The Art of Range Podcast

Parker Ranch is the oldest and biggest ranch on the island of Hawai'i and one of the top cow-calf operations in the country. Keoki Wood traces the ranch's history from John Palmer Parker's founding in 1847 and the arrival of the Mexican vaqueros who gave rise to the paniolo tradition to its current role as a national industry leader and local community supporter. The ranch team culture, which Keoki has been instrumental in shaping for 22 years, values low-stress animal handling and strong people relationships. This tradition led to Parker Ranch receiving the 2025 National Beef Quality Assurance Award from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Keoki describes lessons learned from a 40,000-acre wildfire, and tells why using grazing to reduce fuel loads needs to be treated as a public good. Listen to hear more about the challenges of managing lands from sea level to 8000 feet elevation, cycles of drought and abundant grass, and keeping calves healthy shipping halfway across the Pacific Ocean.

The Art of Range is supported by RanchBot Monitoring Solutions.

Host: Tip Hudson, Washington State University Extension

Producer: Matt Ziegler, WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resources Communications

Keoki photo credit: Dustin Acdal Photography

Music by Lewis Roise

Visit the episode page at artofrange.com for the transcript of this interview and links to other resources mentioned in this episode.

"Ponoholo" comes from Hawaiian wayfinding: when the canoe was on the right path — reading stars, currents, and waves — you were pono holo, going the good way. Pono Von Holt runs Ponoholo Ranch on Kohala Mountain at the north end of the Big Island, the birthplace of King Kamehameha, and where his family has raised cattle since 1928. Annual precipitation on the ranch ranges from 10 inches of rain at the coast to 110 inches in the cloud forest on top of the mountain. In this conversation, Pono traces the arrival of Mexican vaqueros in the 1830s and the birth of the paniolo, explains how adopting intensive planned grazing in the mid-1980s allowed them to increase their stocking rate, and how dry cows do brush control in a way that chains and caterpillars never could, and makes the case for why an island ranch 2,500 miles from a feedyard decided its comparative advantage was a 450-pound calf.

The Art of Range is supported by RanchBot Monitoring Solutions.

Host: Tip Hudson

Music by Lewis Roise

Producer: Matt Ziegler, WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resources Communications

Visit the episode page at artofrange.com for the transcript of this interview and links to other resources mentioned in this episode.

Lani Cran-Petrie runs Kapapala Ranch on the south flank of the Big Island of Hawai'i with her husband, Bill. This episode with Lani begins a series on ranching in Hawai'i. Lani describes the improbable history of cattle in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, from a king's gift of livestock to the hide-and-tallow trade through the sugar plantations that shaped which lands ranches kept, the collapse of in-state slaughter in 1992, the shipping containers and airplane crates that now move Hawaiian calves to mainland grass, and a long relationship with Ellensburg, Washington. She also tells the personal story of ranching for 17 years on thirty-day permits on state land, thirteen years of fighting at the state capitol to keep the ranch, ten million gallons of water storage built on faith, and the herd-breaking of "inexperienced" cattle with dogs, exclosures, and an air horn.
The Art of Range is supported by RanchBot Monitoring Solutions.

Host: Tip Hudson

Music by Lewis Roise

Producer: Matt Ziegler, WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resources Communications

Visit the episode page at artofrange.com for the transcript of this interview and links to other resources mentioned in this episode.

In 1956, a group of Texas ranchers decided the training their kids needed didn't exist yet—so they built it themselves, and it's still running. Lee Knox, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Professor in Ranch Management at Texas Christian University, describes TCU's nine-month, 35-credit certificate program that packs soil and forage management, animal husbandry, business, and marketing into a single intense year, backed by 1,200-plus alumni who host field trips, mentor students, and post job openings. Lee also reflects on a career spanning extension work, two decades with NRCS, and a lifetime of running cattle on leased ground—including why the return of fire to the Southern Plains is a backhanded compliment to better grazing management, and how hunting revenue brought Texas landowners and wildlife groups to the same side of the table.

The Art of Range is supported by RanchBot and the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center.

Music by Lewis Roise.

Visit the episode page at artofrange.com for the transcript of this interview and links to other resources mentioned in this episode.

Doug Tolleson is the longtime Chief Scientist at the Texas A&M AgriLife Sonora Research Station and recently retired director of the Grazing Animal Nutrition (GAN) Lab. In this episode, Tip visits with Doug about a career spent connecting animal nutrition to grazing management—from fecal near-infrared spectroscopy that lets managers "read" diet quality of rangeland forage, to prenatal programming that affects animals all the way to finished meat. Doug reflects on the enduring principles beneath every buzzword—holistic, sustainable, regenerative—and on managing for a moving target in a climate of rising variability, where six years in ten are dry and the Sonora "Flex" experiment builds adaptability by managing for drought and swinging for home runs in the wet years. The conversation closes on the value of long-term research stations, some celebrating their second century, and Doug's advice to young range professionals: stay a "specialized generalist," never be afraid to learn something, and let the land, the animals, and the weather keep humbling you.

Support for The Art of Range Podcast comes from RanchBot, Western SARE, and the Western Extension Risk Management Education Center.

Visit the episode page at artofrange.com for the transcript of this interview and links to resources mentioned during the conversation.

Music by Lewis Roise.