WESLACO – Texas A&M University System ranching experts will spend the next two weekends in northeastern Mexico sharing knowledge and information with 31 Mexican cattle ranchers who requested the visit.

Tony Hinojosa, assistant to the president for Latin American affairs at Texas A&M-Kingsville, said he and others have spent weeks translating and adapting ranch management teaching materials used in Texas.

"We'll be using information and personnel from the rangeland ecology and management department of the Texas A&M University System's Agriculture Program," Hinojosa said. "It's information used in Texas Cooperative Extension's Total Ranch Management Program."

The ranch management training in Mexico is the third such international outreach for Texas A&M personnel in recent months. A forum in Reynosa in November focused on water issues along the border, followed by a water training session in March in Cameron County.

"The program we'll be presenting in Mexico is an all-encompassing, holistic approach to the management of a ranch," Hinojosa said. "It will include every facet imaginable in a ranching operation, from economics and reading balance sheets on a computer, to proper cattle vaccinations and wildlife management."

Hinojosa said the Mexican cattle ranchers were especially interested in raising their technology levels.

"Like our audiences in Texas, a small percentage of cattle ranchers in Mexico are on the leading, cutting edge of technology, and at the other end of the spectrum is a small percentage of ranchers who will never change the way they do business. Our target is those in the middle who want to learn and who are open to innovative and more efficient ways of doing business," he said.

In this project, Texas A&M personnel partnered with two Mexican universities and a local growers group: Universidad Autonoma de Tamaulipas, Centro de Biotecnologia Genomica, and Asociacion Rural de Reynosa.

Training sessions will be conducted April 1 - April 3 at the Unidad Rhode-UAT in Reynosa, then resume the following weekend, April 7 - 9, at the Biotecnologia Genomica in Reynosa.

Hinojosa said the training will include two field trips. On April 1, experts will demonstrate how to take nighttime inventory of wildlife at a nearby ranch. The second outing will be April 9 when the class moves to Rancho El Novillo, 40 miles east of Reynosa, for training and practical activities.

"While we will be teaching information and materials developed over years of ranch management research and extension efforts, Texas A&M personnel will also learn a lot about ranch management from our hosts in Mexico who have been in the ranching business for generations, since before Texas became a state," Hinojosa said.

Also learning from the experience will be Mexican graduate and undergraduate students studying at Texas A&M-Kingsville, some of who will use the international ranch management training efforts as a basis for thesis and research papers.