7 Qualities of Successful Livestock Farmers

Successful livestock farmers have some qualities in common, but some unsuccessful farmers don’t know some of these qualities. I was opportune to give a presentation to a particular group of individuals. During the question time, a young man asked, “How can one become a successful livestock farmer?”

Well, becoming a successful livestock farmer is not so simple. It takes a lot of commitment for someone to be successful in his or her farming endeavor or career. It is one thing for someone to establish a livestock farm, and it is another thing to make profits running the farm. There are many cases of people that have established farms, and at a particular period, the farms were closed down. Why? It is simply because they were not successful in running such farms to a level of earning profits.

Qualities of a Good Farmer

There are some qualities or characteristics that profit-minded livestock farmers must possess before they can be successful. They include:

1. Hardworking

You must be diligent or hardworking before you can make a profit or succeed in your farming business. There is no shortcut to this. It’s either you are hardworking or you reap the reward of laziness.

2. Highly committed

Commitment entails a lot of things. It is faithfulness to yourself and your business. It is the readiness to do or give whatever it takes for your livestock farming business to be successful. An uncommitted farmer will find it challenging to have a good yield or profit.

3. Thirsts for more knowledge

No one knows it all. For a livestock farmer to be successful, he must not rely on his knowledge alone. A successful farmer always searches for knowledge and tips on how to increase yields and profits. Successful farmers are ready to spend money to get up-to-date information by buying books, videos, consult experts and traveling to get trained on how things are better done. Some farmers find it difficult to use the Internet to gather free information when it will cost them little or nothing. Farmers in this category would find it difficult to succeed in their farming endeavor. So acquiring more knowledge is one of the things livestock farmers need to do.

4. Very proactive

Being proactive is very important to the success of your farm. There are livestock farmers that don’t take proactive steps until they when disasters come. It will help if you don’t wait until bad events occur before you put the right measures in place or do the right thing. A great livestock farmer will always initiate change that will better or save his farm rather than waiting until the evil day comes. One way to be proactive is by checking for vulnerabilities on your farm and getting them fixed before it is too late.

5. Highly disciplined

Yes, a successful livestock farmer is disciplined and builds positive values with regards to how his farm is managed. As a farmer, you are expected to discourage stealing or pilfering on your farm in order for you to succeed. The employees of successful farmers know their bosses are disciplined and wouldn’t condone bad or immoral attitudes from them. For example, you shouldn’t accept late coming, laziness, stealing and other forms of indiscipline from your attendants or farm workers.

6. Goal-minded

This is another major characteristic of a successful farmer. He sets achievable goals for his farm and works towards meeting the goals. He envisions where his or her farm will be in the next 1, 2, or 3 years. A goalless or visionless livestock farmer is less likely to be successful. It is because he operates or manages his farm aimlessly, and there has nothing to use as a benchmark to measure how his farm has performed, how it is performing and the next targets to meet.

7. Not discouraged

If you get discouraged easily, forget about becoming successful. Success requires boldness and perseverance. Failing once does not mean you will fail next time. When you fail, you learn, and all you need to do is figure out your errors or mistakes and avoid them next time. But if you are discouraged and refuse to forge ahead, then you’ve tagged yourself a failure. For instance, you bought 200 broiler chicks from a reputable hatchery. You lost about 100 chicks within the first two weeks to diseases due to your own negligence, or perhaps you’re new and inexperienced. As a result of the loss incurred, you promised yourself not to raise chickens anymore. Whereas we have farmers that were once in your shoe, but they didn’t give up. They worked on past mistakes and became successful afterwards. Seriously, failure shouldn’t make you give up on farming. You should be aware that almost all successful farmers you see today failed at a particular period in their journey, but they refused to be discouraged.

If you want to succeed as a farmer, you need to possess the qualities or characteristics discussed. Farming is good and profitable, but don’t forget that the farmers that achieve a high level of success do so by routinely practicing great farming habits.