 Jackie and I knew way back what we were doing was not sustainable. We did a custom farming, custom haying, sheep, cattle operation and I felt like I was 60 years old when I was 25. I knew we couldn't keep doing it. I knew the ranch wasn't making money. I wanted our kids to stay here and be part of the operation and that we couldn't afford to do that if we kept doing the sheep and cattle thing. My wife Jackie and son Brody and daughter-in-law Samantha helped run the operation. Brody and Samantha have four little kids as well, seven on down to one. And we hope to make them a big part of the operation when they get a little older. About 10 years ago we moved into this rotational grazing practice and basically what we did is cross fence the whole ranch into 30-some pastures other than our calving pasture. We have one calving pasture that's about 5,000 acres and we turn our cows in there for the months of April, May and into June and they calve there and then we start our actual rotation. We're moving from pasture to pasture which are section size. We run the Buffalo herd all in one large herd as opposed to splitting them up into smaller groups. We'll hit these pastures hard for a few days. They're only in a pasture 5, 6, 7 days depending on the size of the pasture. We've seen tremendous improvements in the ground by doing that. Before we cross fenced the whole ranch, like I said we have 30-some pastures now and before we did that we essentially had 5 or 6, 7 pastures that were just huge. And what we're seeing now is by cross fencing that and making those animals utilize every bit of the ground, they're utilizing the grasses that they wouldn't in a larger pasture. Buffalo tend to like native ground and warm cool-season grasses and by doing what we did we basically made them cover each pasture and graze all the grass instead of just what they liked. You'll come out of these pastures and after a month they've regrown and you can't hardly tell that they've been grazed. We see warm-season grasses coming in that I haven't seen for years. So I mean we're on to something here. My only regret is that we didn't do this 30 years ago. Before we had the ranch fenced like we do now we essentially had a fall pasture, a summer pasture, a spring pasture and they would just really be intensive on certain areas of ground and they were really working the perimeters of pastures and wanting new ground all the time where when you're moving them every 5, 6 days they're happier. They got fresh water, fresh grass. We don't have near the issues of them breaking out of pastures or anything like that so I think the overall animal health and happiness would be the biggest thing that we've seen. We started going to some holistic range management classes and that really opened up a whole new world to us on what we can achieve with our pasture management. My mom and dad and wife went to several of these classes years and years ago but it was a hard thing to buy into. It didn't make sense. It's not what dad did, it's not what grandpa did, it's that whole idealism of changing your train of thought. One of my favorite pickup lines that I ever remember from one of those classes is if you always do what you've always done you'll always have what you've always had. So just that idea of changing and doing things different and it's worked well for us. Yeah, part of the holistic management is the theory of mob grazing. So like here on the ranch we basically call it a thousand animal units that we move pasture to pasture and it varies from time of year but everything from there, you put a thousand animal units on 500 acres depending on the year, just everything from their feet action on the ground and their urinating and defecating and just the fertilizer and the hoof action that works up that soil and it brings grasses on that otherwise if it wasn't managed that way you see grasses that you wouldn't see if it was managed other ways. One statistic that's pretty interesting is for every 1% of organic matter improvement in the soil will hold a gallon and a half more water. It doesn't take much improvement to make a load of difference. Every section of ground has at least one reservoir dam and five tire tanks. So the wildlife has a tremendous amount of water resources and that's what the main thing lacking here in Hardin County is. We've seen the deer numbers increase, we've seen the bird population increase, the grouse. We're actually seeing some elk moving in through the ranch now, we see them quite regularly so it's a natural thing for them to migrate to grass that's being managed like this because it's like a free smorgasbord for them. It's not every ranching operation that not only can afford to have their kids home but have a tremendous future. So with everything we do, the whole conservation side of it, the development of pastures and water and all the resources, Brody and Samantha have been a big part of it as Jackie has. We couldn't have done it without them, we're very fortunate to have them here. I mean I can't wait until our grandkids are my age and they'll see a tremendous change in this ranch.