Famed motivational speaker Zig Ziglar once pointed out many people wrongly spend more time planning their wedding than their marriage. It’s a caution to keep in mind when picking the females to which you are hitching your herd’s future.

To build a solid, long-lasting relationship with those new herd additions, consider where you want to be five, 10 or 20 years down the road.

“You have to have an idea of where you want to go. Look around your region to some successful people. See what they’re doing,” recommends Landon Andrews, American Angus Association regional manager for California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona. “Make a point to pick their brain a little bit. Ask what they’ve learned through trials, tribulations and failure.”

Taking the time to ask questions and learn from those individuals who seem to have figured “it” out means the learning curve — and thus the corresponding opportunity for failure — shrinks.

Beginning with the end point (and potential buyer) in mind is admirable, says Mark Johnson, Oklahoma State University Extension specialist for livestock evaluation. Building in a degree of flexibility? That’s just plain smart.

“My plan may be to retain ownership through finishing, but the one certainty of beef production is that environment, climate and intended marketing end points — those change,” Johnson warns. “Producers need to have some degree of flexibility built in based on that variation.”

Observing and learning from producers who have already experienced that fluctuation is educational. But in the end, producers need to decide what product they’re producing and who they want to market that product to in order to truly position their operation for the future.

Reese Tuckwiller, regional manager for the Northeast, echoes the need to identify direction early with a sobering reminder.

“I hate the statistic that the average Angus breeder is in the business for less than five years,” Tuckwiller shares. “How do we keep them in business longer and make their business models sustainable? Ultimately, you need to make a plan.”

Your ideal partner

At the end of the day, producers have to have a product the public wants to buy if they want to stay in business, says Alex Tolbert, regional manager for the states of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

You have to be mindful of your customer and how they gauge success, Tolbert emphasizes. “If I don’t have that in mind when I’m making breeding and management decisions, it’s easy to get lost.”

Tolbert reminds new producers that they are a grass farmer — and they can’t forget it. They need to build a program around a female that fits their environment, their grasses and the quantity of forage available.

Forages and their particular nutrients are going to differ from one place to another, he explains. That means more emphasis should be placed on females with a proven record of performing in your particular environment.

Every decision is relative to what each operation labels as success, says Jeff Mafi, regional manager for Kansas and Oklahoma. Regardless of available resources from ranch to ranch, if it rains and the weather otherwise cooperates, producers could find themselves looking for more cows.

The important thing to consider, he says, is that purchasing cattle isn’t always as simple as handing over payment and walking away.

“People buy and sell cattle every day of the week,” says Mafi, noting that producers know when they need to boost their in-herd numbers in order to balance the grass Mother Nature and good management have provided.

Finding those genetics might be as easy as leafing through the Angus Beef Bulletin  or asking around your area for producers willing to share more about their operation. Whether that means you’re purchasing bulls, sourcing females or simply enjoying good conversation, go visit with those cattlemen who have a system similar to the one you see yourself creating.

Sourcing females whose mature cow size and level of milk production match the forage available means cows have a better shot at breeding back earlier in the breeding season, calving early in the calving season and weaning a calf each year, Johnson says.

“That sounds pretty basic. It’s pretty simplistic, but I think any time we’re looking at replacement heifers, that is fundamental,” Johnson says. “If they do breed early, calve early and wean a calf each year, they will turn into the kind of cows that we get to cull when they’re 10 or 12 years old.”

The animals that fail to calve, don’t match their production environment or have some kind of issue should be culled from production or they will be a drain on profit potential, he explains.

How should producers ensure they’re selecting the right replacements? Johnson believes in selecting only the top end of heifers to develop as replacements. Their mothers should be a good environmental fit because they’re mature females that have already proven their worth in their unique production situation.

“Identifying those earlier-born heifer calves out of the older cows is pretty sage logic to apply to the selection of heifer calves,” Johnson suggests, noting not every producer has the luxury of sourcing replacements from within their own herd. “If we’re not producing those heifers ourselves, there’s a lot of useful information that comes from GeneMax^® Advantage™.”

For more information on GeneMax Advantage and the benefits genomic testing can have in your commercial cow herd, visit www.genemaxangus.com.

All good things in moderation

With so many options available when it comes to purchasing commercial females, Andrews recommends raising cattle you enjoy looking at and want to feed. He cautions against single-trait selection, especially where replacement females are concerned. After all, there’s a fine balance between preference and potentially heading down a bumpy road.

“Don’t chase extremes in any direction,” Andrews says, sharing phenotype ranks high on his list but doesn’t mean everything. “We all want that unicorn. We all want those perfect numbers and cattle that look really good to boot. Understand that’s a hard animal to replicate.”

While balance between phenotype and performance is needed, says Johnson, there’s also a balance among genetic values. For example, he says, most cattlemen love growth and pay weight regardless of the end point they’ve chosen for their calves. Whether selling at weaning, as yearlings or retaining ownership through processing, producers need to balance growth genetics at any of those marketing end points with the mature size of the cow they’re living with 365 days a year.

Johnson says it is easier to take one or two traits to the extreme; however, the best cattle combine a number of things to a high degree, and the ideal animal is seldom the most biologically extreme.

“Think about beef production from a standpoint of dollars generated per acre of pasture as opposed to how much we made per cow,” Johnson summarizes.