Last updated on June 5th, 2025 at 07:55 pm
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Tough Country, Tougher Cattle
East Texas Ranching Ain't Easy. The Sanders Found a Way Through It.
Bob & Dustin Sanders
Jefferson, Texas
East Texas has a way of testing ranchers. It looks like prime cattle country with its steady rainfall and thick grass, but underneath the surface, many ranchers know the truth: the land often promises more than it delivers.
Bob Sanders has heard that sentiment his whole life. “My granddad used to say East Texas promises so much and delivers so little,” he recalls with a quiet grin. For years, he and his son Dustin ran cattle on these pastures and tried to make the most of it. But they kept hitting the same wall.
“We get the rainfall,” Bob says, “but our grass is washy.” That soft, nutrient-light forage made it tough to get cattle to thrive the way they needed them to. Even with the right genetics and decent management, the animals just weren’t performing like they should.
Running cattle in a place like this means watching everything closely—grass quality, cow health, birth rates, and feed bills. For the Sanders, it was clear their operation wasn’t performing like it should. Cattle didn’t look right, calves were getting sick, and predators were a constant threat to anything born weak.
A Facebook Flyer and a Big Decision
Like many good ranching stories, change didn’t come from a sales pitch—it came from curiosity. Dustin had come across a flyer on Facebook for a mineral product called Riomax. He mentioned it to Bob, and though skeptical, they were willing to give it a try. They’d tried other mineral programs before with mixed results, so expectations weren’t sky-high.
But just a few weeks in, something shifted.
“We could tell the difference in three weeks, thirty days,” Bob says. “It was amazing.”
The cattle’s coats started to shine. Not just healthy—but strikingly so. “Their hair coats in the spring was like a copper penny.” Even the cowboys noticed and commented on the difference from the year before.
Health Turnaround: From Scours to Strong Starts
The most visible change may have been how the cattle looked, but what really convinced the Sanders was the change in calf health.
Scours had been a recurring nightmare. “We used to get 15, 20, or 30—or half the calf crop—had scours,” Bob explains. “You’d run through and hit them with antibiotics.” And with predators always lurking, weak calves were a major liability. “In this part of the world, we have a lot of predators, and those weak calves seem like the predators nail them.”
Since switching to the new program, scours have nearly vanished. “We’ve had 2 or 3 with scours,” Bob says, a dramatic drop. And fewer weak calves means fewer losses. “This year, we just don’t have any predator problem. We haven’t had any death loss, so the calves, when they hit the ground, they’re up.”
The improvement didn’t stop with the calves. The cows were different too—especially in how they milked.
“We were running a loose mineral,” Bob recalls. “The milk bags—you could probably put enough milk to fill up a little sandwich bag.” That wasn’t cutting it.
But once they got on the tubs, things changed quickly. “They was filling up a gallon Ziploc bag. It was just incredible.” Bob watched the bags grow from “a softball to the size of a volleyball.”
That kind of milk production means calves that grow faster, stay healthier, and have a better chance at weaning off at heavier weights.
The Sanders had seen some hard years before—losing cows due to low birth weight and poor condition. “Last year or year before last we did lose quite a bit of cows,” Bob says. “Small frame. They weren’t healthy. Predators was an issue.”
This year? “We just have not had any problems at all.”
When calves are bringing $3 a pound, and you’ve got 20 calves at 500 pounds each, the numbers add up fast. Just avoiding a few losses can make a huge difference on the books.
Running the Numbers: Does It Pay Off?
Bob isn’t one to spend money blindly. Every change they make gets run through a sharp pencil. And with Riomax, he kept a close eye on every figure.
“We weigh our rolls, we weigh our feed, so we know exactly how many pounds these cattle are getting,” he says. They were feeding about 30 pounds a day, just to see how the cattle responded. Then he pulled back to 24 pounds—and the herd was still content. “It kind of saved us some money on that account.”
Even more impressive was the impact on their winter hay bill. “Before we got on the Rio, we had like a $350 winter bill on our cattle,” Bob says. “Hay was high this year. We’re going to be at, I just figured it last night, $189.” Nearly cutting their feed bill in half made a big dent.
The upfront cost, he admits, is no joke. “It could choke a mule when you write a check for this.” But in their experience, it balances out—and then some. “They’re talking about 40, 41 cents a day, and that’s pretty much true in the wintertime. In the spring, they’ll back off of it and it drops down. For us, it dropped down to about 30 cents.”
People ask Bob how he justifies paying that kind of money for a mineral tub. His answer is straightforward: “When you go looking at the benefits—how your cattle look, the death loss, lower feed costs—in our operation, the tub pays for itself.”
That’s not marketing. That’s just math—and experience.
For Bob and Dustin Sanders, it’s about more than a product. It’s about turning around a tough East Texas situation and finally seeing results from the land they’ve worked for generations.
“It has to work,” Bob says. “Or we can’t pay our bills.”
Nathan's quest to prove Riomax wrong!
Article preview: Combat your herd health issues with proper nutrition
Without sufficient nutrition, the immune system can’t do what it’s supposed to do.
“Until death do us part.” No, we’re not talking about wedding nuptials. We’re talking about the relationship between nutrition and the health of your cattle. “They’re dependent on each other,” says Dr. Peter Franzky. “One will not work without the other.”
Franzky is a consulting cattle nutritionist and a livestock producer from west-central Minnesota. In addition to his work as a consulting nutritionist, he was involved in developing the unique formula in Riomax® supplements.
Here’s why Franzky says that cattle health and nutrition are wedded so closely. In a ruminant animal like a cow, the bacteria and enzymes in the rumen are what digests the feed.
RANCHING AIN'T EASY.
FOR ALL THE WORK THAT YOU DO, YOU DESERVE
MORE IN RETURN.
15 - 30% FORAGE SAVINGS
3 - 10% INCREASE IN CONCEPTION RATES
10 - 40 LBS. INCREASE IN WEANING WEIGHTS
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