#36 | Can You Really Reduce Calf Retreats by 30%? (Failed Turboboost Trial)

The weight we put on them in a day breaks down to what it costs to put that weight on them in a day efficiency, and we're buying cattle with absolutely no margin in them. Why are we doing this? So Well, welcome back to that ranching podcast. Today, are in a starting yard in Roswell, New Mexico. And I'm joined here today by Caleb Weidner. I'm the cattle manager here for Adelante Farms. Well, Caleb, it's it's great to be here experiencing the heat. It's about a 102 degrees dry heat. Nice shade throughout this whole feed yard here. And, maybe for the the benefit of our listeners, you could just walk us through, Caleb, a little bit as to what the stress factors you have as an operator of incoming cattle. Obviously, we're here end of August and we got fall ahead of us. Talk to me about what keeps you up at night. What are what are some of the frustrations and such? Yeah. That that's not a real clear answer on, it's it's so seasonal in the fall. In our area, everyone weans in the fall. Horrible time weather wise whenever we're trying to wean calves. Temperatures can be a 100, drop down into the who knows what horrible time with the dust, no rain. Having to doctor cattle, Then we get in the season, in the summertime and we're dealing with heat stress like we are right now. But it's just stress year round with these cattle. Yeah. So whether it's heat stress right now in August or, you know, October, November, you got weather going up and down. I guess, coupled with that, you got calves that have been yanked off of mama or shipped or talk to us a little bit about that stress. Yeah. Taking them through the hardest part of their life, taking them off their mom, changing the diet, putting them in a new environment, having to put them in here amongst other cattle, just compounding factors on top of one another. So when you bring cattle in from day zero, when do you typically see your disease challenges or a disease break? We're on a pretty intense vaccine protocol. Typically, we'll do a three to four days off, vaccinate them, do a two week booster, and then we will typically have to start paying real, real close attention at about twenty one days. I've noticed the last couple years that's kinda creeping up to, could be up to thirty to forty days, but And then suddenly you have a disease break. Right. Right. When you That's just the immunity, I mean, they've gone through everything they can pull and the immunity down is and that's kind of where they quit fighting it off. And then you've given them vaccine on top of that, and and you've almost given them the disease, you know Yep. Which is standard protocol. Vaccine, pulling them off milk, throwing them in a new environment, just all of it. Co mingling. So when you twenty one days in or or more, you start seeing a disease break, what is the main disease challenges that you see here in New Mexico? Respiratory. Right. So you're not necessarily seeing a scour No. Respiratory. It'll be it'll be mostly respiratory just the heat and the dry dust and Okay. Yeah. That's that's a tough one. So now, what is what what do you start hitting them with? If you have one that's got you know, comes down with respiratory challenge, what are you what are you hitting it with? Yeah. That it's kinda seasonal too, depending on which drugs work. To be honest, sometimes we'll do a third treatment with a vaccine booster and just try to trigger an immune response. Sometimes even change up the mineral a little bit and you get, you can kinda see some changes overnight also. Yeah. But are you using like a Draxin or a For us, Draxin works really good in the summertime. I don't have very good success in the pens with a ResFloor, Draxin, Baytrol, Xcede. Okay. When you got a doctor, how much of the time do you end up having to retreat one of those? Usually a first treatment will do it. We have very few retreats. Yeah. And and if you see, let's say the small percentage that you do gotta retreat, do you see them getting knocked back and kinda trailing the rest of their peers in terms of weight gain? Yeah. And I We went through a little run with some Mycoplasma and that's awful for anybody that's had it. But you can treat and treat and never get any success on those. We've never had the best of luck getting those caught back up. I'd call those a chronic at the first treatment. Yeah. A typical respiratory treatment, to be honest, I feel like we treat them with antibiotics and we give them some Banamine for the fever and I I feel like the Banamine just knocking the fever off of them might give them enough of a boost to take off from there. Yep. May maybe wasted antibiotics on those, but generally on those they just take right off after a treatment. Yeah. So and I realize you've got a lot of different cattle coming in here. But what is an average that you see for treat rate and then retreatment and death loss? What what are your what's your numbers for this neck of the woods? Yeah. They they vary. Wean cattle for ranchers in our area, buy cattle out of the sale barns, then have some program cattle coming in too. Would say a normal, throwing those all together, a normal treatment would be five to seven percent, Including our sale barn cattle, everything. Our typical death loss here is generally under two percent. Okay. So five to seven and then two. Wow. That that speaks volumes for what you guys are doing and your management. So that kinda leads us into the question here on, at this this location, you guys are busy doing a side by side trial on the turbo boost program. And so we've shared the numbers, from Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle, East Texas where we saw the treat rates and the retreats go down 15.2 down to 5.2, 14 down to seven, and then East Texas down 30% on treats and 30% on retreats. Now here we are in New Mexico as he said program calves right off the ranch. No sale barn, no commingling. What sort of a how how far would they have been shipped? Yeah. They pulled them off the cow. They they were on the truck approximately six hours to get here. Six hours? Yeah. Okay. So we got a group of steers and a group of heifers off of the same ranch. And, this one is not following the same trend as our other data. As of now, we have zero treats on both groups. There was one death loss, one critter on the Riomax side that maybe just speak to that because it wasn't a regular respiratory challenge. Yeah. Wasn't a typical health health issue with us. He just kinda gutted up, maybe had some impaction tied up somewhere inside and lost that one. Yeah. So, you know, this trial is is not, you know, it's it's not just a shining example of the turbo boost program. But I think it's important to talk about where we've seen turbo boost shine. And of course, we're not through this. We're in roughly day 50 and it's looking to continue through the full sixty day program and talk of getting it all the way to ninety six days and then we'll get some data on on weight gain at the end there. But I guess I just wanted to point up and I so appreciate this opportunity to get, you know, real ground truth. And with program cattle, a good quality calves, we may not have seen the same sort of data we're seeing off of high risk calves out of the Southeast, for example. But having said that, talking to Lance and and and to yourself, what we are seeing is the steers just look. Maybe you could talk just that's a visual. Obviously, we gotta run them across the scale before we get any data. Just a little brighter. Don't I think they've maybe lost a little more of their dead hair than the heifers. Intakes are up above where we would normally have them right now, definitely above the heifers. And again, these are cattle that we've had multiple years in a row and knew this was a set that we wanted to try the turbo boost on and maybe be ahead of some of the issues that we would typically see. Yeah. Well, I I mean, I don't wish it any other way for you because if you're having no issues on both sides, either side here, that's great. We have an old saying that health equals weight gain for starting calves. And the first sixty days is the most critical on a in the feed yard for setting that trajectory for the rest of that calves life in this yard or in a yard. And so, I think what we're seeing, is indicators of weight gain. Like I said, we've seen point three two, point five, some numbers that we just got in in the last few days, north of point five, you know, extra half a pound daily gain across sixty days. So we'll be watching this and following it through and looking forward to hearing back for from you on that that data. So do do you have any other input to the listeners just on the reality of the market as it is today and and the risks that are at play? Yeah. Well, where you were just talking about weight gain and the the weight we put on them in a day breaks down to what it costs to put that weight on them in a day, efficiency and we're buying cattle with absolutely no margin in them. Why are we doing this? So it has to be efficient, it has to be be spot on and and that's what it's all about. Yep. Well, it comes back to efficiency, getting more out of what you've already got. So thanks for joining us at this on this, That Ranching podcast, and we will see you next Thursday morning.