As a beginning cattleman I found the book extremely helpful and one can use the philosophy in all aspects of ranching. Great book for all interested in cattle and land stewardship.

The Lasater Philosophy of Cattle Raising, by Laurence Lasater, is an outstanding basic guideline for economic selection of cattle that can used in either an extensive or management intensive grazing system based on sound environmental practices.

The Lasater Philosophy was developed by Tom Lasater, one of the founders of the Beefmaster breed; and a succesful cattleman in Texas. His philosophy has several basic principals that can make any livestock breeder succesful in profitable production. He covers topice like selecting animals that will be hardy and performance oriented in your environment. Basically, select those animals that will be coming from a harsher environment than the one that you will be putting them in. If they come from an easier climate, one can expect performance to drop. Lasater also covers the importance of the bull and the cow in making genetic decisions and how fertility should be measured.

Perhaps the hardest part of the philosophy to grasp is the rather strict cull policy. Any female animal is culled if they lose an offspring for any reason. That means predators, scours, or even lightning. Keeping the best of the best, should prove to produce consistency and quality over the long run.

I found this book to be excellent and recomend it to any breeders of any livestock who are interested in environmentally and grass based production methods. We currently use these principles in correlation with Linear Measurement to manage one hundred head of Belted Galloway cattle. Remeber, if you replace the words cattle raising with sheep, hog, or goat raising, the principals are still quite useful. Excellent photos of the Lasater type Beefmaster are included in all chapters and easily illustrate how these animals should appear in actual management conditions.