Just keep using a bigger gun. Right. Yeah. Bigger bigger, more expensive gun. And and at these price levels, a dead one is expensive. He never knows what works. He just knows what doesn't work. You don't have to save that many calves to make a big difference. You know, if you don't poop, you'll die. Welcome back to That Ranching podcast. I'm Duane Manning, one of the family here at Riomax. Jared Pockner from Northwest Oklahoma, Riomax dealer, a superior rep, marketing cattle and and stuff like that. I'm Robert Martin. I'm from, Aetna, Texas, Riomax. New Riomax dealer. Do, some backgrounding in cow calf operation. Do you wanna kick us off, Robert? Maybe explain a little bit what you guys do bringing in cattle and then We have buyer order buyers at different auction barns that consolidate them at their place, and they they give them the paste. They give them all their different vaccines that and shots that worm them, and and then they bring them to us. And when we get them, we're already behind because it might have been four or five, six days. We don't know how long they've sit at the auction barn before they were ever bought. It's really a high risk calf and hard way to make a living. Yeah. So have you seen like, you're using the paste Yes, sir. Before they get there. What what have you seen? Since we started using the paste, we've noticed a a big difference in the the numbers of the ones we've had to pull in individually. And if I do treat them, I give them the paste again, and our retreats are our retreat numbers are down. It's way easier to preventative measures than once one gets sick, it's it's hard to bring it's hard to bring one back, especially a little a young one than most of the cattle we have, being so small, don't have any markings on their ears, and they they probably don't have any mineral in their past. They probably had never had anything done in probably ninety five percent of them are bull calves. So And and you we were talking earlier today. You were saying it seems like the last few years, health has been a lot tougher. It seems we're just talking a little bit, Jared, like on the Draxin side of things with it becoming more readily available for people. There's a lot more guys that use that where they maybe used to use LA two hundred or something to to keep using a bigger gun. Right. Bigger bigger, more expensive gun and and at these price levels, a dead one is expensive. Very expensive. When you get in a group of calves, if the the rancher maybe upstream has been using Draxin to treat all of a sudden It's not work. Block. There's not very many guns that are bigger than that. So So have you noticed to get those calves up on feed and we get them eating, has the turbo has the paste helped in in that regard? It could be the paste or the tubs because we kinda started at the same time, but we I did notice that it seems like they acclimate to the feed better, and I did notice you don't have as many belly swollen. And also also on their first group that we started with, at six weeks in, they gained I weighed them coming out, and they looked they looked great. And they gained two point one pounds. That's being cut. That's balling forty to forty five days in. Yeah. On a on a, like, two seventy five. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Two seventy five. And usually, we're in that first six weeks, whenever I'm turning them out to grass, if I weigh in before that, usually, we're about one one point five, one point six. Really? Because it So over half a pound a day better. Which is about twenty five pounds, which is a lot of weight. I was talking to a producer the other day from, actually, Oklahoma. We're doing some trials with, and he was saying that if you have to treat one, about guaranteed, you're gonna have to roll them back to the next group. You know, they they're set back that far. You're Yeah. Behind, basically. So you're saying they're seem like they're acclimating to feed faster, which were you you were telling me the other day, I think, that they're you felt like they're almost eating more right out of the gate on Yes. On Real Max, which in in this case is a good thing. Yeah. Great thing. Yeah. Need they need protein. They should be on they should be still having their mom's milk. Yeah. They have to get it from somewhere. Grass isn't gonna do it. Yeah. Everybody in the stocker business, when they're receiving highly risk calves like that, the number one thing they're trying to do is to get them on feed, back on feed. Yep. They've been through such a stressful deal. Their gut bacteria, everything's just gone, you know. And that's why I think the paste is a great deal for, you know, I had a customer that he was buying in Mississippi calves and same kind of deal, maybe a little bigger than what you're dealing in. He bought some of the paste. He says, I like it. I'm getting along good with it. But I'm gonna use a cheaper product to start with and then I'm gonna use the Turbo Paste on my retreats and stuff. And I just thought, it's ten bucks. It's ten bucks. It's cheap. Back to what he was saying about preventative. Why would you wait till you have to Yeah. Why would you wait? When it's ten bucks on a twenty two hundred dollar calf or whatever, you know, got in that sucker by the time you get to you. Yep. Ten bucks is nothing. You don't have to save that many calves. Yeah. Or or just than two hundred. Or just give them on feed. You know, just get them on feed and get them going. What, Daryl, though, he says is a calf never gets over a good start. Yeah. You know, from a baby calf, but it applies in the feed yard too. If a calf gets started properly, that makes a world of difference in performance. And like your calves, they get a bad start. Yeah. And you gotta come in in the middle and try to try to fix it. It's a hard job. It gives you the best it gives you the best shot at doing it. It's like the turbo boost gives them right away. Yep. Yeah. It gets right to them. And then, you know, the tub's out there. Then when they come out of the truck, they hit the tub first thing. I've got one customer that they buy in a lot of grass calves and they're getting them out of sale barns and stuff all the time. And, of course, they get them in and they process them and stuff. And then they get them back in in a couple weeks and they revac them and all. And he calls me one day and he says, oh, this group broke on me and everybody's sick. And I'm like, well, what's going on? He's like, well, they got whatever I gave them. I think we cause a lot of the problems That that we deal with, you know. And and I don't know if I want you guys to broadcast this out, but You know, I always used to say, like, if you're having trouble, don't ever call your vet. Because he never knows what works. He just knows what doesn't work. Because nobody calls him when it works, you know, when it's good. When things are good, nobody calls the vet and says, hey, look at this. You know, and every time you're in a, you're in a wreck with a set of calves and the vet will go, well, you got to bring them in and revac them. And then they tip over and you're like, oh gosh, I was a mess. And he says, well, would have really been bad if you hadn't revac them. And you can't well, maybe. I don't know. You don't know. But I think it's important to to treat those calves in a positive, you know, getting their gut back in shape and because if you think like if you're talking about like a calf like that, I mean, how long have they if they got hay at the sale barn, maybe, you know, by how long they've been off milk now, that's a massive gut change for that animal or even a, you know, a weaned calf. I was talking to Trevor the other day and you always hear when you got a cold, keep eating. Yeah. Right? Like you gotta you gotta feed a cold. Right? Well, what happens is the same with cattle is when they the first thing that happens when they start feeling down is they go off feed and that just kills that good microbe population and the bad stuff they So if you can keep that gut healthy, that's half the battle. They're going through that. Their guts are empty. They're and then and then we load them up with a disease challenge, whether it's through the sale barn or through vaccines or whatever we do, we just further stress them. And a lot of times you have to do it kinda in a a logistic sense like, well, we're working them. So we're gonna do this and we're gonna do that and Everything, all the respiratory, everything's tied to stress. Yeah. Gut stress, nice stress, stress away from its mom, stress with the new group, just like kids going to school. It's it's all new environment, new everything is everything is stress. But Yep. I've always thought that the gut stress was one of the hardest because it it seems like most of our problems come at week two and a half to to week four or five. It takes that long to get through their system, right, to where, like, a stress event typically is what precedes a health break. You know, if if you have that, but it takes a couple weeks for whatever reason, it's more incubating, like you say, or it's subclinical, I guess, is the easiest way to put it. They're not that sick yet. All of a sudden they start going off feet or whatever and then it breaks out. And it's not to say you can't treat them obviously. Mean, we're not trying to get rid of Draxin and what have you, but from everything you can do for gut health and getting ahead of it, or when you do treat them, getting that gut back going again is extremely critical to making sure it recovers. That customer you had that treated him with a sick So yeah, he had his sick pen and I think I think he said he had like sixty head or so in this sick pen and they were kind of chronic and stuff. He was like, we're not gonna be able to do anything with them. And he ran them through and and gave them the paste. And I think he said all but like five of them bounced back. Wow. And and got got back going where they were able to catch back up with the herd. And he he said within twenty four hours of giving them the pace, he noticed a difference Wow. In their activity and and just being up eating and being at the bunk and and doing that stuff. So, you know, that's kind of an anecdotal deal. But it it just to me, it makes sense. Like, you you gotta stimulate that rumen and they gotta be back on feed. Know, when I worked in the feed yard and stuff, that was that was a number one everything, you know. You you pull six, but how you get those six back on feed. That's where they need they need to start eating again. That's right. You know. Don't eat, you die. That's right. Is why That's a good thing. Well, so I got my little son, he's about six years old and he's walking around one day and he looks up at me and he goes, hey dad, you know, if you don't poop, you'll die. He's right. Well, yeah, he's right. He's kinda scorned about it from the other end. It's the same deal. Wise. Very wise. He is wise. He's a wise little kid. Well, I think we're about ready to wrap up. But if do you guys have any parting shots and That was mine. That If you don't poop, you'll die. You don't poop, you'll die. What a better way to end. Yeah. Hey. We'll see you next week. Alright. Bingo. Thank you, guys. Very much. Thank you. Alright. We got a little editing to do with that.
AUDIO VERSION
There's an old truth in this business: a calf never gets over a good start.
You hear it from old-timers, you hear it from vets, and you hear it again in this conversation with two Riomax dealers who are living it every day; one running cattle through a stocker operation in Northwest Oklahoma, the other backgrounding high-risk calves out of the sale barn in Edna, Texas.
- We talk about what's actually changed in calf health over the last few years — why the industry's answer keeps being a bigger, more expensive antibiotic instead of getting ahead of the problem.
- We talk about gut health, and why the real fight isn't at intake, it's two to five weeks in, when the stress catches up with them.
- And we talk about a 60-head sick pen that everybody had written off and what happened when they didn't give up on it.
There's also a six-year-old who explains the whole thing better than most do. You'll know it when you hear it. If you're buying calves out of a sale barn, running cattle through a backgrounding program, or just trying to keep your retreat numbers down and your margin up, sit down and listen to this one.