I heard a great presentation the other day by Richard Teague, professor of range ecology at Texas A&M's Vernon facility, in which he gave 11 grazing management tips learned from ranchers.

Teague is one of the few researchers actually studying ranchers who use controlled grazing and documenting their successes and failures.

These tips, Teague said, actually were collected by Dave Pratt and Walt Davis over a long period of years, and from personal experience and observation.

Dave Pratt has owned Ranch Management Consultants with his wife, Kathy, since 2001 and lives at Fairfield, California. Pratt has been teaching Ranching for Profit Schools for former RMC owner Stan Parsons since 1992, and has a great reputation for business acumen as well as grazing knowledge.

Walt Davis was one of the early and very successful practitioners of Holisitic Management, mostly on his ranch along the Red River near the tiny town of Bennington, Oklahoma. He and his family sold the ranch several years ago and he now lives at the little town of Calera, Oklahoma, where he grazes a few cows, writes books about management and history, does ranch-management consulting and teaching, and writes a column and blog for Beef Producer.

Here's what they say: