reel do quite a bit.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And then there's even a spectrum in, in polywire and posts and stuff too. I mean, you can buy the, like $2 a post fiberglass post from Fleet Farm. And the, some of my favorite reels are the electric plastic, electric cord reels for seven bucks at
Oh yeah.
mean, you don't the step ins and the big a hundred something dollars Gallagher geared reels to start either. So yeah, there's a, can get by real cheaply to start if you're trying to operate on a budget. That's, yeah. One of my favorite parts about this business.
Yes. I, I completely agree. And lastly, Jared, can others find out more about you?
Yeah, so if, you want, you can listen to my podcast, the Herd Quitter podcast. Um, you can find that wherever folks listen to podcasts. Um, then if they wanna follow me specifically, well, there's social media for the Herd Quitter podcast on Facebook and Instagram. It's Herd Quitter podcast. Otherwise. Jared Luman on Twitter now XI guess, or, or Jared Luman on, on Instagram and, uh, Facebook.
Very good. Jared, appreciate you coming on and sharing about your journey and what you're doing. Really appreciate it, and I enjoy your podcast.
thanks Cal. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for, for the opportunity. I enjoyed it.