How We Stopped Doctoring Calves Daily

We've had days, doctored thirty, forty, fifty, sixty. It seems like sometimes when it hits, it just it just hits. We buy a calf that's a really hard calf. We buy at the two seventy five pound weight, which that calf's probably three to four months old. It should still be getting milk from its mother. So it's having not only to come into a new environment, come through a sale barn where it's exposed to all kinds of new things, but now its diet's changing. We have some friends that put them together for us, consolidate from many different barns. Two or three days a week, we we get loads and then we background them, we feed them, and put them on grass. And as we get to week two, three, four on them, it it seems like we start getting into lots of sickness. There's lots of variables in that, but it's really hard on you. I mean, it's hard to do that day after day. It's not much fun seeing them suffering like that either. Then death loss, it's really not much fun dragging those things off. I don't touch any of the dead stuff. I don't even get anywhere. You had asked me about helping figure out some of the health stuff, and so, you know, you start searching for different things, and then the Internet learns. So they were putting videos up about Riomax. My background is in nursing. I'm always thinking about, like, people and their immune system and learning about Riomax and learning about how it works for the cow's digestion and to improve their immunity was really interesting. Just the science behind it is what sold us. So we started with the tubs first. They didn't know about the paste, and then we got our first case of paste in, and we started using it. And the pulls for sickness and retreats has been a lot less since using the Turbo Paste when they arrive. Which we have pretty hard data on that because she keeps spreadsheets on it. We're seeing probably a thirty percent reduction in first treats and then the same reduction for the second treat. The ones that we give the first treat to has been the last treat on a lot of them and that's exciting to know that you can doctor one and it can get better. And we rarely lose one that hadn't been doctored. If a calf costs two thousand dollars and the paste is costing you ten dollars, that's pretty easy math that that saving one and two hundred would Pay for it. Would pay for the paste. Kind of a change of pace than what we've been doing. Right? Used to, every day, there was some sort of not great news, and now we're actually making multiple days in a row sometimes where there's not any negative news. So that's been a a big change. That's right. And we're right in the heat on the group that we started, the Turbo Paste. We're in week five, six, seven, right in there on the average on on that group. We should be treating way more right now than than than we are. It's I think it's helping the digestibility of the transition into their feed in that first three, four, five, six weeks. They look absolutely amazing. Some friends, they give the turbo boost on arrival, and then they bring us the calves and they drop them in a pen. They're gonna make a circle around that pen. A lot of times, it might be one or two that stop at the hay, one or two that stop at the feeder, but then you're gonna have a whole lot of them stopping at that tub, and they sit there. I had another tub in there just to kinda give them another option in there and they didn't do that with that tub. They didn't stop stop on the tub and lick it like that one. Even whenever we turn them out in that next day into a bigger bigger trap, they always find the tub. You don't have to force them to eat it because they wanna eat it. If I don't have to spend all morning doctoring and then my evenings doctoring, and you can drive through the calves and you're you're like, man, these look great. Maybe I'm gonna watch that one. Maybe I'm gonna watch that one instead of being like, man, I have to get that one, that one, that one, that one. And then if you know if you're getting that one, that one, you know the next day you're gonna do the same thing because it it just it never stops. Being able to drive through a group of cattle that you know are right in their window when they're when they're supposed to be breaking and they're not breaking, feels really good. Have anything to add to that? Yeah. I mean, the math has to math, but it looks like it's good math. Math doesn't work, I hear about it. If the next group of calves acts like this and the next group and the next group oh, yeah. It would pay for itself. Quickly. Many, many, many, many, many times over.