The Texas Heat Doesn't Bother Our Cattle—Here's Why
You know, it's middle of the afternoon, a hundred and two degrees, and they're just relaxing and chewing their cud, grazing. You know? Most cattle, when it's that hot, they're laid down or, you know, stood up somewhere beating flies off, and they're still out there grazing and taking it easy. This ranch is the Horse Creek Ranch. It's up by Highway eighty three. My family's been Texas Panhandle since eighteen eighty two. We run predominantly Hereford cows, Hereford bulls. We're in the cattle business, and you can make all the right decisions and all it takes is one catastrophic event and there you are. We have a few crossbred cows that were my dad's cows. We've been on the Riomax program since about twenty twenty four. I've noticed my cattle that I've seen on it, there is not as big of a fly population on those cattle. Then the garlic that's in it, helping to to where the cattle were cooler. I was out four in the afternoon one day and those cattle were just out there grazing, lounging, chewing their cud. You know, it was a hundred and two, hundred and three that day. Had to move some cattle around because of different situations. Found that that cattle that were going through that day were in a pretty stressful situation. We had about ten tubs out there and all those cattle that came out of there did well that summer seemed to do good. The calves did too. Kinda made me think it was a good thing to feed, you know, four hundred head of cows and calves and yearlings. It would have been an awful lot of feed every day. By putting that out, those cattle could go up there when they wanted to eat. Some of the hay that was there wasn't as good a quality of hay maybe, and they were able to utilize that. And that's really where I saw, in my mind, the positivity of it. The cattle seem to be doing really good. We get the calves off them. They look good. We don't have hardly any health problems, believe it or not. Our weaning weights and the shipping weights, yeah, they were up significantly. I'd say put it in one pasture and not in another one and look at what's going on. We're in the cattle business and we're always supposed to be trying to learn and better whatever we're doing. My suggest would be to try it, put your pencil to it, decide if that's what you wanna do. That would be my advice.
Fast Facts
- Fewer flies on cattle since starting the Riomax program
- Cattle stayed calm and kept grazing at 102-103°F instead of bunching up
- About 10 tubs covered roughly 400 head of cows, calves, and yearlings
- Cattle made better use of lower-quality hay with free-choice access to the tubs
- Hardly any health problems across the herd
- Weaning and shipping weights up significantly
Horse Creek Ranch sits up by Highway 83 in the Texas Panhandle, where Swasey Brainard's family has run cattle since 1882, mostly Hereford cows and bulls with a few crossbred cows that came from the rancher's dad. Cattle country doesn't leave much room for error. As he put it, "we're in the cattle business, and you can make all the right decisions and all it takes is one catastrophic event and there you are." The ranch has been on the Riomax program since 2024, running about 10 tubs across roughly 400 head of cows, calves, and yearlings.
The difference showed up in the heat. On a 102-103 degree afternoon, most cattle are laid down or standing around fighting flies, but his were still out grazing and chewing their cud, calm rather than stressed. He credits some of that to the garlic in the tub keeping flies off. The tubs also let cattle self-feed when the available hay wasn't the best quality, instead of hand-feeding 400 head every day. Health problems have been minimal, and weaning and shipping weights came in up significantly. His advice to anyone considering it: "My suggestion would be to try it, put your pencil to it, decide if that's what you wanna do."
"My suggestion would be to try it, put your pencil to it, decide if that's what you wanna do."
Open cows, pounds you don't wean, sickness, or forage that goes out the back end don't make you money, do they?
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Riomax® is revolutionizing the way ranchers deal with high input costs. With better digestion, your herd can get all the nutrients they need from less grass. This leaves you with more days on grass (you start feeding later in the fall), less stress, and a more padded pocketbook.
Seen a lot of savings on our on our pastures. Generally, figure about five and a half to six acres of pair around through here. We've been even last year through the drought of that we had of twenty twenty, we did four and a half acres of pair on on ours, still had adequate grass left. Cattle came off in good condition. They weren't weren't malnutritioned, weren't low body scores. Been running pretty consistent, six body score better on everything. We're paying right around fifty dollar an acre cash rent up here is kinda kind of a common thing. You can knock out an acre here off of every cow that that saves a lot of money. Mean, fifty fifty bucks and you don't need four hundred another four hundred acres. It's another twenty thousand. So all of a sudden you got forty forty five thousand dollars in your pocket and you still have all the extra added benefits through the mineral, the health benefits of it. And it really saved on the last year too with the drought. We didn't think we'd get through. We put the same amount of number in the pastures and it didn't rain. We pulled it out and we still had old grass in the pasture. I didn't know the tub saved that whole deal. We had stretched it a lot because there was a lot of people selling cows and we didn't sell anything and we didn't pull them out early. And this year, most of the pastures around here are pretty much nothing. And we drove through everything. We still got, you know, shoots of grass and tufts of grass all over the place. Not a lot, but it we kept them. It made a huge difference. As far as paying for itself, you know, you got to feed and you start saving instead of a lot of guys are up to forty five, fifty five pounds. It was figured somewhere in there a big cow and even when they had the calf on them sixty pounds. So if you're feeding thirty pounds, yeah, it's gonna easily pay for itself without you see a bit. I mean, we, you can see it on the cow calf pairs too, bigger calves. We calve in May, June, and we're weaving seven hundred and some pound calves off of Dallas. So it makes, yeah, we can see the difference really easy. You just go through each step and see We're running more cows than we used to run on the same acres. That is a big deal. Because I used to on on my pastures, they're not big pastures, but on my pastures, I used to run twenty five head and they would have it grazed down to nothing in five months easy. Now I can run thirty, thirty five on the same pastures, and they can stay there another month longer easy on any given year. And this year, they got to stay two months longer, and there's still grass left over. Well, yeah, it's high priced, but it's like if if you can afford or not. But I think you can afford it because you cannot afford not to feed it because you can get your cattle to market faster. They're healthier. You could run more cattle on your land or you can stay there longer before you have to move on to an another patch. The cows are way healthier. They're way more content. They're happy. They're happy cows.
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"We've been able to save enough hay with Riomax and we're increasing our production with Rhyzogreen. Both of those products have made it possible for us to have the confidence in knowing we're gonna be just fine.
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Sheridan, WY
"I think it's a pretty cheap way to get way more out of your soil than what we do weithout. More out of what they eat, so they eat less, and Rhyzogreen gives them more grass."
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Valentine, NE
"...It's a win-win. You're attacking it on both fronts and you're nailing it on both fronts, so it's kind of a no-brainer. Why wouldn't you do both (Riomax and Rhyzogreen) at the same time?"
Bradley Franke
Cross Plains, TX
"I saw increased yields on every field I treated, every one...The worst yield increase was 17% up to 85%."
Todd Farrington
Collbran, CO
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Jim Lambert
Whitney, NE
“Went from 40 acres/cow in this drought to 30 acres/ cow . . . that’s $70/ cow/year!“
Raymond Rivale
Des Moines, NM
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Leon Mcelprang
Huntington, UT
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Reach out & let’s talk about your ranch
Help us understand the needs of your ranch & the challenges you face. Then we’ll crunch the numbers to see if Riomax is a fit for your ranch.
FIND THE RIGHT NUTRITION PROGRAM
Get a program that fits your needs and pays for itself. Shipped direct or through our dealer network.
ENJOY ONGOING SUPPORT
Our herd health guides and network of dealers are here to ensure Riomax® is paying for itself.
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