How We Cut Hay Consumption During Years Of Drought

A hungry cow is not a happy cow. As you can see out here, there's not much for the pickings. We've been droughted out for a few years now and feed's been really hard to come by. We've had to haul water for the past couple years in some of these lease pastures. As time has gone on, I've supplemented with a loose mineral along with cake. So I've been looking something to help us just maintain our herd as far as condition. That's how I kinda ended up with finding Riomax. It might have been Facebook or YouTube, but I watched it quite a few times and it would come back up. Then I got to looking. I talked to another fallow rancher and he said he was using it or he had some extra tubs and I bought them from him. What I did notice probably within thirty days, the consumption on the hay, it went down quite a bit. I I I was feeding less is what I really noticed. The type of hay I was purchasing at the time wasn't the best of quality, but they were cleaning it up. We're feeding, you know, thirty to thirty five pounds per head per day and and the condition on our cows weren't the best. But I'm noticing with this product that we're feeding less between twenty and twenty five pounds. And our cows are I've noticed they they really just they're really content. They lick themselves a lot more and calves are seem pretty healthy and strong. And especially on like these dry grasses this time of year, you know, they've lost a lot of their quality and they they seem like they utilize it a lot better also. It helps break it down, get what they can out of it. It always seems through the spring of the year their condition drops a little bit, especially with calves nursing on them. Starts pulling them cows down and it kept their condition a lot better than it had in the past. As you can see out here, there's not much for the pickings and our cows look good. How have your heifers done on it? Can you speak to that at all? They're really content. The calves look good. And those are the ones I really worry about because their condition really really drops a lot on them when they're nursing calves and it doesn't seem like it has. And even last year when we used it on them, I was pretty happy with them last year. And this year, they even look better in my opinion. And we always try to take care of them a little bit better, but it's I don't wanna say it with with the Riomax, they've almost taken care of themselves in a sense. As you saw, there's a lot of hay out there and they're not really eating it. They're just really content. I'm pretty happy with this product. It seems like it fits us and it it fits the cows well. This year and last year weaning, they weaned a lot easier. They don't back off any feed. They just at times, it's hard to keep feed in front of them just eating so much and we just feed, you know, long grass along with some cake and I think them rumens are just healthy with it. It encourages them to eat. They feel better so they're gonna eat more. Our weaning weights from last year to this year, they've been quite a bit heavier. We were really dry this year. We changed up some of the bulls a little bit on our AI end of it. I don't know if that's part of it, but I would say on the average about a hundred pounds difference between our bull calves and our heifer calves from last year. It's worth a lot when they're paying what they're paying right now for calves, you know, when you start selling them. And these are the guys that feed them. They recognize what these calves do and the health on them, and they want them. You make a little bit more profit on them animals cause they're worth something to them when the health's better and there hardly isn't any death loss or none at all or even as far as doctoring. That's what we're really focusing on. I think if you raise a healthy calf and have that proper nutrition, I think they go on and they're not have so many health issues on them. It works and you'll see results. One of the biggest things I've noticed is our cows have been really content. They're happy. If that makes sense, they're happy.