For most people, the new year brings new year’s resolutions. I stopped doing those many years ago because I know myself well enough to know that those resolutions will be long forgotten by February. Although we might not set resolutions for ourselves, perhaps we should set some obtainable goals for our cattle operation.

Length of Calving Season

Many producers in eastern Oklahoma do not have a defined calving season and the majority of those who do will have a 90-120 day calving season. Ideally the calving season would only be about 45 days long. By shortening the calving season, you are increasing the uniformity of your calf crop and decreasing the production cost per pound of weaned calf. This goal may not be obtainable in one year, but any decrease in calving season this year will only help with meeting the end goal next year. A great resource on calving season is OSU Master Cattleman Chapter “Choosing a Calving Season”. Another tool to use is estrous synchronization and tools for that can be found at Beef Reproduction Task Force.

Forage Production

Set a goal to decrease the number of days that you have to provide hay to your cows. While most of our forages are in dormancy, it is a great time to think of a strategy for forage production in the coming year. The first step is to work through a forage budget to determine how much forage you will need. The OSU Factsheet PSS-2584 “Forage-Budgeting Guidelines”. If you determine that you will be short on forage, then getting your soil tested will increase the effectiveness of your fertility strategy. OSU Factsheet PSS-2207 “How to Get a Good Soil Sample” will advise you how to obtain a good soil test for analysis. For all grazing, stockpiling forages is highly recommended to decrease the number of haying days. OSU Factsheet PSS-2591 ”Bermudagrass Pasture Management” has a section that covers stockpiling bermudagrass.

Herd Genetics

Increasing the quality of your cattle should always be a goal, but perhaps 2026 is the year where we can afford to step up our genetics game. Either through artificial insemination or through buying more genetically superior bulls we can improve the genetic potential of our calves and future breeding animals. Using Expected Progeny Differences (EPDs) is a great way to select the breeding animals that can impact your goals the most. OSU Factsheets AFS-3162 “EPD: Part IV, Use of EPDs”, AFS- 3169 “Understanding EPD Accuracies” and AFS-3172 “Calculating Across-Breed EPDs” are great resources to get a better understanding of EPDs.

Records

Of course none of these improvements mean anything without having records to document your improvements. Make it a goal to either start taking great records or keeping up with the records you have. Whether your records are pen and paper or on the computer, some records are better than no records. OSU Factsheet CR-3279 “Cow-Calf Production Record Software” covers the options of many different software programs that are made for cattle production records.

I’m confident that 2026 will be a great year for all of us, but I just hope it doesn’t go by nearly as fast as 2025 has gone. So set some goals for your operation for the coming year and ask your OSU Extension Office how we can help you obtain those goals.