How I Stopped Buying Fertilizer (And Got 20% More Hay)

It needed some TLC and so it's been quite the work in progress and it's it's that's it. We bought this place in 2019. I had no idea anything about Rhyzogreen or microbes. It took me a couple of years. We used our first application in the fall of 2024. I think we did one hundred and twenty, maybe one hundred and thirty acres and could see a definite improvement in not only how much hay we made on the same ground, but how the cattle looked when we fed it out. Their body condition score was noticeably different. Really the way the grass looked when it was, it just looked healthier. You know, whether you've got a grain ration that you supplement or you're feeding hay in the fall and through the winter, that's the most expensive and most time consuming thing that a rancher can do. I mean, you've got fuel costs, man hours, your equipment costs, fertilizer. Before you even start talking about your grass, if you can feed more cows with the same amount whether it's pasture or whether it's rolled up and roll, it's still the same grass. If you can cut your time down and cut your cost down, not only are you making more product, but you're also saving time. I know for a fact because I'm here every day and I'm doing it that we had a minimum of 20% increase on tonnage and yield on the ground that we applied Rhyzogreen to versus the year prior where we didn't have Rhyzogreen applied. I mean it more than pays for itself if you look at it in that sense. I noticed a more uniform body condition just looking at the cows. We could see a difference in how it was stayed consistent throughout the winter months. You know, there wasn't this big fall off the cliff and you don't have to spend a ton of time with input costs trying to get their body condition score back up. If you can keep that pretty much level all through the year, that's worth a lot as well. We start calving in August. Our coldest months typically are going to be January and February and that's when we feed the most hay. But if we're able to keep our score up when these cows are lactating, I mean they've got calves on their side with our hay and with what we feed them what we input into the ground, that's a big statement for us as well and should be for anybody. The last couple of years we've just really been trying to be proactive and conscious about what comes out of our ground and what we feed our cattle. You know, fertilizers, the herbicides, the different things. Rhyzogreen being is not fertilizer. It's a health food for the microbes that are in the soil that actually build the quality of your forage and your crops in there. Whether it's like I said with hay yield or the grazing application of it, it works and we've been really happy with it and we'll continue to use it. From a cost standpoint, we feel like it's cost saving because we're not putting as much inputs into our grasses and our land when we use Rhyzogreen. Fertilizer is substantially higher and who knows where it's going to go, but it's all about the rancher's bottom line. If you can do the same thing or even better than what you're doing at less of a cost and it's less impact on your ground and it's better for your soil and it's better for your whatever you're growing then it's a no brainer. You've got to work with the land you've got so you've got to get the most that you can out of your ground and the only way to do that is to feed your ground. So if you're not feeding your ground, your ground's not gonna feed you.