In today’s beef buzz, Senior Farm And Ranch Director Ron Hays speaks with Dr. Robert Wells, who joined the King Ranch Institute for Ranch Management last November as an endowed chair, described his new role as “a great experience so far.” He explained that the institute, created through an endowment from the King Ranch to Texas A&M–Kingsville, has a clear mission: “Our mission is to sustain the ranching heritage of our industry, and in order to do that, we have a two-pronged approach.” One side focuses on the education of master’s level students, while the other emphasizes outreach to working producers through continuing education.
Wells elaborated on the outreach: “We do a series of lectureships. We have about 11 different lectureships that we rotate, and we split those roughly five one year, six the next year.” These lectureships are intentionally “very timely in their type and nature.” He emphasized the credentials ranchers can earn: “If you go through four of those lectureships and two of our symposiums that we do annually in November, then we will bestow upon you a Certificate of Advanced Ranch Management.”
The program, Wells said, is designed to be practical and useful: “We look at it as a continuing education program for producers and for ranch managers and ranch owners. They’re high level, but at the same time, we’ve got them designed where we can bring somebody along very quickly, and then when they leave, they have some tools in their pocket that they can take home to use on the ranch immediately.” Ranchers can pick and choose topics that meet their needs. “We’ve got everything from equine management to brush management, grazing management,” he said.
One of the most impactful areas, Wells pointed out, is finance. “We do a cow calf business lectureship, which really dives into the financial side of it, where most producers really need that boning up, so to speak. Because we just don’t teach that in the animal science curriculum. We don’t teach that in a wildlife or range curriculum when you go through. So we give them the tools to understand how to financially analyze their ranch that makes it easy and simple to do.”
Looking to ahead, Wells previewed a new offering: “We’ve got a new one that’s going to come up in January, which will be a ranch nutrition class lectureship. It’ll be a day and a half, and we’re going to touch on basically all things that are on the ranch, from a nutritional standpoint, cows to horses to wildlife as well.”
Ultimately, he tied everything back to the institute’s broader goal: “Our opportunity and our charge is to be able to help ranchers stay on the ranch and to become more successful.”
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
