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Farm4Profit Podcast

Tucker Brown : How Their Ranch has Survived 130 Years

26 Mar 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the history of R.A. Brown Ranch and its survival strategies?

0.031 - 11.363 Tanner Winterhof

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81.79 - 100.761 Tucker Brown

We do AI, we do embryo transfer, we do a ton of that. And so because of that, we're investing more. We're selling two-year-old bulls, 18 months old. They're on a no corn diet. And so they're ready to go out to the pasture. They're not corn fat and they're ready to work, right? With 800 bulls, we have the opportunity to get the calving ease, to get the growth.

Chapter 2: How have previous generations influenced the ranch's success?

407.405 - 416.863 Tanner Winterhof

Yeah. Oh, God. Texas. Like, we got laid over. So what's your earliest memory doing something on the ranch?

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417.434 - 444.167 Tucker Brown

Oh, earliest memory. Most of my earliest memories tend to be horseback with my dad or going fishing with my granddad or feeding mares with my granddad. That's where most of my earliest memories come from, tend to be there. I'm definitely more on the cattle side, but most of my memories tend to have some kind of horse related to it. And my granddad was a big fisherman.

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444.468 - 466.842 Tucker Brown

He loved fishing more than anything. And so the two things I always did with my granddad were fish or feed mares. And those were pretty special memories. What kind of fishing? Bass fishing. Bass. That's his favorite. Yeah. So we don't have any underground water at the ranch. We fully rely on catching rainwater. And so we call them tanks. Others call them ponds. We have them all around the ranch.

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466.882 - 482.068 Tucker Brown

And so my granddad for years would stock those. We believe in crossbreeding cattle and fish. So he would crossbreed some different strands of largemouth bass. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

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482.707 - 491.119 Unknown

So if you were horses way young, did, uh, uh, Texas rodeo comes to mind. Did you get into any ranch rodeo or into anything, uh, uh, collegiate or.

491.76 - 515.014 Tucker Brown

I did. I didn't on the collegiate side. Um, I did do, I did do a little bit of rodeo growing up and mostly it was on the, you know, junior rodeo circuit, I guess is what you'd call it. But, uh, There are some really talented rodeo cowboys around our area. Wesley Thorpe's a three-time gold buckle winner at the NFR as a healer. And I get to hold it over him that I beat him.

515.655 - 519.663 Tucker Brown

We were 12, but I beat him. And I like to hold that over it.

519.703 - 523.53 Tanner Winterhof

Some people peak earlier than others. Yeah, you're right.

523.51 - 548.86 Tucker Brown

But in any small town, you know, you have to be involved in everything for the town to work. Drive, yep. And so, you know, once Junior High came around and then started playing all the sports and doing rodeo, and it was kind of like you had to pick which one you want to do. And we picked—we didn't pick rodeo. We love rodeo, but we didn't pick rodeo. I'm on the ranch rodeo team now, and—

Chapter 3: What does a successful generational transition in ranching look like?

883.074 - 900.541 Tanner Winterhof

Hey, that's hustling right there. Eventually, they got caught up to, but like, yeah, when you're all virtual. Yeah. Speaking of hustling, how... You do broadcasting for sports. You've got your social media and the content creation side, and you're on the ranch. It sounds like two and a half full-time jobs.

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901.102 - 922.276 Tucker Brown

Boy, yeah, it is. And I like it that way. My dad or my grandmother growing up, I love my grandmother to death, Peggy Brown. She's amazing. She... What I always tell my dad and then my dad passed it down to me is like, hey, the devil's playground is idle hands and you will not have idle hands around here. So and that's that's kind of where we we stay busy and we work.

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922.336 - 942.06 Tucker Brown

And one of the things about coming back to the ranch is that. You can come back in two ways. You either come back as an employee of the ranch if there's a job open and you're the man for the job, or you can come back and grow the business, bring something back that will be able to bring more income to grow the ranch rather than split it up again.

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942.621 - 948.932 Unknown

Corey, could you imagine having 18 siblings or relatives in your farm? Are they all involved?

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949.604 - 977.079 Tucker Brown

Of the 17, 15 are quite involved. Now we're not all on the same ranch now. We did a generational transfer in 2013 from my granddad to my dad and his three siblings. And that was summer in the panhandle, summer around Throckmorton. And so we each kind of manage our own. That was the best way we felt that we could keep the ranch moving. We saw a lot of people, or they did.

977.159 - 979.125 Tucker Brown

It's really cool what they did. I wasn't a part of it.

979.365 - 983.577 Tanner Winterhof

I want to hear the story because we talk about succession planning all the time. So keep going. I love this.

983.945 - 1004.001 Tucker Brown

Yeah, they're trying to figure out how can we keep the ranch and the family and the family and the ranch. And we saw a lot of ranches at that time that Grandpa was dying. They didn't have a plan. The family didn't know. The communication wasn't there. There was lots of fighting going on, and it tore the ranch and the family apart. And we loved the idea of keeping the ranch all together.

1004.041 - 1021.174 Tucker Brown

But then we had four siblings who wanted to go four different directions. And so what they were afraid of is that we wouldn't go anywhere because we would have no chief. And if we selected a chief, that it wouldn't be good because three don't want to go that direction. My daddy's the only one that wanted to do the seed stock side.

Chapter 4: How do seedstock genetics and data-driven decisions enhance profitability?

1478.77 - 1488.865 Tucker Brown

So ever since then, like, even though I am reaching the people in the cities, as I'm reaching them, I'm reaching our bull customers and people in agriculture along the way is what I've seen.

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1489.52 - 1494.545 Tanner Winterhof

What are the genetics that you got going? What breed and what are you breeding for?

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1494.845 - 1518.868 Tucker Brown

Black Angus, Red Angus, and Sim Angus are three. Those are the ones that we mostly do. The Black and Red Angus would be like our main. That's what we sell the most of. We sell about 800 a year. 800 bulls? 800 bulls a year. And we have a phenomenal program with cooperators all across the country. And most of, I mean, of course, we have cattle of our own and bulls of our own that we sell, but...

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1518.848 - 1544.419 Tucker Brown

What we do is if you had the cattle and you were the – we typically try to find the right person that has the cattle rather than the right cattle and then maybe not the right person. But whenever we can add doctors, lawyers, nutritionists, Feed salesmen, mineral salesmen, coal miners, like all of these different types of people onto our team. We have our network.

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1544.439 - 1555.302 Tucker Brown

We have a lot of value in our network, or we see a lot of value. And so we just have so many people to ask these questions to that are in West Virginia, Florida, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Louisiana. Yeah.

1555.282 - 1567.992 Unknown

In the seed stock that you're selling, do you guys breed for a certain genetic disposition, calving ease, milk score? Are you gainability six pounds a day? I mean, who are your customers and what kind of cattle are you breeding?

1568.09 - 1587.92 Tucker Brown

Yeah, a lot of our customers tend to be the ones that are willing to invest more because they're keeping their calves longer. That's been the case. We do AI. We do embryo transfer. We do a ton of that. And so because of that, we're investing more. We're selling two-year-old bulls, 18 months old. They're on a no-corn diet, and so they're ready to go out to the pasture.

1587.96 - 1604.493 Tucker Brown

They're not corn fat, and they're ready to work, right? With 800 bulls, we have the opportunity to get the calving ease, to get the growth, to And then to get some that are just that awesome combination of marbling, motherability, fertility, and that's what we're shooting for, right? Got it.

1604.693 - 1619.089 Tucker Brown

Never have the perfect cow, but with 800 of them, we have that opportunity to have a group of really high cavities bulls and a group of terminal growth bulls in each of those breeds. But we do love...

Chapter 5: What modern techniques like DNA and embryo transfer are used in ranching?

2035.643 - 2053.222 Tucker Brown

If we were on an ATV or a bike or... And the way that our... registered cows are just so docile, they would look at those things and stay under the tree that we wouldn't be able to get to. And so being horseback, it works pretty good.

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2053.863 - 2054.886 Unknown

What's your favorite color horse?

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2055.828 - 2074.043 Tucker Brown

I like gray horses. I get that from my granddad. Yeah, I get a gray horse. I've got two gray horses right now that I love, and I'm even selling one of my gray horses for the first time on March 10th. We have a horse sale and bull sale, and Trump is his name. I get quite a bit of a social media flack for that.

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2074.463 - 2092.208 Unknown

Yeah. It's weird how my wife, she has a color that she wants, and all the girls want buckskins, and some are chestnuts, and so I had to learn all the colors on the orders for sure. But, Corey, when your daughters want one, you're going to be all over the house. La, la, la, la, la.

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2092.408 - 2097.495 Tanner Winterhof

In Iowa, they just cost money. Yes, they do. It sounds like you're actually making them make money.

2097.728 - 2108.238 Tucker Brown

Well, that's been a new thing. I mean, that goes back to that Yellowstone trend, really, because before it was a cost and it was an investment for us to do our job. But now we're able to make that a profit center.

2108.358 - 2112.002 Unknown

Do you guys have one of your 17 that's a horse farrier or do you hire that out?

2112.162 - 2125.575 Tucker Brown

We hire that out. We used to try to do all of that our own. But what we found is that if we stay in our lane and do what we do best, then we can bring in other experts that do that job extremely well and we can do what we do best.

2125.555 - 2139.004 Unknown

That's one thing you don't see in our farm stores where I'm from in Montana. Every time we go there, there's just shoes and farrier equipment everywhere and then clothing. In Iowa, there's a whole lot more clothing and sprayers, et cetera, et cetera, at the farm stores.

Chapter 6: How are over 1,000 registered cows managed across multiple breeds?

2545.043 - 2557.156 Tanner Winterhof

I think the farmer way is normally I got to do everything myself, but there's a little bit of a freedom when you know that you can just give that. They are much better at it and they're going to make Give me more time and make me more money.

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2557.477 - 2562.065 Unknown

I think it until I was 40 before I thought that I couldn't do it all myself. And then I just started hiring people.

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2562.085 - 2577.994 Tanner Winterhof

I mean, he built his own house and shop and whatever, you know, say handyman. Don't need nobody. No. Which I did it too. I mean, shoot, when you don't have money, you just kind of, I think that's maybe what it was is now that I have more money. Now I just, I'll just YouTube this. I'll just, yeah.

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2577.974 - 2597.636 Tucker Brown

And there is a lot of that of like, where is our time most valuably spent? And that's been a changing thing for me. I've held every position on the ranch from feed manager to foreman to cow manager to bull manager. And now I'm actually taking less of those roles and more into the marketing role because that's where I can be the most valuable.

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2599.057 - 2607.744 Tanner Winterhof

Here's a clip for Cody. When's the best time to calve? Uh-oh. It depends. It depends. When do you guys like to calve?

2608.044 - 2609.867 Tucker Brown

We like to calve in January, February, March.

2609.967 - 2610.908 Tanner Winterhof

There you go. I like it.

2611.509 - 2627.59 Tucker Brown

That's when we like to calve. It's in Texas. We rarely have storms except for last week. Yeah. We had three days where it was really bad weather for calves, and I'm willing to work those three days to stay away from the extreme heat that those calves would be born in if we did three months later.

2628.667 - 2641.625 Tanner Winterhof

Yeah, the folks that were giving Cody a bunch of crap weren't necessarily talking Texas, but he's hoping that March is terrible weather in Iowa. All those folks get to eat crow, and we got to do a follow-up.

Chapter 7: What sustainable practices are implemented in pasture management?

2818.848 - 2819.409 Tanner Winterhof

Yeah.

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2819.429 - 2824.837 Unknown

Right? He's a smart man. He's a smart man. We have education and entertainment.

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2825.358 - 2829.885 Tanner Winterhof

There you go. Together. That's kind of neat. And then you're also on the radio?

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2831.467 - 2840.461 Tucker Brown

I'm much less on the radio now. The only game I called this year was the state championships in Cowboy Stadium, which if I could do one, that was it.

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2840.481 - 2842.965 Unknown

That's good. What's your sign?

2843.3 - 2843.761 Tucker Brown

My son.

2843.781 - 2847.508 Unknown

Like K-V-R-P-Q-X-R-92.5. Oh, that's kind of weird.

2847.528 - 2850.875 Tucker Brown

It is K-V-R-P. Thanks for listening to K-V-R-P-97.1.

2850.895 - 2861.836 Tanner Winterhof

Don't give him any credit for that. Is it on there? That's funny. Do you have a radio name? I don't. I do need one. Like Chuck Wagon or something. Chuck Wagon.

Chapter 8: How does social media and storytelling bridge the gap between consumers and ranchers?

3215.029 - 3224.982 Tanner Winterhof

Well, we're unfortunately out of time. It's my fault for scheduling things way too close, but I've had a good time so far. Hey, me too. Did we miss anything that we should have shared?

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3225.232 - 3226.894 Tucker Brown

Oh, I don't know.

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3226.914 - 3228.235 Tanner Winterhof

People can hire you to come talk, right?

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3228.596 - 3238.366 Tucker Brown

Yeah, I do speak all across the country. It's a blast. You know, the more we can tell our story from our side. I mean, like I said, when the truth is told, Ag wins. And so I'm just trying to tell the truth.

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3238.506 - 3241.389 Unknown

So do you have a Beth Dutton at home that tells the world how to?

3242.511 - 3242.951 Tucker Brown

Not quite.

3243.692 - 3244.012 Unknown

Okay.

3244.032 - 3252.201 Tucker Brown

My wife, shout out to my wife. You're the best. All right. I get to go do all these things and three girls. And I mean, that's, I love telling the story. I just had a lot of fun with it.

3252.265 - 3259.26 Tanner Winterhof

It is fun being a girl, Dad. You do need to swing over to the Ranch Bot booth. Yeah, it's cool. Get your girls a band-aid.

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