IN HER ELEMENT, Tiziana Prada McArthur has fulfilled a childhood dream of operating her family's Argentine ranches. She combines traditional methods with modern technology, including computer software for which she also serves as a marketing specialist.

Young Argentine Woman's Dream
To Run Family Ranch Came True

By Colleen Schreiber

ENTRE RIOS, Argentina — Tiziana Prada McArthur aspired to run her family's ranching interests when she was a young girl. Despite obstacles and challenges, she's doing just that today.

When Prada was a girl, she dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. Her love of animals, particularly horses, sparked that dream, she says. Her father purchased their first ranch property when she was only five and she fell in love with the country way of life.

"My family would come to the ranch every other weekend. My parents would pick us up from school and we would change clothes in the car," Prada recalls. Back then the roads and cars weren't nearly as modern as they are today, and it took most of the night to make the six-hour trek.

"The ranch was my place," Prada says. "I never wanted to go back to the city when the weekend was over."

Her love of animals and the ranching way of life has grown and matured over the years.

Prada began competing in horse jumping competitions when she was 10. She rode every day, either training or competing. While she was still in high school she took an active role in the ranching operation, working on the ranch during her summer breaks.

"Before that I would just come down to the ranch and dash about on my horse. I never paid attention to what was going on," Prada says. "I worked with the gauchos every day. I would get up at 5 a.m. and would be waiting for them to come by and get me. I loved it."

When it came time to go to college and choose a career, she decided to study agricultural engineering, a degree program, Prada says, similar to animal production.

"If I'm in the city for more than two to three weeks at a time, I begin to despair. I have to get out in the country and connect myself. You see a cycle of life here. It's beautiful and I appreciate that beauty," she remarks.

Her other love is the people she finds in these rural and often remote settings.

"They're so different from the people I am in contact with in the city."

The gauchos, she says, showed her a way of life. The first thing she learned was how to gather the cattle out of the brush. Because the livestock had to be dipped every 20 days, learning how to gather in an efficient manner is critical. There's a unique whistle that the gauchos use when driving the cattle, and that too she learned.

"There's always that cow in every bunch that stays stuck to the ground. The bulls are terrible too," Prada says, "but the gauchos' system works fairly well."

An agricultural engineering degree is a five-year program which requires students in their first year to take classes like botany, animal anatomy, physics, chemistry, animal physiology, plant physiology, climatology, and bovine, swine and poultry production. Upon completion, students are qualified for a variety of agricultural job opportunities.

While in college, Prada continued to spend a great deal of time at the ranches. Upon graduating, however, she worked for four months in Brazil. Today Prada is the Latin American marketing specialist for CattlePro, a herd inventory computer program.

She continues to manage the family ranching interests as well. Her father bought Campo Huguito, a ranch to the south of Buenos Aires, about 15 years ago but they've had San Jose de Feliciano in Entre Rios for 20 years.

Land in and around Bahia Blanca sells for $700 to $800 per hectare. Most of this land, Prada says, is irrigated. Dryland sells for $500 to $600. Land in the Province of Entre Rios two years ago was selling for about $250 per hectare. Today that same land, Prada says, would bring $600 to $700. Land values in the north have sky-rocketed because of foreign investment in the timber industry. It is said that the trees grow much faster than in most other places in the world.

Average annual rainfall on the ranch in Entre Rios is between 800 and 1000 millimeters, 31.5-39.4 inches. Rains come mainly during the summer and then again in the fall. For the last couple of years, however, rain has been sparse. Because of that, Prada has reduced her cow numbers from 300 to 200 head, and the few replacements she's kept in recent years are kept at Bahia Blanca.

In a traditional kind of operation, Prada says it takes 300 cows to make a viable economic enterprise. The ranch is in the margin right now.

Prada is concerned about being a good steward of the land and at the same time being efficient and innovative.

"You learn to do the best you can without robbing the land," she says.

Prada runs a cow-calf operation on their Entre Rios ranch. At Bahia Blanca it's a stocker operation on irrigated alfalfa fields. Her goal is to incorporate improved pasture on the ranch up north for fattening cull cows prior to taking them to market and also for conditioning heifers. Ideally, she wants heifers to be able to breed between 13 and 15 months of age.

Generally, Prada runs about 1.2 animals per hectare on native pasture. On improved grasses, stocking rates jump to two to three animals per hectare.

Brush clearing is a slow process because the clearing at the north ranch is all done manually. The brush is cut by hand and then a chain and a team of horses is used to uproot the larger brush. It took a good part of five months to clear 25 hectares (61 acres).

Down south, farming is done in the conventional manner. Wheat and oat stubble is grazed after harvest, and livestock are only run on the alfalfa fields during the day. At night they're moved to the wheat and oat fields, and the following morning around 11 a.m. they go back on the alfalfa. Such a system, Prada says, keeps the animals from bloating on the alfalfa.

Early weaning has become popular in recent years and Prada has had positive results using the practice. Early weaning, she says, is a good practice to use with first calf-heifers, cows in poor body condition and late calving cows.

Calves are weaned at 60 to 90 days of age, weighing between 70 to 100 kilograms. Ten days before weaning, the calves are given their appropriate shots and implanted. They're tagged, weighed, and all the information is loaded into a software program.

Ten days after the calves receive their shots they're weaned and shipped the 1200 kilometers (approximately 750 miles) south to Bahia Blanca. Shipping costs run about $1000 a truck, and Prada can send 60 animals at a time.

On arrival they're unloaded into corrals where they are fed a ration consisting of a pre-manufactured feed with 18 percent crude protein with coccidiostat, good quality alfalfa hay and fresh water.

On day two the calves are dewormed and given a three-way vaccine for clostridium as well as a polivitaminic shot. The calves stay in the corrals for 10 days. Each day their feed intake increases, and by the 10th day their daily intake is around two kilograms of feed per head.

The animals are monitored closely to insure they're eating and drinking properly. Calves that have trouble adapting are penned separately and given special attention.

After the 10th day they're taken to improved pasture, either alfalfa, brome or orchardgrass. They continue to receive supplemental feed and hay once a day for the following week. At the end of those 10 days, the animals are taken off the hay and fed only a 16 percent crude protein ration until they reach 100 kilograms or 220 pounds. From then on they graze only on improved pasture.

Fields are divided into small pastures with electric fence. To insure the calves are always feeding on top quality forage, they are rotated every six to eight days depending on the growth rate of the pasture.

The clue to success, Prada says, is the gaucho.

"If he does a good job and really observes and takes care of the calves during this stage, then 75 percent of your battle is won," she says.

The gaucho in return is rewarded with 10 percent of the gross sale when the calves go to market.

Prada has been pleased with the results thus far.

"Our cows are in better shape, they breed faster and the calves did great," she says.

She made a comparison between early weaned calves and those weaned at six months of age, and says the difference was incredible. Early weaned calves weighed 150 pounds more at the time of sale. She hopes to eventually use this practice with the calves up north so they don't have to be transported south.

Prada runs a spring calving program. Calving begins in July and usually finishes up in October. In the past, bulls were run year-round, but in the last couple of years Prada has made a concerted effort to set a confined calving period. Currently, bulls go in around the 15th of October for three or four months. She uses a combination of Angus, Brangus and Hereford bulls.

The conception rate averages about 85 percent, excluding heifers. Actual calving percentage, she admits, is much lower, usually around 65 percent.

The calves go to market off alfalfa fields weighing 400

to 420 kilograms, or 880 to 924 pounds. Heifers usually weigh 320 to 350 kilograms, or 704-770 pounds.

Prada isn't against raising grain-fed beef, but she says the only time it works is when grain prices are low.

"We're very good with our grasses," Prada says. "And They’re very cheap feed."

Like others, Prada believes there will be more producers who finish their livestock for the last 60 days on grain, but she doesn't expect the feedlot industry to grow like it has in the U.S.

The Argentine beef industry, Prada says, is currently working on developing a futures market as a risk management tool, but completion is still a ways off.