Last updated on May 14th, 2026 at 11:24 am
There's a lot of waste that goes on. No rancher anywhere likes the word waste. What was supposed to last a week is now gone, and they don't have anything for the next five days. You get way more peaks and valleys where they have it, and then they don't. And we know a cow does the best when it gets consistent daily intake of nutrients. So coming into summer, a lot of folks are faced with this decision. Do I do what I normally do or do I consider a tub option? Which one will get a rancher the bigger bang for his buck? Well, the one that well, welcome back to that ranching podcast, around the kitchen table, where we discuss topics that really matter for folks in the ranching industry. Joining me today is Daryl Paskewitz, Twain Manning. So coming into summer, a lot of folks are faced with this decision. Do I do what I normally do? You know, use a loose mineral through the summer or do I consider a tub option? You know, maybe not as traditional. People sometimes think of tubs as protein tubs only for the wintertime or cornstalk grazing. Let's talk about what is the best for folks. You know, we have a loose mineral. Riomax has a loose mineral. Obviously, tubs is the main thing we do. But just to sort of showcase the differences between loose mineral and tubs, what are some of the negatives that guys run into with a loose mineral? Yeah. And like you say, we have our own loose mineral as a company. So by no means, I mean, we're more just talking objectively. This is the the problems. There is windproof, you know, waterproof, and really waste proof benefit of the tub is you're not getting, you know, a bull a bull can't tip over a tub and it blows everywhere, gets wet and clumps up. Like, that's just some negatives as a as a rule of of loose mineral that you hear. There's a lot of waste that goes on, would you say that? Think of sorry. No. Was just thinking of that word waste. No rancher anywhere likes the word waste. Bull dumping it over or even the wind blowing loose mineral is very painful for for people to watch happen because that ain't helping nobody's bottom line. One of the things with a loose mineral versus a tub is that a loose mineral is more difficult to, keep out all the time. We know a cow does the best when it gets consistent daily intake of nutrients. Don't care where they're coming from out of the grass, or the feed, or the supplement. If it's eliminating peaks and valleys and you can have a program that delivers consistent daily intakes, the cattle do much better. So if you have put out a week's supply or two weeks supply of loose mineral, maybe the cow comes and devours it in a couple days, or, like you said, gets tipped over and what was supposed to last a week is now gone and they don't have anything for the next five days, You get way more peaks and valleys where they have it, and then they don't. The tub, we often see our tubs, for example, lasting three to four weeks when you put out a feeding. So it's there twenty four hours a day, day or night. It makes a big difference daily intake. The other benefit of a tub in general is the licking action. You probably got the stats better than I do on saliva production. Doctor Fransky always used the phrase saliva is the start of the digestive process. Yep, it starts right behind the lips, he used to say. Yep, so it's a natural buffer for the rumen and it's a key part of the digestion process. But the amount of saliva that a cow can produce, like you mentioned Twain, varies dramatically. I think different studies have shown that a cow could produce between ten to forty five gallons of saliva per day, depending on a bunch of factors like their diet, and in this case, in this discussion today, the tub, licking on the tub will greatly increase the amount of saliva a cow produces. You think it's important to note that saliva is high in pH and it's a buffering agent for the rumen? So it comes back to it's not just saliva for saliva's sake, but in that licking action, we're starting to make a big impact on the stability and the balance within that rumen to digest the grass that cow's eating. Yeah, the rumen environment, the engine of the cow. We wanna have a very stable functioning rumen environment. And that's a big, big part of it. But when it's if it varies between ten to forty five gallons, it's a huge variance. And and if we can impact that and create more saliva, the tub is a better option. If If you think of it, even if we, like for Riomax, have basically the same ingredients in our loose mineral or our tub, which one will get the rancher the bigger bang for his buck? Well, the one that aids digestion the most. And what you're saying is that licking action is just working, you know, in a natural system. I I think that's that's huge. But the other side of it, this whole waste idea, it really hurts, you know, like you get a rain event, which you're always thankful for moisture, but then you're if if you don't have a cover over your mineral and it clumps up and turns into a brick, you know, then you end up dumping that out. Nobody enjoys that. So looking at this through the lenses of what's gonna make the biggest impact on pasture and what's, you know, dollars and cents, what's the biggest return? Guys guys are also using the tubs. It's a lot easier with a tub to move it around, you know, or when you put your next tub out pasture utilization. So if there's an area of the pasture the cows don't typically go to, you can put it out, you know, in that area and they use it as a management tool. It's just a lot easier than a loose mineral bucket, you might say. Yeah. I remember a guy in Idaho telling me that he said there's parts of the ranch that the cows have never grazed before. Now with Riomax, they're they're grazing it. Well, that's music to his ears and to ours because we're getting more out of every acre. But he also said they're eating star thistle, which he said they've never in the history of this ranch have consumed star thistle. So what it's doing is you're working with the digestive system, that cow is in better shape to digest poor quality forages, but we're also, with the tubs as a grazing management tool, sucking them into the far flung parts of that pasture to help folks get more out of every acre they have. The final thing was a lot of loose minerals out there. They could be even a good mineral program, but they tend to not have the digestion side of it. Daryl? Yeah. When, when we're looking at a formulation, we want to do everything. We want to pack everything possible into that formulation. That's how we look at formulas as a company: what all can you put in there? And there's only so much room, but we have our formulas packed, jam packed full of minerals, vitamins, trace minerals, covering all those bases, and then doing everything possible we can in the in the form of digestion support. So you don't wanna overlook any of those areas. The the one thing guys do sometimes say is, well, I'm just gonna, you know, cheap out or skim by this summer and just use a loose mineral. It's a lot cheaper. You know, it's only thirty bucks a bag or fifty bucks a bag or whatever it is. But if you do the math, and I'd encourage you to do it on your own operation, what we find in over a six month period, a lot of guys are spending say twenty to thirty bucks a cow for their summer's worth of mineral, even on a a lower cost loose mineral could be upwards of forty or fifty on a more expensive loose mineral. And if you compare it to the Riomax tubs on average, because forage quality is good in the summer, we could have lower consumption on the tubs. You're gonna be spending typically in the neighborhood of fifty to sixty bucks a cow. So realistically, you know, we're only talking the difference of about thirty dollars a cow. Look. Cow calf pair, I should say. And we're talking twenty five hundred dollar calves right now. What a thirty dollars investment will get you in terms of feed efficiency. The cow's doing a better job breaking down their feed. They're not eating as much grass, milk production, increasing weaning weights, and then overall fertility conception rates as well. All those things add up and make a thirty dollar investment look like a pretty small blip on the radar at the end of the day. Yeah. Which comes full circle back to our purpose of driving profitability back to rural North America. And, when you talk about those levers we can pull, you know, grazing management, managing your resources, you know, weaning weights, fertility, these things are huge. So, well, that wraps us up for this episode of That Ranching Podcast. See you next week.
AUDIO VERSION
There's a lot of waste that goes on. No rancher anywhere likes the word waste. What was supposed to last a week is now gone, and they don't have anything for the next five days. You get way more peaks and valleys where they have it, and then they don't. And we know a cow does the best when it gets consistent daily intake of nutrients. So coming into summer, a lot of folks are faced with this decision. Do I do what I normally do or do I consider a tub option? Which one will get a rancher the bigger bang for his buck? Well, the one that well, welcome back to That Ranching Podcast, Around the Kitchen Table, where we discuss topics that really matter for folks in the ranching industry. Joining me today is Daryl Pasquitz, Duane Manning. So coming into summer, a lot of folks are faced with this decision. Do I do what I normally do? You know, use a a loose mineral through the summer or do I consider a tub option? You know, maybe not as traditional. People sometimes think of tubs as protein tubs only for the wintertime or cornstalk grazing. Let's talk about what is the best for folks. You know, we have a loose mineral. Riomax has a loose mineral. Obviously, tubs is the main thing we do. But just to sort of showcase the differences between loose mineral and tubs, what are some of the negatives that guys run into with a loose mineral? Yeah. And and like you say, we have our own loose mineral as a company, so by no means, I mean, we're we're more just talking objectively. This is the the problems. There is windproof, you know, waterproof, and really waste proof benefit of the tub is you're not getting, you know, a bowl a bowl can't tip over a tub and it blows everywhere, gets wet and clumps up. Like, that's just some negatives as a as a rule of of loose mineral that you hear. There's a lot of waste that goes on. Would you say that? Think of sorry. No. Was just thinking of that word waste. No rancher anywhere likes the word waste. Bull dumping it over or even the wind blowing loose mineral is very painful for for people to watch happen because that ain't helping nobody's bottom line. One of the things with a loose mineral versus a tub is that a loose mineral is more difficult to keep out all the time. And we know a cow does the best when it gets consistent daily intake of nutrients. It doesn't care where they're coming from. Out of the grass, or the feed, or the supplement. If it's eliminating peaks and valleys and you can have a program that delivers consistent daily intakes, the cattle do much better. So if you have put out a week's supply or two weeks supply of loose mineral, maybe the cow comes and devours it in a couple days, or like you said, it gets tipped over, and what was supposed to last a week is now gone and they don't have anything for the next five days. You get way more peaks and valleys where they have it, and then they don't. The tub we often see our tubs, for example, lasting three to four weeks when you put out a feeding. It's there twenty four hours a day, day or night. It makes a big difference daily intake. The other benefit of a tub in general is the licking action. You probably got the stats better than I do on saliva production. Doctor. Fransky always used the phrase saliva is the start of the digestive process. Yep, it starts right behind the lips, he used to say. Yep, so it's a natural buffer for the rumen, it's a key part of the digestion process. But the amount of saliva that a cow can produce, like you mentioned, varies dramatically. And I think different studies have shown that a cow could produce between ten to forty five gallons of saliva per day depending on a bunch of factors like their diet And in this case, in this discussion today, the tub licking on the tub will increase greatly increase the amount of saliva a cow produces. You think it it's important to note that that saliva is high in pH, and it's a buffering agent for the rumen. So it comes back to it's not just saliva for saliva's sake, but in that licking action, we're starting to make a big impact on the the stability and and the balance within that rumen to digest the grass that cow's eating. Yeah. The rumen environment, the engine of the cow. We wanna have a very stable functioning rumen environment. That's a big big part of it. But when it's if it varies between ten to forty five gallons, it's a huge variance. And and if we can impact that and create more saliva, the tub is the better option. If if you think of it, even if we like, for Riomax, have basically the same ingredients in our loose mineral or our tub, which one will get the rancher the bigger bang for his buck? Well, the one that aids digestion the most, and what you're saying is that licking action is just working, you know, in a a natural system. I I think that's that's huge. But the other side of it, this whole waste idea, it really hurts, you know, like you get a rain event, which we're always thankful for moisture, but then you're if you don't have a cover over your mineral and it clumps up and turns into a brick, you know, then you end up dumping that out. Nobody enjoys that. So looking at this through the lenses of what's gonna make the biggest impact on pasture and what's, you know, dollars and cents, what's the biggest return? Guys guys are also using the tubs. It's a lot easier with a tub to move it around, you know, or when you put your next tub out. Pasture utilization, so if there's an area of the pasture the cows don't typically go to, you can put it out, you know, in that area, and they use it as a a management tool. It's just a lot easier than than a loose mineral bucket, you might say. Yeah. I remember a guy in Idaho telling me that he said there's parts of the ranch that the cows have never grazed before. Now with Riomax, they're they're grazing it. Well, that's music to his ears and to ours because we're getting more out of every acre. But he also said they're eating star thistle, which he said they've never in the history of this ranch have consumed star thistle. So what it's doing is you're working with the digestive system. That cow is in better shape to digest poor quality forages, but we're also, with the tubs as a grazing management tool, sucking them into the far flung parts of that pasture to help folks get more out of every acre they have. The the final thing was a lot of loose minerals out there. They could be even a good mineral program, but they tend to not have the digestion side of it. Daryl? Yeah. When when we're looking at a formulation, we're wanting to do everything we wanna pack everything possible into that formulation. That's how we look at formulas as a company, that it's what all can you put in there. And there's only so much room, but we have our formulas packed, jam packed full minerals, vitamins, trace minerals, covering all those bases, and then doing everything possible we can in the in the form of digestion support. So you don't wanna overlook any of those areas. The the one thing guys do sometimes say is, well, I'm just gonna, you know, cheap out or skimp by this summer and just use a loose mineral. It's a lot cheaper. You know, it's only thirty bucks a bag or fifty bucks a bag or whatever it is. But if you do the math, and I'd encourage you to do it on your own operation, what we find, you know, over a six month period, a lot of guys are spending, say, twenty to thirty bucks a cow for their summer's worth of mineral. Even on a a lower cost loose mineral could be upwards of forty or fifty on a more expensive loose mineral. And if you compare it to the Riomax tubs, on average, because forage quality is good in the summer, we could have lower consumption on the tubs. You're gonna be spending typically in the neighborhood of fifty to sixty bucks a cow. So realistically, you know, we're only talking the difference of about thirty dollars a cow. Look, cow calf pair, I should say. And we're talking twenty five hundred dollar calves right now. What a thirty dollar investment will get you in terms of feed efficiency. The cow's doing a better job breaking down their feed. They're not eating as much grass, milk production, increasing weaning weights, and then overall fertility conception rates as well. All those things add up and make a thirty dollar investment look like a pretty small blip on the radar at the end of the day. Yeah. Which comes full circle back to our purpose of driving profitability back to rural North America. And, when you talk about those levers we can pull, you know, grazing management, managing your resources, you know, weaning weights, fertility, these things are huge. So, well, that wraps us up for this episode of That Ranching Podcast. See you next week.
Summer decisions can make—or break—your bottom line.
In Episode 16, we tackle the loose mineral vs. tub debate and what it really means for your cattle and your operation. From reducing waste and eliminating inconsistent intake to improving rumen health and forage utilization, this conversation gets into the details that actually move the needle.
We break down how better supplementation can lead to: More consistent nutrition Stronger digestion and feed efficiency Improved pasture use Higher milk production, fertility, and weaning weights
Because when you zoom out, it’s not about saving a few bucks upfront—it’s about investing where you get the biggest return per cow.