I've been on a few exotic ranches in Texas, New Zealand, Namibia and South Africa. The number one thing that I've taken from the owners of those places is fencing. Whatever you do, make sure to do it the very best you possibly can because you will never have enough time to keep fixing it and do everything else that needs to be done every day. On my small piece of land, I'm removing every tree where I will build my fence that has any chance of damaging the fence. Trees will always try to destroy a fence, and who can inspect a fence when there is a major storm happening? My neighbor has a couple hundred acres and after one storm, he had trees down and his fence completely destroyed in half a dozen places, with three times that many damaged or supporting branches. He didn't clear anything before putting up his fence and it's a nightmare trying to do it now.

How's the predator situation at the family ranch?

First, welcome! The only advice I would offer besides agreeing on the 8th fence would be to do the research on which exotics can tolerate the Kansas climate. I’m sure this is something you’d do beforehand anyway and I’m sure there are plenty of species to choose from, but hadn’t seen anyone mention it.

I'd start by understanding the costs of high fencing 5000 acres to see if it is something you can do to begin with.

on only 80 acres your going to have a heck of a feed bill unless you plan on only having less than 15 animals. definately put down predator wire buried on outside of fence. Blackbuck don't like cold weather. Bigger the animal more it eats!

Guessing the cattle are eating on 5k acres. In 80 acres once they eat all the browse and grass down to dirt then all they will have to eat is feed. That's why I said if you have only a few animals on 80 ac you can supplement feed. You can do a basic pellet feed will cost about 8-10 a bag around here don't know in Kansas. But it will be low in protein.

Usually we can run 20 head of steers from march to august and then supply mineral for extra growth. The bluestem is great for grazing and they haven't taken the pasture down to dirt yet. From what I've read other threads I should give the exotics plenty of room to run so if they do get spooked then they don't go through the fence.

Or start killing each other.

That's a good point. Should I stick to 1 or 2 species and wait until I get more fenced in to diversify?

It's interesting there's only 2 exotic game ranches in Kansas. Did they get some special exemption, or is the market just significantly less? Read into local and state laws about what is allowed and what documentation is necessary.

People's taste varies, but most HF ranches here seem to be carrying axis and blackbucks now as they're relatively cheap and make great mounts. Certain animals will fare better than others depending which part of the state you're in and the climate.