Right now cattle prices are at an all-time high. I sold off a lot of the cows I didn't want early because of it, and got a fat paycheck.
People are complaining that you can't make money running cattle anymore. This is nonsense. Anyone can make money with cattle when the prices are high. You can even make money feeding them on a feedlot.
The way to really rake in the dough is to learn how to regenerate your soil through rotational grazing. I'm swimming in grass right now. If I never see another drop of rain I could graze my herd until September, at least, and they would never know what hunger is the entire time. Why? Because my soil is strong. The cattle eat the grass then they leave it alone until it fully recovers. This causes the soil to restore to what it was like back when we had the Great Plains and vast herds of buffalo running around.
This isn't something you learn in a seminar. It takes practice and experience. You have to learn how to "read" the grass and soil, how to tell whether you are giving them enough grass or not enough. You also need to learn how to manage the cattle throughout the year (if you want to do cow-calf). If you want an easy way to get into it all, start off the spring with a bunch of calves. Run them until you run out of grass, then sell them back. Easy money.
The people complaining about the cattle industry don't know what they are talking about. Yes, we are being cheated left and right, but right now, prices are high and everyone is making money.
That will not be true for very long. Eventually, the price of cattle will fall. Eventually, only the guys who know how to make money without buying feed will be able to run cattle. When that time comes, a lot of pasture land will become available for cheap. You should be able to buy worn-out pastures and cows for pennies on the dollar at that time. It's an opportunity that only people who know how to do rotational grazing can take advantage of.
Get ready for it. Learn how to manage a herd. If you can run 10 cows, you can run 100 cows on 10x the acreage, or 1,000 cows on 100x the acreage. The skills are roughly the same.
My son picked Gym teacher (god knows why, he's 8, lol), my wife picked Pilot, but I picked farmer.
I grew up in a rural-ish area, but rural enough that we had horses, goats, chickens, and 4H clubs. My family grew corn, tomatoes, and squash over the season. Not commercially, but we ate well in the late summer. We also had chickens, so plenty of eggs year round.
Anyway, I'm not sure I'd do cattle. I know ranching is a "man's" profession, but I wouldn't get tired of growing corn or other crops. I think it's cool that you actually are a farmer dude. I miss the country. I live in a megacity now and sometimes I drive out to my old childhood neighborhood and just take in the silence and sound of the evening. The setting sun as the insects buzz, into the night when the crickets start chirping. The smell of horses and manure, the smell of the dusty hay barn, chickens clucking as they roost for the night. I miss it so much.