Last updated on June 8th, 2026 at 01:09 pm
What if you could get more out of the land you do have without buying? If a piece of land came up next to your ranch, what money wouldn't you pay for that that twenty percent more ground? Let's say you're running a hundred cows right now and you could run another twenty on the same ground. What is the limiting factor? You know, a lot of guys, when they think of profitability, they think weaning weights and conception rates. One thing that a lot of guys don't think about is Welcome back to this morning's episode of That Ranching podcast. I'm joined here this morning with Trevor Greenfield, Daryl Paskewitz. We're here to talk a little bit on one of the bigger levers you can pull in your operation. You know, a lot of guys, when they think of profitability, they think weaning weights and conception rates are kind of the biggest metrics of success. And and although those are both very important, we wanna impact those as well. One thing that a lot of guys don't think about is the carrying capacity of their operation. Trevor and I were talking a week or two ago, we were saying, you know, if you think about it, if a piece of land came up next to your ranch, you could increase your ranch by twenty percent. Let's just say, you know, you could grow your ranch, buy some more land. What money wouldn't you pay for that? That twenty percent more ground, Daryl, your ranch a little on the side. What would you say to that? I think it's highly important to understand how you can improve efficiency, increase efficiency. If you think about it this way, you know, let's say you can, you're running a hundred cows right now and you could run another twenty on the same ground with what we see on Riomax where, you know, between fifteen and thirty percent feed savings that translates to grass, Trevor, as you often remind us. Yep. Carrying capacity. Just unharvested hay. And so you could pull another twenty calves off the same ground. I think there's been studies that have shown about, what is it about eighty five percent of a rancher's inputs are feed or forage, I guess, including grass. So you think about that, you have twenty free calves. Yeah. You got the cost of running those extra cows or keeping those heifers back. But those extra calves that don't have a feed bill attached to them are highly profitable to the operation. Do you think, Twain, sometimes the ranch size or the number of acres you have is a limiting factor to growth. People might have a thousand cows and that's all they can sustain. They may have an appetite for growth and they want to get to twelve hundred, but they can't because they don't have the resources to sustain it. And so I think that talks to a bigger question, whether you're one hundred cows or one thousand cows, is what is the limiting factor? And what if you could get more out of the land you do have without buying? I mean, a chunk came up next to you, you'd probably want to consider buying it. Yeah. We're not saying don't buy it. But what if it didn't come up and you still want it to grow? If you think all the people we work with, from, you know, guys in New Mexico that run eighty or one hundred acres to the cow down to we have customers over in Missouri that they're running a few acres to the cow. Missouri or Missouri? I've heard it both ways. And then you go, I mean, all the way up to guys in Northern BC that we work with and we hear it consistently regardless of the stocking rate, regardless of how many cows they run, is they can't find more land. It's the limiting factor for the vast, vast majority of Western US and Canada running cattle? Would you say? Well, Greenland's available. It's not looking for you. So one of the other things that's going along with that is if your cows eating ten to twenty percent less feed, you have a whole spin off effect right there. Whether you're using that extra grass to increase your stocking rate or increase your carrying capacity and bring in more cows or keep more cows or not, you still have the cow using less feed and not putting on miles, walking around chasing feed. They're laying down earlier in the day. We hear this all the time, don't we? That they're conserving energy, they're getting their needs met earlier in the day. They're producing more milk and higher quality milk and getting better weight gain on those calves, but it's not at the expense of increased feed consumption, is it? I was going to say to that, Darryl, let's say you're not wanting to, with the price of cows or heifers now, you don't want to buy more. But to your point, if they're running more efficiently, which they are, we're able to then graze more days. You may not graze more cows, that's an option, but you may say, well, I just want to stay with a thousand head, not twelve hundred. Well, you can stretch out the capacity of your acres so that you're grazing more days. Fifteen to thirty percent hay savings is usually, or hay or forage, is usually measured in the wintertime with feeding hay because you can count bales. But it's the same on pasture. That efficiency number is the same. And whether you're wanting to increase your herd or just run more lean and mean, I had an old guy tell me efficiency never goes out of style. Well, I I think it's more difficult to maybe measure it when you're season long grazing. Some people are turning cows out on grass first thing in the spring and take them off when the snow hits in the fall. And we've seen people comment that they've have noticed that even even on season long grazing, they watch their grass production and they monitor that very closely and they do see a difference. But it's even more noticeable when you're in really small paddocks or you're maybe moving the cows once every seven days and all of a sudden they get the cows on Riomax and get these cows spooled up and get that digestion engine, the rumen, very healthy and working better. And suddenly they go from maybe seven days to nine or ten or eleven days, And it's noticeable within just two or three weeks of getting the cows on the tubs. And really whether you use that grass or you don't, for some of our customers, it's just the insurance policy of knowing that you got that extra feed available so that on a year like this, guys are coming in, they're worried, you know, maybe of the drought and what have you. I would say there's plenty of our customers that would have some, you know, dead forage from last fall that they never used. They just left, you know, looking after their ground. They're coming out this spring and they got that forage to get started with and then they spray stockpiled forage. You're not pushing your ground nearly as hard while still being able to pull a number of calves off. You know, guys have loans to meet and what have you, they have to pull a certain amount of calves off their ground each year to cash flow it. For sure. And I've heard it in reverse, guys not necessarily not wanting to build their herds, but in drought years where a lot of the neighbors have had to sell down, and guys on Riomax have been able to maintain their numbers because of that efficiency deal where we're squeezing more out of every mouthful, hence we're getting more out of every acre, we're running more lean and mean, And they are thanking us today when markets are so good that they didn't have to sell down like so many of their neighbors. So we've talked about Riomax and that Rhyzogreen kind of inserts here too, a little bit on it, a lot a bit. Yeah. Yeah. But you were talking to that fellow in Wyoming the other day. He was complaining in a good way. He said he's using Riomax, so he's conserving forages. He's got stockpiled forages and stockpiled hay, but he's also using Rhyzogreen, so he's getting more production out of his land. And he said, right now, I'm in a situation where I got more grass than I need and more hay than I need, and I don't want to buy more cows. Right? So that's, that's just a warning. These are some of the bad things that can happen using Riomax and Rhyzogreen. But then he said, well, what I might do is just take cattle in, you know, and think of that. Now, now he's got another revenue stream. So when we look at Q50 and this quest to get to fifty percent ranch efficiency, it opens up more opportunities for revenue streams. Not only is he, you might say, drought proof, like he's got stockpiled forages, he's sitting in a good position where he can now take in more cattle and add more revenue on top of his same land base. In a lot of ranch country, one of the things is that the limiting factor to forage production is water, simply the volume of moisture. And you have the snowball effect as soon as you start saving forage and reducing the amount of feed that cow is eating. The more cover you have on your land, the more shade, of course, on the soil. We all know that the temperature of the soil drops dramatically as soon as it's covered and has good More than ten degrees. Dramatically, yeah, it is a huge, and if you're not evaporating the water off, you're going to grow more for forage next year. And the other thing to that point on Rhyzogreen, we see we change the soil structure, So for every inch of moisture you do get, whether that's rainfall or snow melt or irrigation, we're getting more into the soil versus less runoff. Well, let's leave you with this question. What would you do with twenty percent more land or twenty percent more resource in your operation? Give it some thought. That's one heck of a question. Is this part of the wrap up? Yeah. Thanks for joining us this morning on That Ranching Podcast. We'll see you next week. You have one week to contemplate that question because we're gonna be back. We're coming back at you as foot rot, pink eye and summer pneumonia next week.
AUDIO VERSION
What if you could get more out of the land you do have without buying? If a piece of land came up next to your ranch, what money wouldn't you pay for that that twenty percent more ground? Let's say you're running a hundred cows right now and you could run another twenty on the same ground. What is the limiting factor? You know, a lot of guys when they think of profitability, they think weaning weights and conception rates. One thing that a lot of guys don't think about is Welcome back to this morning's episode of That Ranching podcast. I'm joined here this morning with Trevor Greenfield, Daryl Basquitz. We're here to talk a little bit on one of the bigger levers you can pull in your operation. You know, a lot of guys, when they think of profitability, they think weaning weights and conception rates are kind of the biggest metrics of success. And and although those are both very important, we wanna impact those as well. One thing that a lot of guys don't think about is the carrying capacity of their operation. Trevor and I were talking a week or two ago, we were saying, you know, if you think about it, if a piece of land came up next to your ranch, you could increase your ranch by twenty percent. Let's just say, you know, you could grow your ranch, buy some more land. What money wouldn't you pay for that that twenty percent more ground? Daryl, your ranch a little on the side. What would you say to that? I think it's highly important to understand how you can improve efficiency, increase efficiency. If you think about it this way, you know, let's say you can you're running a hundred cows right now and you could run another twenty on the same ground. With what we see on Riomax where, you know, between fifteen and thirty percent feed savings, that translates to grass, Trevor, as you often remind us. Yep. Carrying capacity. Just unharvested hay. And so you could pull another twenty calves off the same ground. I think there's been studies that have shown about, what is it, about eighty five percent of a rancher's inputs are feed or forage, I guess, including grass. So you think about that, you have twenty free calves. Yeah. You got the cost of running those extra cows or keeping those heifers back, but those extra calves that don't have a feed bill attached to them are highly profitable to the operation. Do you think, Dwayne, sometimes the the ranch size or the number of acres you have is a limiting factor to growth. People might have a thousand cows and that's all they can sustain. They may have an appetite for growth and they want to get to twelve hundred, but they can't because they don't have the resources to sustain it. And so I think that talks to a bigger question, whether you're a hundred cows or a thousand cows, is what is the limiting factor? And what if you could get more out of the land you do have without buying? I mean, if a chunk came up next to you, you'd probably wanna consider buying it. Yeah. I we're not saying don't buy it. But but what if it didn't come up and you still want it to grow? If if you think all the people we work with from, you know, guys in New Mexico that run eighty or a hundred acres to the cow, down to we have customers over in Missouri that they're running a few acres to the cow. Missouri or Missouri? And I've heard it both ways. And then you go, I mean, all the way up to guys in Northern BC that we work with, and we hear it consistently regardless of the stocking rate, regardless of how many cows they run, is they can't find more land. And and it is a it's it's the limiting factor for the vast vast majority of Western US and Canada running cattle. Would you say? Well, Greenland's available. It's not a good freak. So one of the other things that's going along with that is if your cow is eating ten to twenty percent less feed, you have a whole spin off effect right there. Whether you're using that extra grass to increase your stocking rate or increase your carrying capacity and bring in more cows or keep more cows or not, you still have the cow using less feed and not putting on miles, walking around chasing feed. They're laying down earlier in the day, we hear this all the time don't we? That they're conserving energy, they're getting their needs met earlier in the day, they're producing more milk and higher quality milk and getting better weight gain on those calves, but it's not at the expense of increased feed consumption, is it? I was going to say to that, Darryl, let's say you're not wanting to, with the price of cows or heifers now, you don't wanna buy more. But to your point, if they're running more efficiently, which they are, we're able to then, you know, graze more days. You may not graze more cows, that's an option, but you may say, well I just want to stay with one thousand head not twelve hundred. Well you can stretch out the capacity of your acres so that you're grazing more days. Fifteen to thirty percent hay savings is usually or hay or forage is usually measured in the wintertime with feeding hay because you can count bales. But it's the same on pasture. That that efficiency number is the same. And whether you're wanting to increase your herd or or just run more lean and mean, I had an old guy tell me efficiency never goes out of style. Well, I I think it's more difficult to maybe measure it when you're season long grazing. Some people are turning cows on on grass first thing in the spring and take them off when the snow hits in the fall. And we've seen people comment that they have noticed that even on season long grazing, they watch their grass production and they monitor that very closely and they do see a difference, but it's even more noticeable when you're in really small paddocks or you're maybe moving the cows once every seven days and all of a sudden they get get the cows on Riomax and and get these cows spooled up and get that digestion engine, the rumen, very healthy and working better. And suddenly they go from maybe seven days to nine or ten or eleven days, And it's noticeable within just two or three weeks of getting the cows on the tufts. And really, you use that grass or you don't, for some some of our customers, it's just the insurance policy of knowing that you got that extra feed available so that on a year like this, guys are coming in, they're worried, you know, maybe that of the drought and what have you is, I would say, there's plenty of our customers that would have some, you know, dead forage from last fall that they never used. They just left, you know, looking after their ground. They're coming out this spring and they got that forage to get started with Stockpiled. And then they spray stockpiled forage so you're not you're not pushing your ground nearly as hard while still being able to pull a number of calves off. You know, guys have loans to meet and what have you, they have to pull a certain amount of calves off their ground each year to to cash flow it. For sure. And I've heard it in reverse, guys not necessarily not wanting to build their herds, but in drought years where a lot of the neighbors have had to sell down and guys on Riomax have been able to maintain their numbers because of that efficiency deal where we're squeezing more out of every mouthful, hence we're getting more out of every acre, we're running more lean and mean, And they are thanking us today when markets are so good that they didn't have to sell down like so many of their neighbors. So we've talked about Riomax and that rhizogreen kind of inserts here too. A little bit on it. A lot of it. A little lot. Yeah. Yeah. But you were talking to that fellow in Wyoming the other day. He was complaining in a good way. He said he's using Riomax, so he's conserving forages. He's got stockpiled forages and stockpiled hay. But he's also using rhizogreen, so he's getting more production out of his land. And he said, right now, I'm in a situation where I got more grass than I need and more hay than I need, and I don't wanna buy more cows. Right? So that's that's just a warning. These are some of the bad things that can happen using Riomax and Rhyzogreen. But then he said, well, what I might do is just take cattle in, you know, and think of that. Now now he's got another revenue stream. So when we look at Q50 and and this quest to get to fifty percent ranch efficiency, it opens up more opportunities for revenue streams. Not only is he, you might say, drought proof, like he's got stockpiled forages, he's sitting in a good position where he can now take in more cattle and add more revenue on top of his same land base. In a lot of ranch country, one of the things is that the limiting factor to forage production is water, simply the volume of moisture. And you have the snowball effect as soon as you start saving forage and and reducing the amount of feed that cow is eating. The more cover you have on your land, the more shade, of course, on the soil. We we all know that the temperature of the soil drops dramatically as soon as it's covered and has good More than ten degrees. Dramatically. Yeah. It is a huge and if you're not evaporating the water off, you're gonna grow more for more forage next year. And the other thing to that point on Rhyzogreen, we see we change the soil structure. So for every inch of moisture you do get, whether that's rainfall or snow melt or irrigation, we're getting more into the soil versus less runoff. Well, let's leave you with this question. What would you do with twenty percent more land or twenty percent more resource in your operation? Give it some thought. That's one heck of a question. Is this part of the wrap up? Yeah. Thanks for joining us this morning on that ranching podcast. We'll see you next week. You have one week to contemplate that question because we're gonna be back. Back at you as footrout, pink eye, and summer pneumonia next week.
What if you could increase your carrying capacity by 20% without buying more land? In this episode of That Ranching Podcast, Trevor Greenfield, Daryl Paskewitz, and Twain break down one of the biggest profit levers most ranchers overlook: forage efficiency.
Most producers focus on weaning weights and conception rates — and those matter — but the real question is: What’s the limiting factor in your operation?
The guys discuss - Increasing carrying capacity - Running more cows on the same acres - Feed and forage efficiency - Drought resilience - Riomax and Rhyzogreen results
If you could pull 20 more calves off the same land base… what would that mean for your ranch?