Giovanna the Cattle Queen

[Music] welcome to ag on wheels today we find ourselves in edinburgh texas with giovanna benitez giovanna happens to be one of the largest and youngest cattle ranchers here in the area so giovanna are you excited to show me what you've got going on today of course i'm super excited and i hope you love everything that we do every day so we're gonna take a glance into her daily life so let's go let's go [Applause] [Music] what made you want to choose to be involved in agriculture and it's not easy being involved in agriculture so what motivates you every day to continue okay so my father and my mom used to live in roma texas and my dad had an auto electric shop unfortunately my mom and my brother passed away in an accident and he decided to sell all of his business in roma and continue my mother's dream and that was to buy a ranch since my dad raised me it was kind of ideal that after school there was no time for cheerleading or basketball or soccer or anything like that i had to come back to the ranch because a tractor was waiting for me so it was fun i'll get out of school come jump in a tractor with my dad do some homework and that's how we spent our time together i was six years old and already driving a tractor look at you you probably drive better than i do so it was fun and my greatest motivation i feel that it is living my mother's dream just every day waking up and knowing that i'm doing something that it was her dream to do and now it's your dream now it's my dream and i love it okay so tell me a little bit about this fence it plays into your irrigation system right yes that is correct so in order to have a proper rotation yet irrigate the pastures my dad invented this fence that you're able to have a five-string barbed wire the irrigation system will pass by whenever it's down but then you pick it up in order for you to place the cattle and do proper rotation so it is very hard to have cattle when the pasture is so big so you could have 125 acre pasture but since we don't have a lot of acres we needed to make sure that we were very efficient and we could put as much as head of cattle as possible on a per acre basis with this fence my dad was able to do both things have a lot of cattle in the pastures and be able to irrigate [Music] geo so we know that you have cattle in the pasture but now we're standing here in the pins why do you have these cattle in the pins okay the reason why it's that we source cattle from all over rio grande valley and whenever they get to the ranch we need to make sure that we process them properly with their vaccines dewormer flight control and if they have a little bit of issues then we need to put some antibiotics on them and so you said the key word and i think that we need to clear this too is vaccines correct okay so what kind of vaccines are we putting into the cattle we place two types of vaccines it's called bobo shield and sulgen whenever they arrive to the ranch and the once they're here we place them in their pans and it's very important for us not to come and go the cattle that was already at the ranch with the new cattle because the new cattle could infect the cattle that was at the ranch so then it's going to be a lot of health issues and a lot of health concerns it's also very important for us to have our water trust clean and make sure that the sick cattle don't drink from the same water truck from the healthy cattle because then you're going to have a lot of issues there once they get here they'll come to the pens and we'll be monitoring them we'll keep the cattle there and once uh they're good to go they're healthy then we'll sort everything out wherever they belong the heifers with the helpers steers with the steers and it'll be also based on the weights so it's kind of almost like taking care of a newborn baby and training them right you're training them how to eat you're making sure that they're healthy before they can provide for you and for the world that is correct and before we let them lose to the pastors we need to make sure like i said that they're healthy and another thing of having them here with the small pens is that we have the squeeze chute so we just sort them out here take them to the squeeze shoot and that's going to be a whole lot of stress less compared to if you have to doctor them in the pasture and rope them and drag them and everything yeah i can imagine i'll pass on that one [Music] so we know that you're a hard worker you told me earlier that you bailed the hay you're the driver i mean you were all hands on deck but you also told me that you went to college tell me what you studied i did so i have a double major in utrgv in finance and economics then after that i decided to go to tcu and get a ranch management master's certificate and i'm currently doing a another master's degree in international agriculture from oklahoma state university i felt that i had a little bit of extra time you know with covet so i could do everything online better you than me because after i got my bachelor's i was i was done but it was out that door way before so you have all hands on deck on the ranch you have an expansive education but you're also involved in organizations such as the stpra which is that is correct i'm involved with south texas property rights association it is a great association that talks about everything that's going on not only here in the border but also water issues border patrol border security fever tick animal health in general it just covers everything it's a great part of it's a great association and it's a great network to be a part of they're always there for you and absolutely and i think that that is extremely crucial especially being won a woman in agriculture and two i think living where we do it's really important for us to be kept up to date on all those important topics that we have that is correct south texas property rights it's always going to send you daily emails uh making sure that everybody's up to date with everything that's going on along the borders you'll read for me right when i get them because i don't like to read of course so geo you know as well as i do living here in the rio grande valley we endured a freeze this year a freeze that we haven't seen since the 1980s and all of our citrus is pretty much destroyed but i see here that you're using it explain to me a little bit about that process that is correct we use a lot of citrus in our ration so we have a wet ration and the citrus gets here because it's not good for hb or walmart because it's not the proper size or it's too big or by the time it's out on the shelves it's only going to be good for one or two days that it's not good for the grocery stores to put it out and then in a couple of days having to remove it so we are able to get that citrus to the ranch and we place it in a ration we store it and this used to be in a silage pit and we have the citrus here and with the excavator we are making sure that we remove all the top which is kind of go dark colors or black and we only get the good part of the citrus and we put it in a ration since it's local it's one of the things that we use and guess what the cattle love it and when you say nutritionist and you say rations so you don't feed them just citrus you also feed them you said cottonseed they're hay is there anything else that you put into those rations yes we do corn ddg and of course the mineral which is the most important one having everything out of balance and having a good nutritionist is the key to making sure that the cattle is going to be healthy and with proper nutrition and not have any issues with the feed yard so it's kind of like when you were a kid and you took your little flintstone multivitamin same kind of concept but for the cattle right that is correct just way more intensified geo thank you so much for allowing us to come out to your ranch and to see exactly what you do i wish i had more time because you were so hands on that i don't think there's enough hours in the day to really show what you do so thank you so much thank you it's a true honor to have you at the ranch and this is your house you're more than welcome to stop by any time be careful what you say you all have a great day where will ag on wheels be next only god knows god bless

Channel: AgMag_stx Ag on wheels

Views: 178,421

Rating: 4.8308082 out of 5

Keywords: cattle, agriculture, women, cows, ranching, south texas, women ranchers, rio grande valley

Id: miT6pA6NNLE

Length: 9min 32sec (572 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021