Rumen's a real interesting place. As these microbial are growing in there, you know, some last for a few minutes, few hours, and as they die off, that actually becomes protein for the cow. So rather than having to to feed it protein, they can actually make their own own protein if you give them give them what they need to do it. Right? So by feeding the microbial protein, that rumen is breaking down, their manure is getting broken down further, they're getting all everything they can out of their feed and out of the the protein. So it's a wonderful thing. It starts with them licking the tub, getting that getting that saliva going. That's the first step. Right? And they're they're they're missing that if you're if you're pouring it into the the silage rations. Let's go. Put. Put. They're pretty tame. There they come. You see? Even the ones laying down got up. I wanna say we tried everything. I'm sure there's a few people out there that have tried done the same thing. We bought we bought the liquid with the lick tubs, you know, with the roll tubs. We bought, I think, three or four different kinds of protein tubs, and then we've also used loose minerals, and then we've mixed it with our salt. We just didn't get we just didn't see any results. We just it felt like we were just trying something different, new flavors, new everything, and it just didn't change things. Riomax was just an ad that I saw once in a while, but didn't know anybody that was on it. So once we, you know, the vet actually recommended it, that's the person we've been using for twenty years. So so it had a lot of weight to it. We started looking into it. It was actually a little bit of a learning process. Sitting down watching videos, figuring out, you know, why does what does this stuff do? I didn't understand what microbial protein was, and I didn't understand that that's how the cows got up to eighty percent of their protein in the first place. So so previous to this, it was just my lack of knowledge knowing how the rumen worked and and what happened in there. So now knowing what happens, it, you know, it makes sense, but I just didn't have that understanding before. For us, the biggest thing we first started to see was they settled down. We, our cows weren't very content. They were always moving, walking fence lines. You know, we got them onto the tubs. You know, they hit them pretty hard at first. There was no question about it. And then they started sloping off. You know, after that two, three weeks, they just started settling down. You can see them laying down chewing their cud more often. For us personally we saw it drop from you know that thirty six pounds a day, it slowly started weeping off to twenty eight pounds a day. When we're saving eight pounds per cow per day that was a lot of savings right? We didn't change the feed at all, we just had them on Riomax. That was our very first year on it, that's where we saw the impact. That's gonna pay for the tub for sure. But for me, it's having cows that are content and in really good shape just happy, right? Where we noticed the biggest difference, yes the feed savings in the winter, but it was having it out year round in the summer. So having it out for the summer for the calves, for us we used to always treat the calves for scours. We used to treat cows for pink eye. Since we put it out year round, we don't treat we've not treated the calf. We haven't had pink eye in our herd. We would easily doctor, you know, ten percent of the calves. So, know, we run a two hundred and fifty to three hundred calves a year, we'd be doctoring twenty five, thirty calves. And that was that was standard. We got used to that. That was just a standard practice. So, you know, we switched over and and started using it year round. The first year we only used the winter. And then we started using it year round and we saw that instantly. We were like, wow, this is mean, the time you save there. You know, the kids are upset because they don't have to they don't have to go out and rope any calves now and and so that bothers them. They enjoy doing that with the horses, but that's the way it goes. Right? Having the protective, minerals in there is huge. Right? Having that so that it makes it through the rumen, gets into the intestine, the animals are actually you're getting what you pay for for all these vitamins and minerals versus, sulfates, which are just getting flushed out the back end and and ending up in your field somewhere. It's changed our whole program. A lot of it's changed because, you know, we were using ivermectin and all other sorts of brands about pour ons. We were having to use them a couple times a year to keep the, you know, lice and everything else off the cows. Since we switched to Riomax, we actually haven't used a pour on, and we actually haven't used anything for that. We've had the vet check them when they're out every year, when we do our preg checking, and our semen testing for the bulls, we haven't checked them as well, and we have had zero issues with it. You can see their hair coats are really full, and they look all they get all slicked off right away in the summer. So, you know, that's just another savings. It's all that little stuff that adds up by just using using Riomax, and and that's the stuff that actually we didn't take into account. I don't think a lot of people take into account. And, you know, once you get out, you start seeing that stuff. So it's not just the cost of the pour on, it's the time. You're running the cattle through, you're harassing them, you're bugging them. Our main herd, you know, we generally ran in that ten percent range. We were, I guess, we got complacent and got that was just average. You know, if we were if we were ten, twelve percent, yeah, that was not a bad catch and we're with that. We switched over to Riomax. We've been down in that two and a half to three and a half percent every year since. Last year we ran bang on three percent. Right? We had six opens on on two hundred. That's a lot of cows. When I look back now thinking, you know, we probably shipped some good cows that just weren't in condition, didn't have what they needed to carry on. They're just happy cows. Right? You know, we're proud to show off our cows. We're we're proud to bring them in. You know, this year, we're actually selling our calves right off the ranch because if you guys know that we've been using Riomax and they're gonna be paying a premium to take them off the ranch now this year because they're gonna be healthy. The return on investment that you're getting is so far ahead with using a tub that's actually got the chelated and protected minerals in it. I don't think there's a single thing we can do to improve your health of your cattle that's gonna beat Riomax. Not for us, not for our farm, and not for everybody we deal with.
