Kendall Woods

Podcast   For this episode of Landowner Insider, I sat down with Stephenville cattleman Wesley Wood to talk about the numbers behind the cattle business. Wesley grew up in a dairy family, started buying stocker calves in college, and has spent the years since building a cattle operation built entirely around knowing his cost of production down to the dollar. With calves running around $2,000 and good young cows reaching $5,000, there's more capital at risk in this business than most people realize, and Wesley was direct about where producers win and lose money. Most Cattlemen Don't Actually Know Their Numbers Wesley's biggest point, and the one he circled back to all conversation, is that most people in agriculture are running on instinct instead of math. He gave the example of a hay producer selling rolls for $45 without knowing it cost him $30 to $35 just to bale it, before fertilizer, ground lease, or weed spray. Wesley uses a break-even calculator he got years ago from Missy Bonds of Bonds Ranch, tied to the TCU Ranch Management program, and plugs in every input, cost of gain goals, average daily gain, death loss, before he'll commit to buying a set of cattle. As he put it, the calculator "shoots you out a real number, whether you like it or not." Cost of Gain Is the Number That Actually Runs His Business Rather than trying to time the cattle market, Wesley's strategy is built around knowing his cost of gain better than the feed yards he competes with. He keeps two years of feed inventory stacked up like a savings account, buys roughage cheap, and grows calves out himself before they ever hit a commercial feed yard. The math is unforgiving: keep a set of cattle two weeks too long and you can lose $60 a head in wasted feed costs. On a thousand head, that's $60,000 gone. Every feed yard also feeds differently, some finish a 750-pound heifer in 160 days, others take 208, so knowing which yard fits which animal matters just as much as the feed itself. Why He Cut the Bottom 15 Percent of His Cattle A few years ago, Wesley made the decision to stop buying the bottom 15 percent of cattle quality he used to accept. He's looking for a deep heart girth and the frame to carry real weight, animals that can realistically get to 1,400 pounds instead of topping out around 1,100. Once he tightened his standards, his closeouts and feed yard performance improved across the board. His read on why so many producers don't do the same: most people are just trying to make a deal, not necessarily the right deal, and it takes discipline to pass on cattle that don't fit what actually performs. $2,000 Calves, $5,000 Cows: What's Really at Risk Wesley was blunt that today's cattle business carries more financial risk than it used to, simply because the animals themselves cost so much more. A good young cow running $4,500 to $5,000 needs to keep producing $2,000 to $2,500 calves for years to pencil out, and interest on that capital, often running around 8 percent depending on the lender relationship, is one of the most overlooked costs in the whole equation. For someone running a smaller operation, maybe 15 head on 100 acres, Wesley's rule of thumb is simple: figure on a $2,000 calf a year at roughly 600 pounds, and if you can't get there, it's time to look at your cow, your bull, or your feed program. The Shrinking U.S. Cow Herd The national cow herd sits around 27.5 million head, down 20 percent since 1984. Wesley pointed out that while today's inventory is close to where it was during the 2008 dip, the cost of rebuilding the herd now is far higher, and there's less land available to run cattle on in the first place. Every time a large ranch sells, it tends to get divided into smaller tracts, which often means losing the working pens and infrastructure that made cattle operations efficient at scale. That shift is part of why more landowners are leaning toward wildlife management on smaller acreage instead, though Wesley made the case that a well-managed grazing lease and wildlife habitat aren't mutually exclusive when cattle are rotated properly. Calculated Risk vs. Playing It Safe The conversation closed on something that applies well beyond cattle: the cost of being too risk-averse. Wesley pointed out that producers who are afraid to commit capital rarely lose money outright, but they also miss the moments that actually build wealth. He remembered passing on 600-pound steers at $1.60 a pound because the price felt too high at the time, cattle that would go on to be worth far more. His take: "scared money don't make money," but that only holds up once you actually understand your numbers well enough to recognize a real opportunity when it shows up, rather than just gambling on a hunch. Watch the Full Episode This article is based on my conversation with Stephenville cattleman Wesley Wood on Landowner Insider.   ▶ Watch on YouTube   Work With Mock Ranches Whether you're evaluating a property for a cattle operation or trying to understand what makes a ranch actually pencil out, our team can help you look at the numbers the right way. Explore current ranch listings at mockranches.com.  

| Podcast For this episode of Landowner Insider, I sat down with Dr. Frank Owsley, interim dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Tarleton State University, my alma mater. We talked about how fast that college has grown, what AI actually means for agriculture education, and why understanding your numbers matters as much as understanding your cattle. A College That's Outgrown Its "Best Kept Secret" Reputation When Dr. Owsley got to Tarleton, he described it as one of the best-kept secrets in the country, a school full of quietly successful alumni nobody outside Stephenville seemed to know about. That's changed fast. Animal science alone has grown from about 450 students in 2015 to over 1,300 today, now roughly half the entire College of Ag and Natural Resources. The college's newest program, zoo animal management, didn't exist two years ago and already has around 100 students. Dr. Owsley pointed to a moment at a national cattle industry trade show in 2016 that stuck with him: wearing a small Tarleton lapel pin, he had 60 to 70 alumni, corporate executives, ranch managers, ranch hands, come up and thank him just for representing the school. That's part of why we've started an alumni chapter for the College of Ag and Natural Resources this year, which I'm proud to be involved with. The AI Question Nobody in Agriculture Can Ignore We spent real time on artificial intelligence, and Dr. Owsley's take was more grounded than most conversations on this topic. His view: AI isn't really artificial at all, it's a faster way to search and aggregate what humans already know. That's useful, but it doesn't replace the ability to think critically, reason through a problem, and recognize when an answer doesn't actually make sense for your operation. He gave a pointed example from his own classroom. When students ask an AI tool how to feed pigs on pasture, it responds with generic advice about maintaining high-quality pasture, technically reasonable-sounding, but wrong, because pigs don't grow well on grass at all. The tool doesn't know that. A student who hasn't learned to question the answer won't catch it either. Know Your Numbers Some of the most useful material in this conversation had nothing to do with classrooms. Dr. Owsley was blunt that too many people in agriculture don't actually know their own costs. He described asking a rancher what his hay was worth per roll and getting a blank stare. Depreciation on a cow, the fact that she loses value every year even before you count feed and vet bills, is one of the most overlooked expenses in a cow-calf operation. We also talked through the economics of grazing hay instead of baling it. Every time you start a tractor, your margin drops. Grazing cattle directly on standing forage instead of cutting, baling, hauling, and feeding it back cuts out several expensive steps and a good bit of waste. It's a small mindset shift that can make a real difference in a ranch's bottom line. Hands-On Learning Still Wins Dr. Owsley talked about the shift in where Tarleton's students come from, more coming out of the Metroplex and Houston now, fewer straight off a family ranch. Interestingly, he's found students without a farm or ranch background sometimes outperform those who grew up in it, simply because they haven't picked up bad habits along the way. What matters more than background is whether a student comes in ready to challenge themselves, which is advice he gives to every incoming freshman: do something that scares you a little before you ever set foot in a classroom. What Tarleton Has to Protect as It Grows As the university pushes toward research-university status, Dr. Owsley was clear that growth can't come at the expense of the things that make Tarleton what it is: a family atmosphere, a culture where students and faculty can have an honest conversation, and a level of individual attention that's hard to find at a much larger school. Protecting that culture, in his view, is just as important as any enrollment number. Watch the Full Episode This article is based on my conversation with Dr. Frank Owsley of Tarleton State University's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources on Landowner Insider. ▶ Watch on YouTube Work With Mock Ranches Whether you're managing a working cattle operation or just want to understand the real economics behind land ownership, our team can help you think it through. Explore current ranch listings at mockranches.com.

Podcast For this episode of Landowner Insider, I sat down in my Stephenville office with Western photographer Scott Slusher, whose work has ended up everywhere from ranch brandings to billboards in Times Square. We talked about what it actually takes to build a career photographing real working cowboys, why authenticity is getting harder to fake even as AI gets better at faking it, and what Texas stands to lose as ranchland keeps giving way to development, data centers, and light pollution. Building a Career on Relationships, Not Just a Portfolio Scott didn't grow up on a ranch. He grew up in Stillwater, Oklahoma, the son of a veterinarian, and didn't get horseback with any regularity until he was an adult chasing the lifestyle he wanted to be part of. He got his start in Dallas doing fashion photography, and the shift toward Western work happened almost by accident, friends who ranched let him come take pictures, he posted them, and other photographers and creative directors in the Dallas commercial market started paying attention.   What's carried his career since then isn't a marketing plan. It's showing up, building real relationships with the ranches and Cowboys he photographs, and staying in touch the old-fashioned way, texting people, checking in, asking to come back. As he put it, you have to go out and meet people, and once you do, that's what creates the work. Authenticity Is the Whole Point Scott is picky about who and what he photographs, and it's intentional. He'd rather shoot a real, working cowboy in gear he actually wears than a model dressed for the part, because he believes people can tell the difference even if they can't articulate why. That same instinct is why he's started experimenting with shooting on film again, an idea a fellow photographer talked him into as a way to keep pushing back against how digital and artificial everything else is becoming. Can AI Replace What He Does? We spent a good chunk of the conversation on AI, and Scott was refreshingly honest about it. He's tested it himself, generating an AI image styled after a specific painter's work just to see how convincing it could get, and admitted the results were good. But he draws a clear line between something that looks like a real paint stroke and something that is one. His worry isn't really about AI matching his technical skill. It's about what happens to demand for original, human-made work, and by extension, to people whose entire livelihood depends on it, if buyers stop caring about the difference. What Ranchland Loss Actually Costs Us The part of the conversation that stuck with me most was about data centers and disappearing open space. Scott's watched some of his favorite ranches to photograph get sold and developed, and he's blunt that it changes something you can't get back, dark skies, quiet, the ability to see for miles. I've had similar conversations with an eminent domain attorney about transmission line buildouts tied to the same growth in power demand, and Scott's read on it as a photographer lines up with what I hear from landowners directly: once that experience is gone from a piece of land, it doesn't come back. Why This Work Matters Beyond the Photo Itself Scott's real value, in my opinion, isn't just the images themselves. It's that every photo of a real cowboy doing real work is a small piece of evidence that this way of life still exists. He's watched that translate directly into business, people see a photo, get inspired, and years later end up buying a ranch of their own. That's the same reason we do this podcast: the more people who actually understand and see this lifestyle, the more of it survives. Watch the Full Episode This article is based on my conversation with Western photographer Scott Slusher on Landowner Insider. You can follow his work on Instagram @slusherphoto.   ▶ Watch on YouTube Work With Mock Ranches If you care about what's happening to Texas ranchland as much as we do, our team can help you find and hold onto the kind of open space this episode is about. Explore current ranch listings at mockranches.com.