The Nebraska Ranch Practicum: A Holistic Approach to Beef and Forage Systems

Initiated in 1999, the Nebraska Ranch Practicum continues today with the goal to strengthen beef cattle operations by providing hands-on learning experiences and direct participation in beef systems. The primary objectives are to improve decision-making skills, enhance stewardship of natural resources, and improve critical evaluation skills of alternative production enterprises. The Practicum is taught by an interdisciplinary team for 8 days over an 8-month period. The hands-on teaching enables students to actively participate and witness outcomes of management decisions from holistic beef systems, including reproductive management, calving and weaning date decisions, heifer development, yearling and calf-fed production systems, and cull cow management and marketing. Additions to the practicum over time have focused on biosecurity, wildlife and pest management, and marketing concepts in a systems-based approach. The learning experience has provided an opportunity to create a production database covering 15 yr from the practicum cow herd. The database includes precipitation records, nutrient content of grazed diets, cow and calf performance traits, and yearling gain. Students critically analyze individual production components in a systems approach and applied this approach to their unique operation. An identical pre- and post-test revealed participants increased their working knowledge of holistic systems. In 17 years, over 600 individuals from 13 states have participated. Course attendees include producers (73%), graduate students (11%), allied industry (8%), extension (5%), and veterinarians (3%). Collectively, participants reported direct impacts on over 290,000 cattle, 3.8 million acres of land with an average of 740 beef animals/ranch and a $15,000 impact/ranch for a total direct impact of $3.4 million. Participants reported they have extended information received from the Practicum to more than 19,000 people, thereby influencing over 1.6 million cattle and nearly 8 million acres. The Nebraska Ranch Practicum indirectly impacted over $6 million to the beef industry.