Producer Features

Sometimes what has worked for years isn’t working anymore. Running a stocker program has worked for Cooper Brothers Farm for decades, but circumstances today have changed, and they’re converting to a cow-calf operation.

You’ve heard of the Texas two-step, a country dance. Let me introduce you to the Texas three-twist – cultivation, diversification and cooperation – involving sprigs, hay and custom work.

For the Rice family, farming has always been a family affair. With the sixth generation coming back to the farm, there is no denying farming is in their blood. Brothers Scott and Steve Rice operate a production alfalfa farm in Wilsonville, Nebraska, the town where they were born and raised.

If you buy a $90,000 30-foot-wide no-till drill, 95 percent of your neighboring farmers will call you crazy – a few cards shy of a full deck, a few bricks short of a full load, half a bubble off plumb.

“If your combine was throwing 80 percent of what it took in back on the ground, you’d be pretty unhappy,” Steve Kenyon points out. A cow, on the other hand, has a greater purpose.

Anybody who runs a bale wagon will tell you how critical bale length is. A New Holland bale wagon, for instance, will pick up three bales and lay them end-to-end in the stacker.