I'm standing in the highest priced lick tub in North America. Now what might surprise you about Riomax is ranchers that would describe themselves as I'm a cheapskate by nature. We pinch our pennies. I am the penny pincher. Are really the folks using it. Now these ranchers that not only expect Riomax to pay for itself, but they expect to see money back in their pocket. Throughout the video today, we're going to talk about the results we see on the Riomax program, the science behind those results and why we see the results we do, and last but certainly not least, crunching the cold hard numbers on what it looks like to feed By the end of this video, you'll know if is a fit for your operation. So how did this tub come to be? To understand where this tub came from, we gotta go all the way back to two thousand two. The year was two thousand two. The Winter Olympics were in Salt Lake City. Kenny Chesney released the good stuff, and Trevor Greenfield started selling vet supplies out of a tiny one car garage in Vesta, Minnesota. He didn't feel like a business founder. He felt like a frustrated man selling me too products. It's vanilla flavor. He thought back to lessons on digestion in high school and asked himself, how could I help impact cattle digestion in ranching? With no answers, he reached out to a longtime cattle nutritionist who sat down and taught him one on one how to feed rumen microbes. By feeding rumen microbes, you squeeze more out of every mouthful. Makes sense. Right? In two thousand six, Riomax was born with a single digestion ingredient. Fast forward, the digestion technology pack has gone from one to five to ten to fifteen and now more than twenty components, helping ranchers save fifteen to thirty percent on hay or forage, which is why they say it pays for itself. Hey. I'm Jake. So we've been called fufu dust, snake oil, you name However, there is over half million cows currently looking on the Riomax tubs for four main reasons. First and foremost, fifteen to thirty percent feed savings, ten to forty pound bump in weaning weights, three to ten percent bump in conception rates, and just to cap things off an increased health, less sickness in the calves, cows staying content, hair coats flicking off to name a few. Their hair coats in the spring was like a copper penny. But to bring it back and focus more specifically on the feed savings, after all that is the main reason guys are using the tubs, What we're doing is we're feeding the microbes in the cows rumen, helping them to digest the feed more efficiently, so in turn, that cow needs less of it. This can look like increased carrying capacity, reducing protein supplement costs, cutting back hay, or utilize some poor quality grazing while keeping that cow's body condition where it needs to be. Whatever that looks like, bottom line is Riomax has to be making you money or you shouldn't be using it. Now I get it. As a rancher, there are literally hundreds of products on the market that are all claiming to be the next best thing. And we've all heard that snide comment, if I use every product that claimed to add fifty pounds, I'd probably wean in thousand pound monsters. Now with Riomax, what most folks don't know is there's two main ingredient packages which make up our secret sauce. I'm gonna hand it over to Lauren and he's gonna reveal them right now. Hey. I'm I'm Lauren and work with the ranchers across the southern US. One of the comments I get from them is, you know, everybody's out trying to sell the next best thing or snake oil is what they actually call it. Thought to myself, oh, it's just another snake oil. So we're we're here to explain the two main ingredients that make up the Riomax to where we're seeing it driving profitability back to North America. So what is Esqort? Esqort is made up of copper, manganese, zinc, and selenium, your four key trace minerals. According to doctor Hall, copper deficiency, selenium deficiency, zinc deficiency are the most common deficiencies recognized in cattle across North America. Industry standard, if you're feeding a mineral that says it's chelated, it's gonna be twenty to thirty percent chelated to seventy to eighty percent sulfates and oxides. Copper sulfate is actually a bactericide. There's been university studies by doctor Spears that show that the sulfates and oxides actually have a negative impact on the good bacteria we're trying to feed in the rumen, and that's where you start getting your antagonist or your tie ups. So by the time that copper sulfate gets to the small intestine, it's become to be absorbed through the cell wall, so there's one way out out the back end of the cow. And there's studies that show as that copper sulfate leeches into your soil, it's gonna have a negative impact on the good bacteria we're trying to feed in the soil as well. On the Esqort package, package, the copper we're using is is completely protected or or completely available to the cow. So with the with the Esqort, we're focused on getting as much of that mineral into the bloodstream with higher levels and more availability. And it was the first time ever that anything had come back with adequate zinc and copper and kind of made me a believer that it wasn't just snake oil. So using that higher quality mineral, we're seeing increased conception rates, increased herd health. And then the the probably the biggest thing is the the cows are cycling back quicker after they calve. So so you start tightening up your calving window. It's not uncommon for guys that have been on the Riomax program going into their second, third year to all of a sudden get eighty percent of their calf crop in that first cycle. I would say eighty percent of our calves are born within the first cycle. That extra twenty one days in in that first cycle is gonna make a huge impact on your weaning weights. We ship the heaviest calves that we've ever shipped from the Diamond Cross. They're about thirty eight pounds heavier than normal, which I think was was definitely part of the Riomax program. So that's all thanks to the quality of the escort package in the Riomax just getting more done with less. Nutrizorb is really the second second part of the the tub or if you wanna call it the protein side of the tub. It's made up of enzymes, probiotics, prebiotics, yeast, and fungi fuel. So what we're focused on there is actually feeding the microbes in the rumen. If we're building up that microbe population, hyperactivating them, they're they're able to break down, utilize the forge more effectively and efficiently. University of Minnesota did a study back in two thousand fifteen on a grainer forage. They consistently bumped the TDN by three percentage points. So we know we can take whatever forage is out there scientifically and give it a three percent bump. So we can take a poor quality hay, make it act like a mediocre or take a mediocre hay, make it act like a good hay, and just help get more out of out of what you got there. So not only are we feeding the good bugs, but we're also tying up and flushing out your your scour scour bugs. So baby calves, see less sickness when they get on the tub. Stalker calves, less sickness. But really, where where we see the biggest benefit is the fifteen to thirty percent forage savings. By building up that microbe population on a efficient rumen, a cow can get up to eighty percent of her protein from microbial protein. The microbe life cycle is less than a half hour. When they die, they become a true usable source of protein. So it's an indirect supplementation versus your traditional direct fed supplementation. So if you think about this dart board as the cow's diet, you know, all thirty or thirty five Ow. That hurt. I was just putting All thirty or thirty five pounds of feed she's consuming in a day. The bull's eye in the middle represents her supplement. So be that a protein tub, a loose mineral, even the Riomax tub fits into that little two percent of what she's consuming. Now at the end of the day, whether it's a twenty or a thirty percent of anything, there's only so much protein you can squeeze into two percent of her diet and that's why at Riomax with Nutrizorb, the digestive package in the tub, we're focusing on the entire diet. Industry wants to try and see how much they can pack into that two percent. We're trying to see how much we can get out of the other ninety eight percent. So not only are we packing as much as we can in that two percent, but we're helping that cow utilize and break down her entire diet. So she's pulling more protein and more energy out of her feed, which is why we see the fifteen to thirty percent feed savings we do on the tub. We've been able to get twenty to thirty percent in savings on the hay that we've been feeding. Those cows are extracting more nutrients out of their feed and they don't need to eat near as much of it to meet those daily requirements. And while it all sounds good in theory, it might be kind of hard to visualize microbes like what Lauren was talking about. Now, what is easy to visualize is a change in manure. What we've been hearing from guys is that rather than the manure stacking up, it's kind of more like a pancake batter consistency with a little divot in the middle. And when guys are out in their field kind of checking their manure, which might sound kind of weird frankly. But I look at poop a lot. What they've noticed is there's smaller lignans or fibers which is showing us that we're just helping to squeeze that much more out of what you've already got. Now, we took this a step further here and I'll give me those. What we did is we did a handful of manure studies. We took a group of cows on Rio and a group of cows not on Rio, same feed source and same water source and thirty days in, we pulled ten pounds of manure from the group that was on Rio and the group that wasn't on Rio and we'd liquefied it and then ran it through an eighth inch screen. And what we found is group that was on Rio, there was fifty one percent less undigested feed. Where is this going? Well, it's not going out the back end. So what does that mean for you? It's staying in the animal to help with body condition and helping that calf development and that's why going back to the Nutrizorb, we're able to help ranchers cut back on their feed and forage cost. Now, this all sounds cool, but the question is, what's this gonna cost? There's two ways to look at our supplement cost. One is on a cost per ton or cost per tub, and the second is really the proper way to look at your supplement cost is what's it costing on a per head per day basis. So let's start with your upfront cost. Riomax on a upfront cost is four hundred ninety five dollars for a two hundred and fifty pound tub. Now, I know what you're thinking. That makes this a pretty dang expensive chair. But let's really let's break it down on a per head per day basis and see what Riomax compares to your other options. Now if we break it down with our low consumption, a cow's gonna eat generally about point two three of a pound on a per head per day basis. So that means Riomax on a per head per day basis is gonna cost you forty six cents per cow per day. But let's factor in the feed savings and see where that comes out. So obviously, we're here varying numbers, but let's just take this year, I think pretty conservative numbers to say a hundred dollars a ton for hay. And if you're feeding thirty pounds of hay per cow per day as a rancher, if we can save fifteen percent of that hay, that means that's four and a half pounds per cow you're not feeding. And at a hundred dollars a ton, that hay savings is worth roughly twenty two and a half cents per cow per day. So if we take the cost of subtract your hay savings, would get you twenty three point five cents per cow per day is what would cost you to feed. So let's discuss the protein tub. So for a lot of guys feeding the protein tub, there's too low of mineral levels in the protein tub, to actually get the cows daily requirements met, so they're feeding a protein tub plus a loose mineral or even possibly a mineral tub. In this case, we're gonna figure protein tub plus a loose mineral. So for a normal, say, a twenty or thirty percent protein tub, it's gonna cost you about a hundred and fifty bucks for a two hundred pound tub. Now a lot of those tubs run anywhere from three quarters of a pound all the way up to two pounds a day. For real easy math, we just said let's figure a pound a day. So if you got a hundred and fifty dollar protein tub, those cows are eating a pound a day, that's gonna be costing you seventy five cents per cow per day to feed that protein tub. And if we take a loose mineral for a lot of guys, if you're if you're doing a middle of the road loose mineral, say thirty dollars a bag at a normal quarter pound consumption, so, you know, four ounces per head per day, that loose mineral is gonna cost you about an additional fifteen cents. So if we compare, you got your protein tub seventy five cents a day, your loose minerals fifteen cents a day, you're gonna be spending about ninety cents per cow per day. So really when you sit down and do the math, arguably a protein tub plus a loose mineral is one of the more expensive ways to supplement your cows through the winter. So let's talk about cake and a loose mineral. If we take cake, you know, for a lot of our ranchers that we work with, they're they were feeding, you know, say two pounds of cake per cow per day, and this year, this stuff, I don't know, anywhere from I'm hearing three fifty to five hundred, but if we just say three fifty on the lower end Three fifty a ton for your cake, and you're feeding two pounds of it, that's gonna cost you thirty five cents per cow per day in cake alone. And if we take those earlier numbers we were running on your loose mineral costs, loose mineral is gonna cost you about an additional fifteen cents per cow per day. So between your cake and your loose mineral, you're gonna be spending about fifty cents per cow per day, not including your labor or the cost of the you know the pickup expenses to be putting that out on a daily or you know a couple times a week basis. Now maybe you're a rancher that says listen, my cows don't need protein, they can rough it through the winter, so we just do a basic mineral program or a mineral tuff. For most of our guys doing just a loose mineral, they're feeding a higher quality mineral program, so about fifty dollars a bag is what they would figure for a fifty pound sack of of mineral. With that same quarter pound consumption, you're gonna be spending about twenty five cents per cow per day to feed just a really good quality mineral program to the cows through the winter. So let's sum up our options here. We got our generic protein tub plus a loose mineral at about ninety cents per cow per day. We have our cake plus our loose mineral coming in at fifty cents per cal per day. Generic loose mineral program coming in at twenty five cents ahead a day. And last but certainly not least, we have our Riomax when we factoring in the feed savings coming in at twenty three and a half cents a day. So now you've got an idea on a cost per head per day where Riomax stacks into the lineup, especially once we factor in the feed savings. Now let's say as a rancher, you're sitting here and you're not interested in feed savings this winter just to be quite frank. You're looking at what am I gonna spend per head per day versus per head per day. So if we're taking that, your loose mineral is costing you twenty five cents a day. Riomax is coming in at forty six cents a day. So that's an additional twenty one cents per head per day we're spending on the Riomax program. Again, this is if you're if you're not as concerned about the feed savings. So let's just do some quick math on that. If we're say saying Riomax is gonna cost an additional twenty one cents per head per day, through the course of the winter or say a hundred and fifty days, roughly five months, you're spending an extra thirty one dollars a cow to feed the Riomax program. Now what I'd like to ask you, and I can't do this math for you, I'd love to help if you would like to connect, but if we're looking at twenty five hundred dollar calves and we're talking about a thirty one dollar investment in your herd, that additional per cow expense through the course of this winter, what are you going to get for your money? I'll say it this way, if you're feeding a twenty five cent a day program and you're totally happy, you feel like you're exactly where you need to be for results, and you're not looking to move the needle any further, well then quite frankly, Riomax might not be the best fit for you here this year. But I would say, if you feel like there's other areas you want to move the needle or you could be more profitable in your operation, let's look at that little extra expense we're gonna do the thirty one dollars ahead and say now what is the potential returns if I achieve those results? Hey guys, my name is Randy. Now, that sounds all fine and dandy, but what if my cows go through the tubs like candy? In a moment, I'm gonna reveal something to you that folks who are using gives them a lot of peace of mind. What I'm going to do is seek to explain to you the Riomax Cost Guard ninety in under a minute. What the Cost Guard ninety is is our guarantee to you that those cows will consume between one eighth and one third of a pound per head per day. Across ninety days, if that average is over a third of a pound, we're gonna reimburse you back down to the third of a pound. So one of the things that is really cool about the Riomax product is our forage balancer technology and what that is doing is that is allowing that cow to self regulate her intake based off the time of year. So if she's on good green grass in the spring, her consumption is gonna be a lot lower as opposed to coming into calving when she's building up her colostrum and getting ready to calve and pushing everything into that calf. Now, you might be wondering, hey, with that low of consumption, is that cow gonna get what she needs? How can you get all of that in a small amount they would eat a day? And what Riomax does that's different is we're building our tub to value point, not a price point. That means that there's no fillers in the tub and the cow is able to get everything she needs out of that eight to a third of a pound consumption. So in the Riomax product at a quarter pound, you're gonna have a lot more feedings than the tub where you're at a pound or a pound and a half per head per day. You can roll down the hill. So you've watched the video, you like what you're hearing, and your next question is where do we go from here? Let's get in touch. Establish what you're looking to get done, and then connect you with your local dealer. Before we do that though, there's two things we need to cover. Firstly, we need to establish how long we're gonna do the Riomax program for. When we're looking at it, for a lot of our guys, a minimum ninety day trial, that's what we recommend. But a lot of our guys for for them a trial period with Riomax looks like six months to a year. So knowing how long you're gonna do the program for and making sure you're committed to sticking with program for that long is essential to actually delivering on the results we've talked about. The second part to it, and most importantly, is you as an operation, you as a rancher, you know what success looks like in your herd. You know, we've talked a lot about what guys see with results, different things in the on the program, but to have what you want specifically to get done with your herd with Riomax is I would say the most essential part of it all. Once we're in touch, we can really talk that through, make sure you know at the end of six months or that year what success looks like on the Riomax program and exactly how the tub's gonna pay for itself in your operation. From our family business, thanks for watching and have a good one.
AUDIO VERSION
If you've seen the price tag on a Riomax tub and thought "there's no way that's worth it," you're not alone. We hear that a lot, and we understand why.
This industry is full of products that talk a big game and don't deliver, and $495 for a tub sounds like a hard number to justify until you know what's actually behind it. So in this video we're addressing that head on.
We break down exactly what's in the tub, the two ingredient packages doing the actual work, and why the form of the minerals matters as much as what's on the label. We get into whether a cow can really get what she needs from such a small daily intake, and why that's actually the point rather than a limitation. We talk about the research behind the results, not just the stories from ranchers, so you can see where the claims are coming from. And then we do the part that matters most: the real cost comparison, tub versus cake, tub versus a protein block and mineral, tub versus a standard mineral program, all broken down to cents per cow per day.
Our goal isn't to convince you Riomax is right for everybody. It's to give you what you need to figure out if it's right for your herd.