Beef Industry Charts

One of the most powerful management tools available to ranchers is the benchmarking his herd's Economic Facts against the average Economic Facts of a set of benchmark herds. This table presents my last six IRM Cost & Return Analyses and the benchmark averages for these six herds. None of these herds had Herd Performance Records.

When you benchmark your herd, you first look for your herd's strengths designated by those Economic Facts where your herd beats the average of the benchmark herds.

Second, you look for those Economic Facts where your herd is beat by the average of the benchmark herds. This, then, identifies some weaknesses in your herd's production and these become your bottleneck(s) to profits. Your management goal is to remove these bottlenecks one at a time. As each bottleneck is removed, your herd's profit goes up.

Then, next year we conduct another IRM Cost & Return Analysis of your herd, and again benchmark your herd against a set of new benchmarks always looking for bottlenecks to profitability. Once again, as one or more bottlenecks are removed, profit again goes up.

This is an annual and continuos process.