6 | R.A. Brown Ranch | 03.08.17
03.08.17 | R.A. Brown Ranch | 7
2. Our long time friends and customers in Vernon TX, Ter-
ry Spears, Michael White and Gene White, have set a new
record with 61 steers and heifers grading 100% Choice or
better and 56% PRIME that earned them over $400 per head
in premiums. That is really impressive since the industry av-
erage is only 5.5% Prime. This marks the 12th year that we
have helped breed their herd to our top young sires as a
proving ground for their carcass merit while simultaneous-
ly producing top-quality replacement females for their herd.
One of those prime steers this year was a yield grade 1.6
and the last group harvested had a dressing percent or hot
yield of 66.9% compared to the industry average of 64%.
They just informed us that they plan to double the num-
ber of cows we will AI for them next year.
A big thanks to Dale Moore & Cattleman’s Choice Feed-
yard in Gage, OK for the great job they do of feeding and
marketing these cattle. He says, “It is sure easier to sell
cattle like this!”
Let us know if you would like to use semen on some of
our top bulls and we will be glad to help you
WHATS GOING ON?
1
2
1. Thanks BEEF! “Congratulations! BEEF
magazine has published our annual list of
the top 100 seedstock operations and you’re
included in it. Your dedication to excellence
has helped propel you to elite status in a dy-
namic business. Producers from throughout
the country and the world utilize your genet-
ics as the foundation to produce outstanding
beef.”
in-shape athlete that is developed right
and ready to go to work.
Kelli and I are excited to be
working more in Oklahoma. We live just
over an hour south of the Red River.
Kelli is a graduate of OSU with a degree
in Ag Economics. We have been to the
OCA conventions and meetings for sev-
eral years and look forward to contin-
ued involvement.
We are blessed with an amazing
family, a great team& fantastic custom-
ers butmost of allwith an awesome God.
The past few years have shown us many
changes in our lives. Mom and Dad lead
us through a generational transfer from
the 4th to the 5th generation of the R.A.
Brown Ranch to best keep the ranch in
the family and the family in the ranch.
Mom and Dad continue to enjoy good
health and are enjoying watching each
of us pursue our dreams as we follow
the Godly example they have so won-
derfully shared with us as they continue
to live out their dreams. With the help of
Dr. Bob Hough, we are starting the pro-
cess of nominating Mom and Dad for
the highest honor given by the livestock
industry, to be selected for Saddle and
Sirloin Portrait Gallery. We welcome
anyone who would like to write a letter
of support to accompany the applica-
tion.
Kelli, Tucker, Lanham and I
were all blessed this past year in many
ways and I want to share a few of those.
Our youngest son Lanham is in
his 2nd year studying Animal Science at
Texas Tech where he earned a spot on
the Ranch Horse Team again. He loves
training and showing horses in ranch
events and he has done well. In the
last year he has won the Reserve World
Championship in the AQHA World
Show Ranch Horse Versatility Cowboy
Class, won the Intercollegiate Ameri-
can Stock Horse Assoc. National Cham-
pionship in the Non-Pro Ltd., won the
Colorado State Fair in the NRCHA Fu-
turity and the Ranch Horse Versatility
and placed 3rd in Non-Pro at the
Snaffle Bit Futurity in Reno,
NV. He’s excited to return
to the AQHA World Show
in Ranch Horse Versatil-
ity and Ranching Heri-
tage Challenge towards
the end of March.
Tucker has had
quite a year too. He
served as Student Body
President
at
Lubbock
Christian University where
he graduated with honors last
May. Last summer he worked on a va-
riety of ranchers, farms and feedyards
throughout TX, OK, NM and KS. Nowhe
is learning a lot at the TCU Ranch Man-
agement Program in Fort Worth that he
will finish in May. The biggest news of
all is that Tucker popped the question to
KarleyWells, who he has dated for three
years, and they will be getting married
at the ranch in June.
My dear Kelli continues to pur-
sue her love for capturing family and
ranch life through the lens of a cam-
era. She has now had her photography
published in Western Horseman Maga-
zine with a 2 page spread and a six page
spread and story about her work in the
debut edition of the Ranch Horse Jour-
nal and most recently in Cowboys and
Indians Magazine. She was the guest
artist with 40 of her photographs on
display at the Chisholm Trail Heritage
Center in Duncan Oklahoma last sum-
mer which is a great place that we en-
courage you to see. They host 25,000
visitors each year. We also had a blast
hosting our first Stoecklein Photogra-
phy School here at the ranch and are
planning another one for this spring.
We were also honored to work with the
TX Beef Council as they put together
a new video promoting beef and “Beef
Loving Texans.” You can see it on our
website.
Here at the ranch, we have been
blessed with a fabulous couple of years
where we have received great
rains. The tanks are full and
the grass is amazing. We
give thanks to God for
his rejuvenation of His
creation with new life of
all kinds from both the
plant and animal king-
doms. We have a fantas-
tic team to work with in
the daily operations on
our ranch with Jack, Jerry,
Ty, Ryan, Kat, Tracy, Casey
and Shelby in TX Plus Benji, Lori,
Kevin, Beard, Clay and Pete here in OK.
We have grown our outstanding Coop-
erator team to help provide the quality
and quantity of bulls that you demand.
There are three new things
that we are very excited about. 1) We
are feed efficiency testing every bull we
sell and every replacement female go-
ing back into our herd. We believe this
is the next great frontier in the cattle
business. We are finding cattle that gain
with the very best, while eating only half
the amount of feed compared to their
contemporaries. We are confident that
we can save you lots of money with this
new trait, but we have to measure it to
manage it. Let us do the hard work and
you can benefit from these more ef-
ficient genetics. 2) We are DNA testing
every bull in our sale & every replace-
ment female going into our herd to give
56% PRIME & over $400 per head in PREMIUMS
Donnel l
you maximum accuracy of every EPD. It
adds to the reliability and predictabil-
ity of the EPDs, equivalent to a bull’s
first calf crop. 3) We have invested in the
$Profit Team and are using their ser-
vices to provide us with an entirely new
genetic evaluation. It is like getting a
2nd opinion from a doctor. We are using
this data to evaluate all of our cattle on
the same base and therefore be able to
compare the feed efficiency genetics of
all the cattle, in all of the breeds of our
program. $Profit is the best tool we have
found to evaluate the overall profitabil-
ity of our cattle. All of these are invest-
ments that we have made in order to set
our program apart from other genetic
providers in our effort to produce cattle
that reliably make you the most money.
We have several customers sell-
ing commercial females in the sale again
this year and they will sell between the
Black and Red Angus bulls about mid
day. We are also selling 20 Registered
Red Angus bred females from our herd
and the B&L herd.
We are blessed to have you as
friends and customers and give thanks
for the opportunity to pursue our pas-
sion of raising top quality cattle that
increase your profitability and sustain-
ability. You can look at videos of all the
animals on our website. Whether you
need anything or not, we hope you will
come join us and many of our friends to
eat and enjoy great fellowship on Tues-
day evening andWednesday. We hope to
see you here.
Sincerely,
Donnell Brown
