Using the Cattle Cycle to Buy and Sell Cows for Maximum Profit

Lessons From The Ranchonomics Podcast Episode 46 With Logan Pribbeno

The biggest money in the cow business usually isn’t made on a steer’s gain. It’s made on the cow herself. Using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows means building the herd fast when cows are cheap and selling it down when they’re dear, capturing the appreciation in between. Done right, that swing can be worth far more per head than any production tweak.

This one’s for ranchers thinking about a multi-year buy-or-sell decision rather than next week’s sale. Logan Pribbeno is the fifth generation at Wine Glass Ranch in southwest Nebraska, running a team of about seven, and he and his father have played this strategy across three cattle cycles. His latest run is a clinic in how the approach actually works, and where it can bite you. For the Pribbeno family, using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows is a multi-generational discipline, not a one-off gamble.

Key Takeaways

• Using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows means buying heifers when they’re cheap, growing the herd fast, and selling down when cows are expensive.
• Logan bought heifers near $700 in 2020 and sold breeding stock that averaged $3,300: appreciation of roughly $1,900 per head, the centerpiece of the profit.
• Capturing cow appreciation can have a 10x effect on income; improving production is closer to a 1% effect.
• You’re “one day closer” to the turn, and being a little early beats being late, because the market doesn’t fall gracefully.
• Used well, using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows is a multi-year plan you commit to, not a reaction to next week’s sale price.

Using the Cattle Cycle to Buy and Sell Cows: The Buy Signals

The framework Logan follows comes largely from Allan Nation’s book Knowledge Rich Ranching, which his father has been working from since a column back in 2000. The idea is to move in and out of cow-calf and stocker enterprises opportunistically: grow the cow herd hard when it’s cheap, overshoot what your land base can justify, then sell down at an opportune time. That opportunistic overshoot-and-sell-down approach is the essence of using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows.

The buy signal is plainly low price. In 2020, Wine Glass was buying unsorted ranch loads of very nice heifers, five and six hundred at a time, for about $700 a head, and they knew on the buy that it would work. Logan is emphatic that this isn’t hindsight talking: in 2020 everyone was bemoaning the death of the cattle industry, sale barns were locked down, and the prevailing belief was that it would never be good again. That’s exactly the gut-wrenching sentiment that marks a bottom. The year before, in 2019, similar heifers ran $580 to $600, and the “experts” insisted numbers meant the market had to go up, right before March 2020 sent it down hard. Price is the great indicator; the conviction to act on it is the hard part. Reading price correctly, not sentiment, is what makes using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows work.

The Sell Signals, and Why Being Early Beats Being Late

Wine Glass exposed about 2,000 heifers in 2020 with the explicit plan to sell them in March 2025. That’s the discipline: you map it, you chart it, you point the ship at a year on the horizon. As Logan puts it, he’s moving a large ship, not a couple of potloads. He can’t turn it on a dime, so he aims at a point and commits, rather than chasing daily or weekly signals the way a more nimble operator can.

The sell signal is all-time-high pricing, ideally while people still expect it to get better, because once the crowd thinks you’re at the top, it starts coming down, and a commodity doesn’t fall gracefully. Logan actually sold a year earlier than the pure signals suggested, driven by cash-flow needs and the chance to buy a neighboring ranch that came up. People asked if he was too early. His answer: no one ever asks if you’re too late, because being late is obvious and painful. As his colleague Wally Olson says, you’re always one day closer to that event happening. Timing the exit is the hardest part of using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows, because the market rarely rings a bell at the top.

How Cow Appreciation Drives the Whole Strategy

Here’s why using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows is so powerful. Logan’s heifers, bought near $700 and run for about $1,000 a year all-in (fair-market land rent included), sold as breeding stock averaging $3,300. That’s roughly $1,900 per head of appreciation, and it lines up with what Allan Nation wrote 25 years ago, that the appreciation, not the steer, is the centerpiece enterprise. Nobody ever made $1,900 running a single steer.

Crucially, the cows paid their own way the whole time. Wine Glass ran them profitably for years, selling open heifers and good calves, so revenue more than covered expenses. The market run-up was a bonus on top of a business that already cash-flowed, not a speculation that needed the market to bail it out. That distinction matters: a lot of folks in 2019–20 were effectively speculating, eating losses while waiting for the market to rescue them. Logan’s program generated positive cash flow from both the cow and the stocker side throughout. That’s the financial engine behind using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows: the herd earns its keep while the market does the rest of the work in the background.

A few mechanics worth borrowing. Selling bred stock is taxed as capital gains, not ordinary income, opening up deferral options you don’t get on stocker profits. When buying back, Logan plans to own a large, black, northern, hedged steer, because as the market drops, feedlots get choosy, and you want the animal they still want. And if you’re financing breeding stock, push your banker for a term note over a short line of credit, so a 50% drop between now and December doesn’t turn into a forced, painful conversation. Details like these are what make using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows survivable when a cycle turns faster than expected.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows mean? It means timing your herd to the roughly ten-year cattle cycle: buying heifers and growing the cow herd fast when prices are low, then selling breeding stock down when prices are high. The profit comes mainly from the appreciation in cow value captured between the cheap buy and the expensive sell.

How much can you make capturing cow appreciation? Logan bought heifers near $700 and sold breeding stock averaging $3,300, about $1,900 per head of appreciation. Allan Nation framed this appreciation as the centerpiece enterprise; marketing it well can have roughly a 10x effect on income, versus about a 1% effect from production improvements. That kind of return is why so many ranchers consider using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows the most powerful lever available to them.

Is it better to sell a little early or a little late in the cattle cycle? Early. The market doesn’t fall gracefully, and once the crowd believes you’ve hit the top, prices start dropping. People question early sellers, but no one questions late ones because being late is obvious and costly. You’re always one day closer to the turn.

How should you finance buying cows in this strategy? Use a term note, not a short line of credit. Bankers will readily write a cow note, and spreading it over several years protects you if a sharp market drop happens before you’d otherwise refinance. A December payment on a line of credit becomes a hard conversation in a falling market.

The Bottom Line

Using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows isn’t about predicting the market to the day. It’s about buying cheap with conviction, running the herd profitably the whole time, and selling into strength a little early rather than a little late. The appreciation you capture between the two is where the real money lives. If you want help charting that buy-and-sell plan for your own operation, that’s the kind of work our team at Ranch Right does with ranchers. Whether you’re just getting started or timing your next sale, using the cattle cycle to buy and sell cows well takes patience, honest math, and a plan you’re willing to hold.

More From the Sell/Buy Marketing Series

• Sell Buy Cattle Marketing: The Complete Guide: the full cluster guide
• How to Get Started in the Cattle Business in a High Market: entering when prices already look steep
• How to Sell Bred Cows for More Money: building breeding stock the market will pay up for
• Sell Buy Marketing in Canada: A Real Example: a farm that pivoted into cattle mid-cycle

This article draws on Episode 46 of the Ranchonomics Podcast with Logan Pribbeno of Wine Glass Ranch.