Daniel Schwab

• Breed: Commercial herd. Purebred/Registered Charolais and Short Horn.
• Calving Date: March 5th – May 15th
• Birth Weight: Avg 85 lbs
• Weaning Weight: About 580-620 lbs
• Weaning Date: November
• Herd Size: 300 head

Fast Facts

We are a 4th generation ranch with the 5th on the way! We have a commercial herd with a handful of different breeds and a purebred, registered herd of Charolais and Short Horn.

In the fall of 2018 we were so short on hay that we needed to purchase it. The hay was costing us $120/bale that year. We started on Riomax® later that fall with hopes of just stretching the hay to last us longer. 14 days into feeding the Riomax® I noticed cows were starting to leave more hay behind than before. On day 21, I cut back from 9 bales a day to 8 bales a day. That saved us 33¢/head/day on hay. Riomax® costs me 21¢/head/day. The hay savings alone is paying for the Ri-omax® and at this point, it was putting an additional 12¢/head/day in my pocket! What we’ve found too is that we can graze cattle on standing corn in the winter and they do great on corn, Riomax®, salt and water. We generally do this for about 1-2 months early in the winter rather than right before calving.

That first year on Riomax® we had a 5% increase in breed up, we were typically seeing 8% open and since have been around 3%. December of 2020 we preg checked 280 animals and had 6 open and 6 later than we wanted. That’s a 4.2% open plus lates combined. Total open was actually only 2.1%. Out of those 6 open, 1 we never actually checked as she went nutty and we don’t keep those so we just counted her as an open since she would be culled. On our heifers that were on Riomax® we had 2 out of 60 open, that’s 3.3% open.

On top of all that, our herd is simply healthier than before too. We used to treat 6-8 calves every single day for scours and pneumonia, now we maybe treat one here and there and that’s generally with only electrolytes.

Through the whole summer and we saw a 30 lb difference in the calves compared to previously.