A RETURN TO CATTLE ROOTS

Is Riomax a breeding tab? I have much higher conception rates these days. What's not to like about that? All he says is I have less open cows and I have no It's really hard to go back and pinpoint what happened. You're six months out. If things dried up in June, right as you turn the bulls out, it could have a massive impact on your bottom line. We don't worry about what we can't control, do we? What we can focus on is what we can control. Sixty to ninety days prior to bull turnout really is when you want to start impacting breeding. Trevor, help us on looking at all the different ways that Riomax can help with breeding. Probably the first thing on most people's minds is what's in the mineral pack. But I want to talk about something that's probably a little bit more unique and and overlooked, and that is Welcome back to That Ranching Podcast. Joining us today around the kitchen table on this Thursday, we've got Trevor Greenfield and Twain Manning. So today, we're diving into are we diving into? We're exploring how do we help conception rates in your cow herd. Big question. Is Riomax a breeding tub? How does Riomax help with breeding? There's a lot to uncover, isn't there? Yeah. One one thing you run into is a lot of a lot of times, I mean, obviously, guys aren't preg checking till fall, typically speaking, if they're spring calving cow herd. So you'll be you're six months past when the bulls were actually first turned out by the time you finally preg checked the cows. And it's really hard to go back and pinpoint what happened last spring or early summer that had the impact, whether good or bad, you know, knowing what you did or you didn't do. If things dried up in June, as you turn the bulls out, it could have a massive impact on your bottom line or on the actual conception rates. But you're six months out and you really don't know what was happening at that specific time. And I think it's really important to know the things you can control that we often talk about is the supplements and what you're putting into those cows through that time period to maximize those results. Would you say? Yeah, I agree. We don't worry about what we can't control, do we? But what we can focus on is what we can control. And that is how we're going to supplement that cow to improve the nutritional success and give them the maximum chance. So Trevor, help us on looking at all the different ways that Riomax can help with breeding. Probably the first thing on most people's minds is what's in the mineral pack. I'll probably leave that one to Twain to talk about the, you know, copper, zinc, manganese, selenium. But I want to talk about something that's probably a little bit more unique and overlooked, and that is the power of Nutrizorb in Riomax, and that is the digestion pack. And this is a little bit different from your average spiel on why to buy our mineral, because this is how to get more out of what you've already got. Your pastures, your resources, with the power of NutriSorb, we not only get more protein and energy, but we get more of all the naturally occurring trace elements or trace minerals, vitamins, minerals out of that pasture. So the first thing is, let's get more out of what we've already got. And maybe that can lead on to then, as far as the supplemental trace minerals, maybe Twain could talk on that. Yeah, absolutely. One of the big things with our mineral package, Esqort, is we use a hundred percent protected minerals. So chelate crystal blend to minerals, but it's a hundred percent protected. What you'll find with a lot of programs out there is they'll use a partially chelated mineral. So they'll have some sulfates and oxides in their mineral program, which is a cheaper form of the mineral and less available to the cow. So when we're using the one hundred percent protected minerals, flax, and then as Trevor said, with Nutrizorb, those different ingredients really all work together to provide the results we see. Yeah, think that's the thing to summarize and to get your head around, isn't it? What we're doing with Riomax is we've got highly bioavailable ingredients and we provide a host of nutrients in there to feed the good bugs and improve digestion. So when you supplement a big range of minerals, vitamins and trace minerals that are highly bioavailable so the cow can use absolutely every piece possible, and along with that you supplement a bunch of ingredients that improve the feed conversion so they can get the most out of their feed, you have a powerful package. There's not any one thing that's contributing solely to the success. It's the combination and synergy of everything that we're putting in there. Yeah. We like to sometimes think of putting stuff into boxes and like, oh yeah, I got the flax in there or the zinc or whatever for breed up. No, it's looking at the whole picture, including the diet, like the grass that the cow is consuming. And just on the trace minerals real quick, with the one hundred percent protected key trace minerals, that is huge because when they're protected, we help them weather the journey through the rumen and get to the small intestine where they're absorbed into the bloodstream. It gives them the highest scientific chance of getting to where they need to go. And that is one of the levers, a big lever that we can pull to impact fertility and conception. One thing that we hear from guys is they want a breed up tub, you know, and they're calling about this two weeks before we turn bulls out, you know, and realistically, we're way behind the eight ball at that point, know, your sixty to ninety days prior to bull turnout really is when you want to start impacting breeding. So thinking about a breeding tub just in a box like you say Trevor, like we're going put the breeding tub out, you know, at breeding time or as the bulls get turned out. And I'm not slighting anyone that does that, but I would say to get the most bang for your buck or the most return on your mineral program, thinking ahead sixty to ninety days is critical to really get those minerals absorbed properly into the cow, get her levels up so that breeding season rolls around. She's ready to ready to roll. And I guess the bulls are the same, you know, they're half the equation. Making sure they're on a good supplement well prior to breeding as well. The term you use, like I need a breeding tub, almost makes me think of we're going to take our feedlot animal, you know, through almost treating it as a feedlot animal through the winter and into the spring and suddenly, Oh, we got, this thing's a reproductive animal. So we're going to give it a breed up tub. It's like, no, it's always been a reproductive animal. And we've got to be mindful of that. You said ninety days out and ideally, you know, year round or in the fetus of its mother. And if a cow, like if a cow needs a high level of copper and zinc and your key trace is manganese, selenium, your key trace minerals, like if she needs a high level of that just through breeding, why doesn't she need it through calving as well and then back it up through the winter third trimester, you know, as she's raising that? There shouldn't be a time when we're pulling levels down because we think we can get away from it. If it means impacting that calf's performance or the cows' health overall, that's as a company, we believe that if if they need it at some times of the year, they they need a year round to maximize performance. One, I mean, one of the other things, so we get guys sometimes that say, you know, hey. I'm well into the nineties on breed up or a hundred percent heard that before where they run the bulls year round or six months of the year. And in their mind, the vast majority of those cows get bred. I mean, maybe the, a lot of the cows do get bred, but over a six month window, you're selling the calves in a lot of different groups and it's really not a very good measure of your fertility. Whereas if we can get majority of those cows in the first twenty one to forty five days realistically, first couple cycles, that's when you know you have a cow herd that's fertile and performing at their maximum, and then you have a more consistent calf crop as well. Twain, have you had feedback from customers where they've seen they're getting more caught in the first cycle or more in the second cycle versus Yeah, we hear it quite a bit that the cows are more calves in the first cycle. But one of our guys this last year was talking to him. Said, yeah, it was back in January, I think it was. And I asked, I was like, oh, so when do you start calving? At Christmas. And I was like, well, I thought you were like February. He's like, oh, no, we are. But he said, last year we had couples right after some of the cows calved, got neighbors bull got into the pasture and got four cows bred. And this is this would have been within a couple weeks of them calving. Those calving. Those cows bumped up a couple cycles from when they had literally calved, got bred, and bumped up about forty five days roughly speaking. So that that just show I mean, obviously not an ideal scenario, but just shows what what the power of Riomax when you can get those cows cycling back faster. And that was a mistake, you know, that was a neighbor's bull type situation, but it tells a bigger story and that is with fertility and that reproductive performance, you tighten up your whole breeding season so that you get more caught in the first cycle, and then that directly flows onto more pounds, you know, a bigger calf, a heavier calf come weaning. I think there's two things going on there, isn't there? You've got the moving them up and it's what you can gain. You can get a tighter calf crop and a more uniform, get them all bred in the first cycle ideally if you could, and then along with that it's what you potentially could lose with them not cycling back, they're not nutritionally successful and that they aren't cycling back and they're not breeding and slowly they fall out of the program and you end up with a bunch of open cows. That's the other side of that. I was talking to a guy once and he said, yeah, I'm not too happy with the Riomax. And I was like, you know, what's going on? We take that seriously. And he's like, well, he said, have much higher conception rates these days. I'm like, what's not to like about that? Well, he says, have less open cows and I have no beer money. But I would say, you know, all all in the spirit of keeping cows in the herd, keeping your getting more out of your cow herd and more production, more profitability for your ranch. And less beer money. Yeah. That kinda sucks, but there's probably other ways. You could sell a bred cow or two if you have to, I suppose. That wraps us up this morning on That Ranching podcast. We look forward to seeing you back around the kitchen table next Thursday.

People hate seeing their cows all bunched up. And it has a real cost to it. Lower milk production on the cows, weaning weights, conception rates for fraud, pink eye. There's just a lot of things that just come along with fly pressure that sucks. There's no silver bullet to fly control. No perfect method, but you definitely can help it. Welcome back to this week's episode of That Ranching podcast, where we sit around the kitchen table and talk about topics that actually matter for folks in ranching. So we wanna talk about the fly issues in summertime. People hate seeing their cows all bunched up. You know, they've got all this grass, all this pasture, and the cows are bunched up in the corner. Dwayne? Yeah. And and it has a real cost to it. I mean, yes, there's the emotional factor that nobody likes seeing their cows bunched up, but it means higher stress on the cattle. So typically lower milk production on the cows, hurts weaning weights, can hurt conception rates for sure. And the cows get stomping and they'll step on each other's hooves. You can get hoof rot, pink eye from them, their tails flick any, the eyes are they'll irritate their eyes. So there's there's just a lot of things that just come along with fly pressure that sucks. They're really not grazing a lot while they're in a corner, are they? Like and probably not getting bred either standing in a corner and probably not the easiest for that calf to actually nurse all hunt you know, bunched up. They're a bad thing every which way. They don't They don't help anybody. They don't help anybody do anything. Mean, fly pressure varies on the year. Right? You get some years, dry years aren't too bad. A wet year gets real bad. And and honestly, even as a company, I mean, we're gonna talk about our our fly control products here. There's no cure all. Like, there's no silver bullet to fly control. Right? Guys try oilers, tags, they feed different items. There's no perfect method, but you definitely can help it. When you, control the flies, then you enable those cows to be cows and do what they need to do. And that is get out and graze, produce milk, nurse their calves outside, get bread, all of those things, and utilize the resources on your ranch versus being bunched up in the corner. But, Daryl, maybe you can speak a little bit to the technology or the ingredients we use for fly control and how that may differ from others on the market. It's an important thing how we go about what we do. As we said earlier, there's no perfect way, there's no perfect cure, there's no silver bullet, there's no thought even of trying to get rid of one hundred percent of all the flies. What we want to do is take the load off the flies to the point where they're comfortable. They're spread out grazing, they're doing what they're supposed to do. That's what we aim to get to. A couple of the products we've got, one of them is Repel. You hear the Repel term a lot being used often year round by a lot of producers, but through the summertime the benefit is it's got a powerful garlic extract product in there. A big proponent of pushing the maximum amount of repelling that you can do on a cow to repel the flies from spending time on the back of the animal or biting them. We can also do a formula that has the UltraCit IGR, so that's going after the fly population to reduce the number of flies that are around kill them in the larva stage before they become mature flies. The challenge with the IGR larvicide approach, while it works, there's two things. One is that if the neighbor's not using something, you're killing the flies on your pasture, they're coming over from the neighbors, that's a negative. The other thing is that it's not an all natural product. Although, like you say, we have it in one of our formulas, but I'm more from the results we see, I really love the way the Repel works, and that is, the name says it, those flies are repelled from the cow. They don't want to land on the cow. And in doing that too, we've got the heat stress benefit and all the digestive benefits and antioxidant benefits of those natural ingredients. So you're cutting a much wider swath and just, you know, going after a certain The other thing when you're working through the manure is there's a lot of your horn flies lay their eggs in the manure, but there's a lot of flies that don't. So your face flies in different things that can travel a lot further distances that you really, no matter how much you put in the manure, you can't control that population. So rappelling is really the best method. Rappelling is the best tool we have. The one thing I will add there is we hear from customers like, oh, I still have flies on my cows. You know, I'm still seeing some flies. A big question I would ask is, are they fighting them or are they just there? Because on a especially on a wet year when you got a lot of flies around, you're still going to have flies on your cows. There's, there's no two ways about that. But what we do see with the repel is you might have flies there, but they're not biting them. You know, the cows aren't bunching, they're not fighting them. And if your cows out grazing, I don't care how many flies she has on her, that is a clear indication that she is not being bothered by those flies. She's out there doing her job. If she's not fighting them, they're not bugging her. Let cows be cows and do their thing. One other ingredient that we have, and it's one of a bunch that we use, but is diatomaceous earth, and that helps with internal parasites, but it also is passed through into the manure, and that is an all natural product that works as like a mechanical kill for the fly larva in the larva stage. It's not an IGR, it's not a chemical or a drug, it's a natural mechanical kill. So that's in all the formulas, rest assured. And we have it at a higher level in all the Repel formulas we put a higher dose of it in. Bottom line is flies themselves obviously are a pain, but it's the cost of not dealing with them that ultimately hits the bottom line. Costs hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the North American beef market. And what it costs you is unrealized gains on your calves, unrealized milk production on your cows, unrealized conception rates, you know? So the cost is huge. What we're trying to end up with is cow comfort. There's no silver bullet. We're not trying to eliminate one hundred percent of all flies. You want the cows comfortable and you want them content. You want them laying down early in the day, they're content, chewing their cud, and they're very efficient animals. That doesn't happen when they're getting flies driving them crazy and they're stamping their feet in the corner of the field where it's nothing but bare dirt and a giant dust cloud, and they're all getting pneumonia and watery eyes. Yeah. The other thing, I was in South Dakota once and this guy's like, how come some calves have tons of flies around them, others don't? So we went out and looked, and he said, like, see that one there? And it was a droopy eared kind of a a little bit sick looking calf, you know, more of a suppressed immune system. And all the good doing calves had almost no flies. So he says, why is that? Well, it's because flies are you know, they go after the weak or immune suppressed animals. So if you got a healthy functioning cow herd, that's probably your best defense. And then repel is a a great way to keep them out and let cows be cows, be comfortable, graze, get bread, pack on the pounds, all those good things. That wraps us up for today's That Ranching podcast episode, and the better one is coming next week.