For commercial ranchers to prosper during good times and bad, they must know how their operations are performing from both a production and a financial standpoint.

To assist ranchers in determining these numbers as well as other performance measures, the Texas AgriLife Extension Service is offering four Beef Cow-calf Standardized Performance Analysis (SPA) Workshops.

The dates, times, and locations are:

• April 20, 2010, 8:30 a.m., at the Young County Arena in Graham, Texas;

• May 5, 2010, 8:30 a.m., at the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center near Vernon, Texas;

• May 20, 2010, 8:30 a.m., at the Nolan County AgriLife Extension Office in Sweetwater, Texas; and

• June 8, 2010, 8:30 a.m., at the Brown County AgriLife Extension Office in Brownwood, Texas.

These are hands-on workshops where ranchers will be assisted in completing their own analyses. SPA provides ranchers an opportunity to analyze their ranch operations from both a production and a financial side. SPA facilitates the comparison of an operation's performance between years, producers, production regions, and production systems. Completed ranch data will be compared to summary data from more than 200 herds in Texas. SPA is intended to be used as an annual tool by the cow-calf producer.

Workshops are intensive so ranchers can complete the analysis for the 2009 calf crop. Registered participants will be sent forms to organize data before the conference. Confidentiality of the producer’s data will be maintained. Individual conferences will be held with producers and each ranch will be provided an assistant and a computer. It is important to register early so you can be advised on how to organize your data for the SPA analysis.

Registration fee is $50 per ranch and includes software, educational materials, lunch and refreshments. Interested persons can obtain additional information or register by contacting Stan Bevers, Extension Economist at Vernon at 940 552-9941, ext. 231 or Bill Thompson, Extension Economist at San Angelo at 325 653-4576.