Only $278 In The Bank And 550 Cows To Feed

About this episode

He stacked every FSA beginning farmer loan he could get, went from about 100 cows to 550 in roughly a year, and when the balance sheet finally settled he was positive by $278. That is the number this whole episode hangs on. Luke and Natalie Kovarik run Kovarik Cattle Co., a first generation Angus seedstock operation out of Ord, Nebraska, selling around 100 bulls a year in a January sale that started at 30. Luke was a town kid with 160 acres and a dental school plan. Natalie is fourth generation Hereford out of Montana, and today she works four jobs off the ranch, including marketing and equity in Red Ants Pants. Almost everything they earn away from the cows exists to pay for the cows. The middle of this one is the direct to consumer beef autopsy, twelve straight minutes on why selling your own beef is so much harder than the internet makes it look, why she dreaded Sunday nights, and what happened to the freezer inventory. Then the influencing pivot, why she stepped back from putting her family online, and what she does with the audience now. Also in this one: custom AI and backgrounding somebody else's calves to make equipment payments, $5,000 of blackjack money wired for embry