In the Sierra Pelona Mountains northeast of Los Angeles, Calif., Mike Williams and his wife, Lynda, manage Diamond W Cattle Co. The ranch sits in a high desert climate with rugged hillsides of short grasses, shrubs, oaks trees and yucca plants.
Though, the nearly 200 head cow-calf operation wasn’t passed down from generation to generation. Originally from Idaho, Williams was looking for something to do when he got out of the Army.
“Somebody mentioned this guy, and I talked to him and found out what a horseshoer could do out in California. So, I came out here to shoe horses initially,” Williams explains. “I’ve worked as a cowboy for a lot of years and always wanted to be a rancher, but a lot of well-meaning people had told me that that’s kind of pie in the sky stuff, and you probably better get ahead by getting a real job. And when I finally decided to buy our first 10 steers, I talked a guy that was running a bunch of yearlings in a ranch over in Simi Valley in Ventura County, to let me throw my 10 out with the ones he was running, and that’s where we kind of got started.”
He continued to build from there, taking opportunities as they came to grow a little at a time and partner with other ranchers on leases. Now, Diamond W Cattle Co. has commercial cows Williams breeds to Angus bulls on 12,000 acres.
“We have also run yearlings, and currently we will keep our own calves after we wean them, depending on forage availability and things like that,” he says. “That’s kind of how we run the first stage of our drought plan. If we have the feed, we keep our calves. If we don’t, then we will sell the calves. Sometimes we might sell just the steers. Sometimes we’ll sell them all. We like to keep the heifers and breed them and then sell them as bred heifers if we have the forage available.”
Most of their moisture accumulates as rain during the winter and spring. Drought is a constant threat for Williams and nearly wiped out his entire herd a few years ago.
“The rain fall amounts are highly variable,” he says. “As a guy starting out, you know getting bigger, sooner or later you’re going to hit a catastrophic drought, which I ran into and almost put me out of business.”
They bought back what they could afford, which included many variations of commercial cattle. Through the changing moisture, Williams has learned to be flexible and take advantage of the rain when it comes, planning for future droughts.
Sustainable Success
Williams was first introduced to the U.S. Roundtable of Sustainable Beef (USRSB) when he was representing the California Cattlemen’s Association.
“I started because I didn’t trust them. Anything with the word ‘sustainable’ on it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth at that time,” Williams explains. “Over the years, the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef developed an organization that basically brought the supply chain together around these sustainability issues.”
Williams continues to stay involved in USRSB, eventually becoming chairman and now currently the immediate past chair.
“We took that concept and kind of defined it in a way that was real and practical and science based, that can be understood no matter from the consumer to the producer,” Williams says. “For a rancher it essentially boils down to is sustainable is what it’s always been. Sustainable ranching is just good ranching. The main concept is continuous improvement.”
No matter the cattle producer’s perspective of environmental or economic issue, good ranching builds sustainability both for that individuals’ cattle and for the land. Williams defines sustainability as something ranchers intuitively have always understood. Nobody still operates like they would have in the 70s or 80s. The process of innovating to make operations more efficient has built operations to be more sustainable. The ranchers who are successful are the ranchers who will stay around for years to come.
“Building healthy soils is good for ranching. It also happens to be good for the climate,” Williams explains. “Those same practices apply, and it doesn’t matter if the producer is concerned about climate change or not. If he’s concerned about having a better ranching operation with better forage production and better soils, he’s going to do the same thing. The same thing applies to water quality and quantity, animal welfare and finances.”
As Williams builds back his herd and continues to increase sustainability, he isn’t looking to grow in numbers but rather efficiency.
“I’m not really looking to take on a lot of a lot more land or anything like that. We’ll watch for opportunities but mostly just try to improve on what I got, improve the genetics of my cows,” he says. “We’re getting to the point where we’re going to a 60-day calving window and still hitting close to 94% conception rate. I’m really happy with our cow size, and we’re building some more uniformity into our females. Just take what I got and try to make it a little better.”
Williams is also incorporating virtual fencing in the coming years as a grazing management tool, but that requires him to upgrade his water infrastructure as well.
“Being sustainable in the past doesn’t mean you’re sustainable in the future, and so, as ranchers, we need to be on the top of our game because as time goes on there’s less room for mistakes,” Williams adds. “Maybe because your parents or grandparents or even you’ve built some cushion into your operation, but you have to always be looking for ways to improve your production metrics, to improve your soils, to improve your financial situation in order to make sure that operation continues in the future.”
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