Ranch To Rail Entries Decline;
Program May Be In Final Year

BUSHLAND, Texas — Texas A&M University's Ranch to Rail program may be a victim of its own success.

"We've had 1700 ranches go through the Ranch to Rail program in a seven-year period," says Dr. John McNeil of Texas A&M, who helped start the program and now coordinates it.

Standing in the processing shed as the cattle are run through the chute here at the Texas Agricultural Extension Service and U.S. Department of Agriculture Research Center west of Amarillo, McNeil studies the cattle going into this year's Ranch to Rail North program.

"I'll have to analyze the data, but watching them come in, they look real good," McNeil says.

Last year, about 1000 head were consigned to the North program and about 800 to the South.

"Our numbers are going to be down this year for a lot of reasons," McNeil says.

Because of the summer drouth that ravaged the state, many ranchers shipped their cattle early. Many of the state's leading cattlemen have already sent cattle from their herds through the program several times and have learned some valuable lessons about their operations.

"Some people learned a lot of things," McNeil grins.

McNeil says the price of cattle has also taken its toll on the numbers in the program.

"I think the biggest thing is the price," he says. "Cattle lost money last year, and it doesn't look like they'll do any better this year. It won't pencil out too good this year."

But some cattlemen still want to learn more about their cattle and their herds, he adds, enough to provide decent numbers.

"We're going to have about 600 in each location," McNeil predicts. "There's about 1200 total."

As in recent years, the cattle which were received in mid-October will be feed either at Hondo Creek Feedyard near Corpus Christi for the Ranch to Rail South program or at Randall County Feedyard between Amarillo and Canyon in the Texas Panhandle for the Ranch to Rail North program.

"We have people from Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas," McNeil says.

However, he adds, "This may be the last year for Ranch to Rail."

While the program has given researchers an immense database and provided the industry with a working laboratory, it takes a lot of work, Extension officials admit.

In the past, cattle from a variety of other states were shipped in to participate in the program. Many of those states are now conducting their own Ranch to Rail programs.

Also, McNeil points out, a lot of feedyards are tracking information on the cattle they feed for customers much the way Ranch to Rail has. In other instances, ranchers, feeders and packers have formed alliances to share information that can be returned from the packing plant to the cow-calf operator.

"A lot of people are doing their own," McNeil says. "A number of feedyards have similar programs."

McNeil says they have referred some ranchers who have shown an interest in the Ranch to Rail program to those feedyards because the A&M program didn't fit the timeframes for their cattle.

"It's been worth it for us," McNeil says. "There have been some spinoff things like the health program. We've kind of standardized it."

The industry has benefited from the program, he says, but those who have benefited the most are those who paid attention to what the numbers on the reports of their cattle showed them and were able to make changes in their operations and improve them. Often, that meant several years of adjustments. A few ranchers have had cattle in the program each year, tracking the changes in their herds.

"Some of them are just now starting to reap the benefit of what they've learned," McNeil says.

The program, devised at the beginning of the decade, takes cattle from individual herds, feeds them in commercial yards and sells them as they become ready for market. Some will sell in March; some will be on feed until May. But the key to the program is the information that goes back to the rancher and the overall report that is published showing the cattle's performance in the feedyard and quality of the carcass.

The Ranch to Rail program was one of the first of its kind to provide the producer with that information. That information is now more commonly passed back up the production chain to improve the quality of the product.

McNeil says this year may be the end of the Ranch to Rail program, but it more likely will be the end of the beginning of the information age in the cattle business.