• Breed: Black Angus
• 460 mother cows
• Calving Date: March 15th
• Calving Weight: 80 lbs
• Weaning Weight: 664 lbs
• Weaning Date: October 18th

Fast Facts

Usually we feed hay from November 28th – June 1st. It’s generally a grass mix - Timothy, Brome, and Orchard. When it’s real cold we’ll feed a grass/alfalfa mix. Then, just Riomax® and salt with the grass mix during the winter months.

Typically, in the winters we feed 30 lbs/head/day. Last year we were able to cut back to 25 lbs/head/day because they were cleaning it up so well and maintaining condition perfectly even with the extreme cold we dealt with. On the low side, hay will go for $135/ton around here. That 5 lbs we cut back equates to 34¢/head/day savings. On 460 head, for 210 days, that equals a savings of $32,844 for the season!

We pushed calving back a couple weeks this year to try and avoid the intense weather around here. So, with doing that, I figured we’d better bump down our contract weights too. On the big steers we used to average 640 lbs. We backed our contracts down to 625 lbs trying to accommodate for the fact that they’d be 2-4 weeks younger. Our big steers av-eraged 664 lbs on Riomax®! Bigger than before AND younger! We even had 12 of them hit the upper 680-690 lbs! That wasn’t a one off either, the smaller group of steers came in at 584 lbs and the contracts were for 550 lbs. All on the same pastures.

Breeding last year, we saw 91% bred in the first 30 days on Riomax®. We were busy to say the least, but it’s a good busy. We run a 60-day calving window.