Teaching note for product 9B17B021.

In 2016, the owner of a cow-calf operation must decide what the appropriate weight for cows in their herd is. For decades, the national trend has been for cow weights to increase because they produce larger calves, but evidence indicates that cow weights may have reached the point where the cost of maintaining a larger cow has become greater than the return from producing a larger calf. Analyzing this issue introduces marginal principles from economics. .....more

The owner of a goat herd had successfully rented a portion of his herd to clear land at a nearby resort. The resort land clearing job generated a small profit and now the owner is evaluating the prospects of bidding on similar land clearing projects in the area. The owner believes that profitability for this line of business is constrained by the size of the truck and trailer used to transport the goats to the job site. He reasons that a larger truck .....more

The owner of a goat herd must decide whether to rent the herd for a land-clearing project at a nearby resort. Goats are better suited to clearing the land than humans and machines would be, but the owner has never rented the goats for such a purpose. The owner must identify costs associated with the project, then must determine a price to charge for the service. Since the owner has no prior experience renting livestock, he must come up with estimates .....more