Tech is rapidly changing the ranching world. In my experience I don’t think I’ve seen technologies that have the likelihood of such fundamental changes, as the technologies being rolled out right now.
Specifically, I’m referring to virtual fence, smart ear tags, and remote monitoring tools. For a rancher the daily duties of checking fence, checking water, monitoring health in livestock will likely be replaced or at least significantly changed by technology.
Many of you may be groaning about the loss of stockmanship and ranching skills or the loss of connectedness of being out with the livestock that is likely to come with these changes. I too share many of those sentiments.
A small group of us recently toured an operation using Halter – one of the virtual fence applications. We shot this video of the tour – when you watch it, turn on the subtitles as the audio is bad in spots:
There was no company representative with us, no salesperson, just a group of ranchers talking about how it works and potential applications. I was blown away. The potential for this game changing technology is incredible. Sure, there are still some challenges in the application, but those will be sorted and you can bet the ease of use will continue to improve. We found ourselves rethinking many of our long-held paradigms around fences, maintenance, ranch skills, infrastructure design etc. The opportunities this presents to have animals where we want them, when we want them there, is astounding. Previously held limitations on what can be done and where it makes sense, all need to be reevaluated.
Other technologies (that I know just enough about to be dangerous) offer opportunities to have a profound effect include remote water monitoring, cameras, and ear-tags that track movement and offer many useful metrics. The days of spending hours driving to remote locations to check water are numbered. With the current costs of labor, fuel and vehicle operating expenses it doesn’t take long to justify implementing these technologies.
I’m not recommending anyone run out and immediately adapt these or other technologies, but I am encouraging you to be aware of these tectonic shifts happening in ranching and examine their potential application to your ranching operation.
At Ranching for Profit we’d pull out the flip chart and look at these “additional overheads” to compare them to our current cost and their potential to reduce overhead costs. The goal is to have increased operating profit on the bottom line. This is the bottom line of your profit and loss when considering all economic costs. Not just cash costs. At Ranching for Profit we teach the 3 ways to increase profit are to reduce overheads, improve gross margin per unit and to increase turnover. Most of these technologies I’m discussing here are around reducing overheads.
Our winter Ranching for Profit Schools are filling up fast. We have just completed a major revamp of our curriculum, adding more hands-on classroom work where participants get additional practice running numbers to develop comfort in the math and understanding what your numbers mean. If you are an alumni and it has been more than two years since you’ve attended a Ranching for Profit School, it’s time to come again. Remember we continue to offer a significant discount to all RFP alumni no matter how long ago you were last in the classroom. If you have yet to attend our school, the time is now. I’ve never heard anyone say, “I wish I would have waited longer before attending RFP”. We’d love to see you in class this winter.
