Why Our Pregnancy Rates Were Dropping (And How We Fixed It)

My dad was like any other rancher in our area. He fed twenty eight pounds of cake three times a week all winter long and kinda got to the point where he was trading his truckload of cattle for his feed bill. We had started seeing some dips in our pregnancy percentages. Then the drought kind of set in at twenty twenty and that number just flew down. We've been a rotational graze operation for about twenty years now. High density shooting for high density rotational graze in a semi area climate. We get about twenty three inches average rainfall. Our median rainfall is about fifteen inches, which I think is the more important number. When we transitioned to rotational grazing, were under stocked, which made things look great. But last year, didn't get the spring rains like we needed, and that really hit us hard that thirty days leading up to us turning our bulls out to where we had a pretty significant drop in our pregnancy percentages from the prior two years without changing anything. My dad, he stopped and asked the good Lord for some better resources on how to do this and do it well. I think the first contact I had with Riomax was two years ago, and I was like, man, this is cool, but I don't think we can justify the cost at this point. I gotta credit my brother. He put it put it in front of my dad and I and said, hey. We I think we should revisit this. The initial response was, oh, we've been there. A bit pricey, but okay. You brought it up. Let's look at it. And I think the difference was when I started talking to people in my area, you know, there's a there's a level of trust when your neighbors are benefiting from it. And so that's a that's a that's a huge help to hear from somebody in a similar situation, paying the bill, seeing the results. We're pretty forward thinking, but, we try not to dive head first and without doing our research. And I think everybody in our industry is worried about their margins. So if you're gonna spend a dollar, you wanna make sure your margins are right. So heard good reviews and decided to take a jump at it and joined up with Riomax back in the spring. Had a pretty abysmal spring and summer rainfall. Looking back on previous years and the drought and drought like conditions, I would expect you'd be seeing a rapid decline in body condition score right now. The difference this year is we're not seeing that decline. And we're not we're not we're there's no supplement going out. Supplemental feeding stopped when it greened up. So they are on grass and Riomax. Weighing in past experiences, we've got heavier calves, cows in better body condition score. They look fantastic. Slick hair. Our calves on average are heavier. They're not butterball fat. They're right where you want them. What we can see in front of us right now makes us very, secure in the fact that Riomax was a good decision. I think the only thing that made me feel a little bit better is if it was raining and a little cooler, but given the circumstances, I'm thrilled. Absolutely thrilled. For me, it's a it's a victory to be able to see the the the animals respond that way, the land respond that way, but then also just see the team is like, What we're doing is working, and that's a good feeling because we've all worked our tails off in some years and not gotten the results that we want. And that's that's hard to to bounce back from. My brother, my dad, and, just all the the people that are out here. I think it's just a a boost in morale. The work ethic that was been been passed down each generation is valuable to me, and I've got the sixth generation at home, two year old and a thirteen week old, and I want them to succeed and do do what they can in life and what they're called to do. But if if it is ranching, I wanna give them the best, the best tools to be successful in life. I gotta say, Riomax has helped us in a ton of ways. They're God honest truth.