#27 | We Spent Thousands on Studies to Prove What We Already Knew

Over the years, a lot of guys have said, you gotta have clinical or third party data for me to believe you. Twenty twenty four did studies across Idaho, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington states. Twenty four, twenty five, Nebraska and Arizona in twenty twenty five in Texas, and then finally, it's in Nebraska on corn silage. I'm saying, well, we kinda knew that already, but thanks. Welcome back to that ranching podcast. We get people that say your data's anecdotal. Where's the concrete concrete proof in what what you're doing? Be it rhizogreen or the tubs, the paste. They wanna know what what the concrete proof is. So Trevor, what would you say on on that when people are saying all our stuff's anecdotal? I have mixed emotions on that. Gotta understand where people are coming from. I I think they've got reason to be skeptical because they've got fed a lot of claims. Like, I'm sympathetic with why they say that. I would say that what is the definition of anecdotal? Because if you got seven hundred and fifty thousand mama cows on the program, these are guys that have been in the industry for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years, and they're making a conscious decision to use Riomax. I don't know. What's the definition of anecdotal to start with? When I hear anecdotal is people saying, oh, it's just hearsay or it's just, you know, someone that it's feedback that isn't very concrete. You know? And and when we're talking to producers, and we're getting videos from guys or feedback from guys, we had had one this morning actually out in Montana. Producer that he'd sent in those pictures to Rodney on the on the rhyzogreen. And on his alfalfa, you know, he'd he'd done a side by side comparison. He was at three and a half ton to the acre on the treated ground with rhyzogreen and three ton to the acre on the untreated. And pictures. Pictures to show the the leaves. With less atrophy. Yep. And in his case, as a producer, what he was saying is normally has to buy about eight hundred ton of feed. And this year, with the way things are looking, if he can get that half a ton to the acre across all his cuttings, he was gonna be at about an extra seven hundred and fifty ton of production. Yeah. And so we're talking large scale production here, and that was gonna eliminate pretty much eliminate his need to buy feed this year. That to me is not anecdotal because he's got he's got his own comparison Half a pivot versus the other half the pivot. He's got the tonnage. He's got the pictures. You can see where the leaves go almost all the way to the ground on the treated versus the other. That is not anecdote. I think anecdotal is like, I I feel it was better. I think it was better. And it's like, how can you trust that? Right? It it's just someone's opinion. But I would say what backs up a lot of what we do in our numbers, both on rhizogreen and Riomax, is these trials where guys have done a side by side comparison, or they're like a sixty year old rancher, and he's comparing what he's seeing this year to historical average or historical data, not just like last year or one good year or one bad year, but, like, for his lifetime. And he's like, I've never seen calves wean this way, or I've never seen cows graze this part of the pasture ever. That to me takes it from anecdotal to, okay. We've got some concrete comparisons. Yeah. I I would hundred percent agree. And these are these are ranchers that they don't really stand anything to gain from feeding anyone a line of BS to be quite frank, you know. They're they're just guys helping each other and I think we see it be it, you know, with the products we offer at Riomax or otherwise is ranchers do rely very much on other ranchers experience with different products and different, you know, machinery and all sorts of different things. They learn off of each other. You know, if one guy's doing something that works pretty quick, see a lot of other guys looking at that thing and wondering how they can implement it in their operation. I think it's important in ag that that we do rely on each other to some degree because, you know, when when a guy can say, here's what I'm seeing, here's what I've done, you can kind of base your judgment or decision off of that a lot more, I think. What gives our customers confidence is that when we're seeing these trends, you know, let's say hay savings or increased production on Rhyzogreen or weaning weights on Riomax, etcetera, when they're seeing these trends and it's consistent from the Panhandle of Texas to Missouri to Alberta to the Rocky Mountains in Montana and Colorado. I mean, these are vastly different grass types, different soil types, even different breeds of cattle, different elevation, different rainfall. There's a lot of different things there. When we see these consistent trends on the levers that we we can impact, such as conception rates, weight gain on calves, hay and forage savings, stretching your pastures, herd health, increased production and tonnage on the rhizogreen side. It's that consistency that that drives the validity. Yeah. But then, I guess, Duane, I I got a a bit of a pet peeve. Over the years, a lot of guys have said, you know, you you gotta have clinical or third party or university data for me to believe you because you're just a family business, how would I believe you? And and I'm like, well, this is our data, like, on Rhyzogreen, sixty six on farm trials. Ninety plus percent win rate. Yep. Yeah. Which I'll I've some of the big corporates in the seed industry talk about sixty to seventy being, you know, world class. So at ninety percent, we think, like, this is awesome. But then guys are saying, we we need third party validation. So we went ahead and and did it starting in twenty four and twenty five, and it's continuing. They don't do that for free, in case anyone's wondering. Well, that's where my pet peeve comes in. We get all this work done, and it comes back and it validates what we already knew. And I'm like, why do we have to pay for that? Because we already knew that. I was just gonna jump in real quick. So I wanna know what do you guys actually have that is proven in the lab that is scientific that is hard? So we've got two sets. One would be on the Riomax. One would be on the Rhyzogreen. We've done three different studies on manure and measuring the leftovers in the manure on Riomax cows versus control cows. That study was done in twenty twenty two. We did three separate studies measuring the leftover for undigested fibers leftovers on Riomax. The average across those three studies was fifty one percent less leftovers. And then you referred to mineral. People often wonder how quick can you get that mineral level up. You know, they know we have esqort, is a hundred percent rumen bypass or protected trace minerals, your key trace minerals. And so we did a study there doing liver biopsies, which is the truest measurement of the mineral status in a cow. This was done in twenty twenty one. Within forty two days, the copper level in the Riomax cows increased a hundred and twenty eight percent. One other study that I'd like to share. In twenty fourteen, we worked with the University of Minnesota to determine the effect we had on the TDN or total digestible nutrients in a cow's diet based on the use of NutriSorb. They did studies on grain and forage. They saw an average of three percent increase in the TDN, which is huge. The way the professor communicated to us, doctor Alfredo DiConstanzo, he said, it makes a poor quality hay function like a mediocre quality hay, and it makes a mediocre quality hay function like a high quality hay. Marcus, that's some, response to the the you know, looking for actual scientific evidence, and, and and that journey continues. We're not gonna stop doing these kind of studies, but we're also not gonna stop the flow of all these pictures we get and testimonials and feedback where, you know, Twain mentioned earlier, these guys that get on video have no incentive to do this besides that they're part of a winning brand. They wanna help their neighbors win. Winning begets winning, and these guys are just part of that journey. And, of course, we've been feeding microbes in the rumen of a cow since two thousand six. We've been sharpening the saw all along, and today, we have over twenty different digestion ingredients in that NutriSorb. So University of Minnesota listening to us, they're probably gonna say it's time for another study. Just some other concrete third party validation studies on Rhyzogreen. Twenty twenty four, Agrellas did studies across Idaho, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington states. Saw an average increase in production on alfalfa of twenty five percent. Twenty four twenty five, AgriThorb, another third party verification body did studies in Nebraska and Arizona and saw a thirteen point nine percent increase in production on alfalfa. Agrellis, in twenty twenty five in Texas did a study for us and saw a fourteen and a half percent increase in production on alfalfa. And then finally, Agrellis did another study for us in Nebraska on corn silage and saw a twenty four percent increase in feed value. We're not talking quantity now. We're talking quality. So there's a a snapshot. There's more coming of concrete third party validation that I'm saying, well, we kinda knew that already, but thanks. And another story, is a guy I was talking to. This is years ago, and I said there's been a trial, know, university trial, and it shows this and this and this. And he said, I really don't care what was done in a little sterile lab in Minnesota. I don't care. He said, what I care about is real world results where the wind is blowing and the snow is coming sideways and we're in high elevation. He said, I wanna know how your product works in the real world, not in a damn lab. Now I'm not saying labs or universities or third party validation is a bad thing, but I am saying we gotta keep balance because if all we had was sterile lab data, you know, probably ninety percent of our our customers wouldn't trust it, and I don't blame them. And and you you've probably if you've seen much on Riomax, you've you've probably seen some of our customer testimonials, and I think that's kind of the backbone of our our results, so to speak, is when when we can talk to a producer and say, k. What are you doing? You know? How is this working for you? What results are you seeing? And to take what you said earlier, across the country, we see with Riomax, we're helping pull more nutrients out of the feed. With Rhyzogreen, we're, you know, increasing the nutrient uptake by the plant. So decreasing feed consumption, increasing production across the board. But what that looks like in each region and in in each herd does vary. If you go up to the north country, north country being say Montana, they feed a lot of hay in the winter. And for them, if we talk about stretching feed or getting more out of that hay, that means decreasing feed consumption. Pretty obvious. So you know a guy that's feeding thirty five pounds of hay, now he's, you know, maybe feeding thirty pounds. So rancher in the North Country, he can relate to that and say, oh, so if I could save, you know, fifteen, thirty percent of my feed, here's what that would look like in my scenario. Now, if you take that down to a rancher in say Western Oklahoma or totally different story. Now, yes, we're still helping pull more out of that feed. The cows are able to get more protein, more energy out of what they're eating, so they don't need to eat as much. But in that case, that's gonna look like either decreasing the amount of grass they're consuming through the winter. So, you know, more stockpiled forage in a drought situation probably means don't have to sell as many cows. Or for a lot of them where they're caking, they're actually reducing the amount of cake they're putting out. If you turn around, took that story back north, that that would I mean, they'd appreciate it up in Montana, but not a lot of guys feed cake up in Montana. So there there's that context that So so the the guy in Texas says, don't talk to me because I don't feed hay. And the guy in Montana says, don't talk to me because I don't feed cake. But the principle and the mode of action and the science behind both of these scenarios is exactly the same. That was a bit of a roundabout way of saying, I think it's important that we, you know, hear from the producers across the country what they're seeing. So we're just gonna pause here. We have a definition of anecdotal coming in. Alright. So the the definition of anecdotal, it refers to information, evidence, or accounts based on personal experience, casual observations, or stories rather than on rigorous scientific research, statistics, or proven facts? Okay. What I would challenge myself as to to ensure that when there is a customer testimonial that it is rigorous and it is based on proven facts, not just, yeah, I think my cows look better, I think we saved hay, or I think there was more alfalfa per acre. You know, I'm a big stickler for pictures like this, side by side comparison. Here you see to the line where rhizogreen was applied, or like this. Here's a manure picture. You can see the, Riomax manure versus control. And I was talking to a guy that had challenged us about being too anecdotal. And when he started to see these manure pictures that we we get from our customers, which tells tells the customer what's going on in the rumen, he said, that's science that you can see. There's a lot to this. I appreciate a challenge from a customer like, wait. I think you guys are too anecdotal. So that we can make sure that it is more valid and proven and rigorous, and then at the same time, limit ourselves to doing all of our studies in a sterile white square box of a lab in Minnesota. Just on the the anecdotal side of things is one one thing we're very serious about as a company is when our customers are, you know, potential customers, someone's interested in the product or interested in Rhyzogreen, we strongly encourage doing your own trial of sorts. On the Rhyzogreen, just before we wrap up, if you look at this picture, it shows a guy in Nebraska that did what we call a tarp study. He laid a tarp down and then sprayed rhyzogreen over top. You can see where, rhyzogreen impacted the growth and where it did not. It's as simple as that. Well, I have guys and they say, well, hey. Listen. I'm not a trial farm, so I'm not gonna I'm not, you know, just putting two groups of cows, exact same cows in separate pastures and measuring it for a full year, which is understandable. But to some degree, when we're looking at starting on a I'll give you an example, just had a customer the other day, he runs about five hundred cows and he was looking at starting on Riomax. His father's a little skeptical, just kinda getting rolling and he was interested in trying it but not wanting to, you know, do everything. And I was like, perfect. If you're not gonna do the whole herd, they had, you know, they have some purebred cows and then they have a couple hundred head of commercial cows. They're gonna start with the purebred herd. So we got, I think about three hundred cows on Riomax currently. There's two hundred commercial cows that are gonna be kept separate and they're gonna be measuring those results, the feed consumption and tracking conception rates and those results. Now for them, they're able to do that fairly easily. For some people, you know, maybe they some of our guys will start with the first calf heifers or some of the guys will start with the majority of the herd and keep, you know, fifty running age cows separate. But some way to know that if you're gonna do Riomax for six months or a year, at the end of that six months to a year, what is success for you as a rancher? I think is extremely important because if you don't have a way to measure results on your operation, it doesn't have to be scientific. You know, we don't have to go into the lab and figure out what the rumen fluid's doing in your cows. It's more important though that you can say at the end, I was looking for this result and here's what I achieved with or with rhizogreen because if we don't have that, it makes it very tough for you as an operator to determine, hey, was this worth the financial investment, and is this something I wanna continue in my program? Is that fair enough? It it is fair. And if you if you understand where we're coming from, it's we are customer centric, rancher centric. That's at the center of everything we do. So as Twain said, we wanna help folks make that decision that is right for them, whatever that decision is for or against Riomax. And we have no problem with a guy saying, well, what did you say, Dwayne? A guy says, well, tell you what. I'll give you my worst group. Bring it on. Bring it on. Bring it on. Three words. Bring it on because we're so willing to showcase the science and the mode of action and the results. The point is we want folks in agriculture to be able to make those decisions that are right for them. And then it's not they got fed a line of BS or they got sold a product. It's like, no. They they did their due diligence, and they said this works for me. And then you do get guys that say, I've been studying you for two years. I've been watching you. I've heard all your data, and I wanna put everything on it. Yeah. That that's awesome. And but I would still say to that producer, alright. Hey. Six months time, what sort of measurables do you have to be able to say this is what Riomax is? Is such a good point. With our customers, we always, you know, what are you trying to get out of this deal? This is about driving results. Are you what are you after? Are you after hay savings specifically, or is it weaning weights you're trying to bump conception rates? What is the holistic picture? We gotta walk a mile in your moccasins and understanding what you're trying to get out of a deal. Even if you do the whole herd, we still wanna come back and say, how how are we tracking? Are we winning or we losing? Yep. And at at the end of the day, hopefully, we've conveyed through this is we do have concrete data that we've done with third party verification, University of Minnesota. And then we've also got what some people would call anecdotal. I I don't think a lot of what we see is anecdotal. I mean, is it's stories from guys, but it is facts. You know, when you're looking at pictures, you're looking at the numbers side by side comparisons. Those are very important to what we do, helping ranchers make good decisions for their operation based on what other ranchers are seeing in similar geographical areas. And then last but certainly not least is as you're looking to start on the or Rhyzogreen program is making sure that you have a way to do your own study of sorts. Be it, like we said, might be the whole herd, but you at least know the the results you're looking for. So with that being said, thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you next week. Thank you.