#32 | Video Rep Explains Why He Won’t Use This Program on His Own Calves

The kind of checks these guys are gonna have to write are gonna blow your mind. Forty bucks a calf on a three thousand dollar calf isn't isn't a lot of money to spend. Well, to That Ranching Podcast where we usually sit around the kitchen table. Here we're out in Cody, Wyoming to talk about things that matter to men and women in ranching and in the feedlot space. So today, I'm joined by Matt Thompson. Matt, thanks for joining us here in Cody. Tell us a little bit about yourself and and why are you here today because you're from Idaho. Yep. I'm from the eastern Idaho area. My family's been in the ranching business for over a hundred a hundred and fifteen years or so. And right now, we're cow calf producers. When we first come to Idaho, we were in the sheep business in nineteen ten I believe my grandfather came here and like a lot of ranchers in Eastern Idaho it's slowly converted over to cattle. So got three boys and and I'm married to my wife Jamie. We're here in Cody today because I've been a video rep for several different companies over the years, fifteen years or so, but I market quite a few calves every every summer and and we ship them in the fall and early spring usually. I handle some breeding stock, but I've always wanted to be in the be a rancher and be in the business like my my dad and my grandfather. I'm hoping I can hold it all together so my sons can be in the ranching business and and it's the only thing I've ever wanted to do. Well, that's a great story. We got your great grandfather, your grandfather, your father, yourself and then your sons. You said you had three sons? I've got some sons and my brother's involved in the ranch with me and he's got some sons as well and some kids that want to be involved. We're talking generational, that's five generations and that's a really heartwarming story because that's the fabric of rural North America really is that generational aspect to ranching. And so just to jump into the here and now, we've got the sale today. Talk to us a little bit about where the industry is at and the optimism and some of the prices you expect to see today. The cattle business has been phenomenal the last few years. But the reason that that it's been phenomenal is because the numbers are way down. The supply is low and primarily brought on by drought and different factors, but we've sold and I've even sold my own calves for money that you'd never would have thought of ten years ago. But we'll have calves selling today from twenty five hundred to three thousand dollars ahead I would would say some even more than that. A lot of money to have invested in these cattle and you want to do everything you can to keep keep those cattle going and gaining weight and not in the dead pile. Yes sir. Obviously, Rio Nutrition, home of and Rhyzogreen, our focus for the last quarter of a century pretty much has been the cow calf space. The new focus we have or a new segment that we're working on is this feedlot starter space. And I will say right on camera that we are not experts in the feedlot industry. But I will also say we know one or two things about bovine performance in nutrition in terms of immune systems, getting an immune response, digestion, efficiency, overall performance. So with the Turbo Boost program, that is a dose of paste of the Turbo Boost paste on arrival and then sixty days exposure to the Turbo Boost tub. With these guys that are buying these calves today to start in a feed yard or in a backgrounding operation stocker, whatever that is. So the prices are what they are. The the ranchers that we serve, it's good for them. They deserve it. They've had tough years and and we're very very happy for them. Talk to us a little bit about what's going on in the minds of the buyers today and what's at risk. They got to take these calves, some of them from a high stress deal, some of them won't be weaned, some of them will be weaned, but they don't know how they were weaned. I mean, we give them a protocol that they've had shots and everything but they've got a lot of money invested and they just can't afford to have one go home and stand there and lose weight and be sick or die and there's nothing worse than a sick calf. Pneumonia can just devastate these calves on arrival when they get stressed and get hauled twenty hours and unloaded in a place they don't know where they're at and dumped in with a bunch of other calves and nose to nose contact can transfer really fast they can they're you can get in a wreck in a hurry. The kind of checks these guys are gonna have to write for these calves are just gonna blow your mind but they gotta have them they gotta have those pens full and and they're in that business so they got to pay the money to play the game. And we appreciate it. Know speaking from the ranching side of things, the cow calf sector, we appreciate it. We appreciate the consumer out there. Look at the consumer demand even with these prices of beef, Matt, from everything I've heard, people are still voting with their checkbook. They're they're still buying beef at the counter. I think chicken's great but I think it's more, you know, fitting as a salad. Beef stays in the middle of the plate. So we we realize there's optimism but coming with it is this risk. And as Matt alludes to, you don't want something in the dead pile. That's worst case scenario, but you also want something that is, you might say, expressing its genetic potential. How much money and effort and progressive thinking has gone into development of our bloodlines and the genetics. Genetics, yes. And so when we have a stress event, pulling them away from mom, that is a stress event right there. Shipping, commingling, talked about running them through a sale barn or maybe they don't go through a sale barn if it's a video sale, so you you eliminate that stress. But one way or another, we're trying to navigate a path of it's gonna be a stress event, how can we reduce that stress and how can we help that calf respond and heal up, you might say, and get straightened out. I'm very excited about the turbo boost product. I've I've been weaning my calves on on the regular Riomax PG three sixty and I've got a lot of confidence in that. But for these guys that are buying calves and guys putting them together at the sale barn to run his yearlings next year, this is gonna be an invaluable tool just to give them a shot of boost their health. Anything you can do, it's it's gonna be well worth the money to keep them keep them gaining. So the the question comes up, well, how is this different to the regular Riomax? And that's a fir it's built off of the Riomax foundation and then the turbo boost tub specifically has three main things added to it. One is a bumper level of that Riomax yeast that's in every tub but that Riommune yeast ties up and flushes out the bad guys. I don't know if everyone agrees with ice or likes ice but I'm going to use that example. Ice ties up and flushes out and sends home the bad guys. Yep. That shouldn't have been there. That's what Riommune yeast does. So we have a bumper level of that, we have bolstered levels of the key trace minerals to feed that immune system, and then most importantly, we have that Turboimmune which is an all natural package. It serves to stimulate an immune activation response. So let's just talk about an immune system. An immune system is like a military base. It's equipped, it's got troops, it's got artillery, it's got ammunition, it's got training. As soon as there's a threat, it goes into high alert mode. It goes into fight, fight, fight mode. And that is what we refer to with turbo immune as that immune response activation. It's like an on switch for that fight, fight, fight mode. And where we're going with this folks is pursuing my dream and maybe that's all it is, is a dream, Matt, to help these guys starting calves to wean themselves off of dependence on antibiotics. Definitely. I don't think we'll ever get it done completely. But already we're making progress to that end so that instead of treating a disease challenge that comes from a stress event with an antibiotic, we do it the other way around working with mother nature and have that calf fight off and respond to that disease challenge with an immune response. Yep. That's the science behind it. A lot of the calves we'll sell today will be programmed calves, meaning they can be third party verified as verified natural and hormone free. And I mean, the American consumer has kinda shown that that the grocery store that they're willing to pay a little more for one. They know where it came from and know that it hasn't had antibiotics. This real product qualifies. It won't take you out of a natural program. It qualifies for third party. My own cattle are I sell this program, and if I have to treat one, it doesn't get to go on the truck with my natural calves. It goes to the sale barn and it sells out a discount to the rest of them. What sort of a discount? What what does that cost to you when it gets kicked out? Some of these natural programs, these calves are a couple hundred dollars ahead. You sell one on the video sale in front of a competitive bidding situation for a big amount of money, you might take it to the sale barn in October and it might sell it midnight at a discount, know. You just don't know. Which really comes full circle, Matt, back to our purpose at Rio. We're just a family business. And that is driving profitability back to rural North America. And that is the core or the lens through which we make every decision. When you talk about getting kicked out of the program and that money that we really leave on the table, that hurts. Right? What the cost of this turbo boost is is gonna sound awful cheap once you start losing cows out of calves out of a program or the weight loss, dead calves, you can pay for some some paste in some tubs pretty quick. And to your point, the the turbo boost paste and the turbo boost tub are both verified with where food comes from for those all natural programs. That was the first thing we got run through the the no one wants to be using something. Oh, that doesn't qualify. So that's all good there. You talked about using the regular Riomax for weaning, and guys have done that for over two decades. The thing we see there is they get up on feed faster in that transition and they overcome stress. Now with this, the Turbo Boost program, it's sort of on steroids and the question is, well, how is that tracking in terms of data? So for those that are hungry for data to justify a decision one way or the other, I have some early data that's come in. And obviously, we've been doing trials on the turbo boost program in the south just because that's where calves are moving sooner. So we've got Oklahoma, East Texas, and Texas Panhandle. So Oklahoma, there was a study done turbo boost versus control, and of course, that's the paste and the sixty day exposure. Treat rate, if that's important to you, five point two percent on turbo boost versus fifteen point two on the other group and a two point two pound daily gain over sixty days average versus a one point eight eight. That's real money. That's real money and health, folks, equals gain. I know that sounds corny but it's true. When that immune system is not trying to fight a disease, conserves the energy in that diet, the same diet, and it'll take more of that energy and channel it to weight gain and that's what we're seeing here in Oklahoma. Let's jump to the East Texas, treatments were down thirty percent. And retreats, which retreats kind of gives a shiver up your spine. Right? Because a lot of time a retreat could be on the way to a chronic and then they stay in that sick pen and go nowhere. Treatments down thirty percent and retreats down thirty percent also. And they're showing up in weight gain at two point one pound average daily gain versus a one point six. So there we have a half a pound differential over those sixty days. And then jumping to the Texas Panhandle, obviously, a lot a lot of cattle fed there, Seven percent treat rate versus a fourteen. And retreats point nine five percent, so just under one percent versus four. And then a zero death loss versus five percent. Now, it's hard to make money on dead cattle. That's the obvious. The frustration here and the risk that's at stake is you can't afford to not have calves gaining at their genetic potential or flatlining. And so we're not this is not a silver bullet but it is some good honest tools that are all natural that we can pull some levers with the immune system, with the digestive system, with the appetite, get them up to that bunk sooner, get them on feed sooner. And as our old nutritionist, German nutritionist said years ago, and he just passed a couple years ago, Fransky used to say in his German brogue, is a healthy hungry calf up at the bunk. Oh yeah. Is this sounding like a different language or does this make sense? It makes sense to me. I think the buyer knew that the calves would been on a turbo boost Riomax program. I think they add value to those calves. I think they're worth a little more to them because they got the confidence to know they're not gonna fall apart on them. I think you guys are going in the right direction for sure and I'm real excited about the turbo boost. And then the last question that comes up, well, how much is it? Because everybody's watching their dollars and I get that I'm in business too. For the program, that dose of paste on arrival and sixty days exposure to the tub, you're looking at around that thirty eight dollar mark. That's the cost of this technology to get you a healthy, hungry calf up at the bunk. It's not a cure all. We're not promising that you can step away from antibiotics completely, but follow us on this journey because with this dream, when you have a dream and you're pursuing something, it makes you do things that you wouldn't have done otherwise and we're pursuing this path to help these folks get by with less dependence on antibiotics. I think with your explanation on the weight gain, you just showed them how these tubs are going to pay for their selves too because I mean it's it's real money that's gonna go back in your pocket with added weight gain and and less sickness. So Matt, before we wrap up, you're no stranger to the Riomax science and all natural technology. Maybe you could just say a little to the listeners as to what you have seen over the years with calves, weaning, stress, disease, etcetera. I like it all year round. Reel's an excellent product, but when I'm calving, I've seen baby calves two days old standing there licking that Riomax tub and it just helps get them going, it helps them their hair slick off and get them started right. But those baby calves that have been on the Riomax in the fall when you when you expose it to them, they know what it is and they go right to licking those tubs and it really helps them get calmed down and acclimated and know things are okay. But I've seen way better health on the on the calves, way less doctoring, just shinier healthier hair coats and their eyes, their ears are up. It's a game changer in my mind. I have one last question and I'm gonna ask you publicly and and I want a totally honest candid response. For the cow calf guys that have been on a Riomax program, like you said, that calf in the fetus at birth all the way through, they've been on the program. Do those calves need to be weaned on the Turbo Boost program? Or are they fine because we've built up the foundation of their immune system and their mineral status? Personally, probably stick for my own calves. I'll probably stick with the regular p g three sixty, but I'm not buying outside calves and introducing them. If I was at the sale barn buying calves or if I was at the video sale buying buying load lots of calves, when they got off that truck they'd have turbo boost and they'd have turbo boost tubs in the paste when we processed them. Forty bucks a calf on a three thousand dollar calf isn't isn't a lot of money to spend. Well, thanks, Matt. Thanks for joining in and and giving us some industry knowledge and expertise coming from, you know, boots on the ground ranching and in this buying and selling. And and good luck today at the sale, by the way. As always, we'll see you next Thursday. I can't promise next Thursday will look quite like this. We might be back in our ugly little kitchen table back in Redwood Falls. But for now, enjoy the Cody Wyoming scenery. And again, thank you Matt for joining us.