THE MINERAL THAT ONLY COSTS ME 18 CENTS PER DAY!

Right after we dispersed in twenty ten, we were still trying to build our numbers back up to have enough cows for the grass that we had, so I kind of took on some cows for other people. One guy, he brought me, I think it was seventy five head of pears down, and he brought me down a pallet of loose mineral. I'd put out two bags, a hundred pounds, and before I left that hundred pounds was gone. And they were just craving it, you know, and cattle are, I guarantee not all the cattle were getting it. I called the guy and said, hey, what do I do? I said, I can't keep enough mineral in front of them. And that's what I like about these tubs is it's hard to take, you know, they'll lick for a while and then they quit and go on. And I think more cattle have a chance to come in and and be able to get get on the tub. We run a primarily a commercial herd of about three hundred and fifty to four hundred cows. We also run a small registered limousine herd that we sell show heifers out of for junior kids across the United States. One winter during calving season, I guess more in the spring, we were fighting scours really bad. We had state vets from Kansas and Iowa and everybody involved and our local vet. And what it really boiled down to, we were copper deficiency. Our ground and all of our hay and everything was really high in iron, and iron ties up copper. So we had a loose mineral made for us, and that really turned our problem around. I mean, as I got older and more involved in it, I finally convinced my dad that we didn't have to feed these cows from November one to May one. So we started doing a little more stock pile grazing and trying to find with that, we was needing to find something, some type of a tub that we could put out with these cows so they'd utilize the grass. So I'll be the first to admit. I mean, I've tried tried them all. Then I had some friends of mine from South Dakota that said that they have used Riomax and and I thought, well, we'll we'll give it a try. And I got on the phone and called. My biggest concern was is if they had enough copper that I would need so I didn't get back into having scour problems. And they guarantee or didn't guarantee me, but they said that, you know, they sure thought it was. And so I tried them and I think I've been on them for about eight years now. And so far we haven't had any scour problems. It was in the fall of the year, like November, December, and of course we'd moved some of the cows home and still had some cows out on stockpiled grass. And what I noticed more than anything was the cows that we'd moved home and was feeding some hay, they weren't going through as much hay as what normally we had been. And then we put the mother cow, like the cows are still on stockpiled grass. I mean, just seem like they're holding their condition a little bit better. That first set of cows we was in this morning or earlier, them things have been out on stockpiled grass since around the first of November. A brome fescue mix grass. We moved them home just four days ago and they hadn't, at that time, they hadn't had any hay at all. They were just on the Rio tubs and loose salt. And them cows actually, when we unloaded them over there the first time, they were, we just weaned calves off and they were pretty thin. Them things had put on a bunch of weight while they were over on there. And so that saved me, you know, almost three months of hay that I didn't have to feed them cows. I'm not a big on what all the stuff they called in them tubs, but you know, it's just doing they're getting more utilization out of their grass because they're on these tubs. I just, I think that's the biggest thing I've seen with these things for me is the hay savings and being able to keep these cows out on grass longer. You can put this mineral out and the weather don't affect it much and in summertime, you know, I place them out and kinda in the far corners are where I think the grass needs to be utilized more instead of around the loafing areas and and make them cattle go out and graze the pastures better. It seemed like with the loose mineral, I mean, we were always trying to keep the feeder, mineral feeders up and covered so the rain and weather didn't bother them. And now I don't have to worry about it. The initial cost of it is, you know, it makes everybody think, wow, can we afford to do this? My theory is you gotta give something a chance. That time I was trying to keep track of what everything was. I kept saying, know, quarter or third pound a day, you know, up to forty one cents is what it could cost you. I think the last time I checked it, it was down to eighteen cents a day is what it was costing me. My wife don't like it when we get the half semi load in, but I finally got her convinced that it's saving us feed otherwise. Right now, this winter, my cows are probably as good a rig as they've been in for the last several years. There's times when they need it, there's times when they don't, and the cows will tell you. Think over time, I think it does pay for itself.