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Last updated on April 7th, 2022 at 02:49 pm

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making it work with tubs 'n year round grazing

Here’s how learning from his mistakes helps ed parke make money.

MEET ED PARKE

Tulliby Lake, Alberta

Ed Parke

Ed Parke makes a claim that the younger set can’t compete with. No, it’s not that he knows more than they do. It’s that he’s made more mistakes.

Time will tell whether or not the younger generation in farming and ranching will compete with him in that regard. But the thing about mistakes is this: if you pay attention, you eventually learn a thing or two.

Parke and his family farm and ranch near the Alberta-Saskatchewan border just north of Lloydminster, Alberta. His outfit runs from the south-facing slopes along the North Saskatchewan River to Boreal forests to the north. The country features lots of bogs, muskegs, and other land that long has been considered worthless.

Parke learned otherwise and it took drought to teach the lesson.

That part of Canada was dry for many years in the 1990s, leading up to a severe drought in 2002. Parke’s uncle ranches north of him and part of his operation contains a huge lake dominated by slough grass. Feed was nearly impossible to get in 2002, so Parke asked his uncle if he could bale the dry, rank grass.

His uncle replied that he should bring the cows to the feed instead of the other way around. It turned out, however, that Parke found enough feed to get his cows through the winter and he kept them home.

Ed Parke1
Ed Parke2
Ed Parke3

But the idea stuck. “Not many years ago, we had a dry summer,” he told those attending a 2021 Riomax® webinar. Once again, feed was hard to find. “We have about a 120-acre muskeg in one of our pastures that the cows didn’t utilize. There’d always be 3, 4, 5 inches of water on it all summer.”

In a dry year, however, the water goes away. So he turned out 50 or 60 of his fattest mature cows and six or seven dry young cows. He put out Riomax® tubs and fed 8-10 pounds of grain per head every two or three days. That and the dry slough grass was their diet.

Getting More Out of Poor-Quality Forage

“Those cattle gained weight eating this so-called worthless slough grass, a Rio tub, and a little bit of grain. That really cinched me on the Rio tubs. They definitely do help the cattle utilize (their feed). They break down the lignin and they can utilize forages that otherwise aren’t as useful,” he said.

Some years back, Parke converted some of his pastures to corn ground. This diversifies his cash flow and gives him the ability to graze his cattle year ‘round. He calves in May and June and retains the calves over the winter to sell the following year as long yearlings.

He uses Riomax® tubs when his cows are grazing corn stalks for the same reason he now grazes his slough grass every year. And the cows got along just fine. “Where I got into trouble was when I quit using them,” he said.

One fall, for some reason, he didn’t put the tubs out and ran into coccidiosis problems in his calves. “So we got some other tubs from a local dealer” and he stayed with them for a year.

Then his Rio representative asked why he quit using Riomax®. Well, he told her, the other tubs are cheaper. His Rio rep then asked him how much of the other product his cattle were consuming and challenged him to try Rio tubs again, claiming the cattle will consume less and the cost would be about the same or less.

Turns out she was right. “We found out immediately, when we put those tubs our with the calves, they were quite a bit less.”

A Year-Round Cattle Nutrition Program

For many years, Parke used Rio tubs seasonally. Beginning in 2020 and 2021, he switched to providing the supplement year ‘round, during summer grazing as well as winter on low-quality forage. “When we processed the calves (summer of 2020) after having the Rio tubs out there for the year, we saw clearly a 4 percent to 5 percent increase in our calving percentage.”

The benefits didn’t stop. At preg check time in 2021, he had fewer open cows. “The year before we had about 60-65 dry cows. This year, we had 40,” he said. That’s out of more than 500 cows in his herd. He also saw a 5-6 percent improvement in live calves after calving season was over.

The cows in some pastures had a 97-98 percent calving percentage. While he doesn’t attribute all of that increase to Riomax®, “They definitely contributed considerably to it.”

Don't Forget About Land & Soil Health

Among the many lessons Parke has learned over the years is to be mindful of soil health. “The prairie soil that grows these good crops was formed by cloven-hooved ruminants dropping their droppings, knocking the grass down to the bugs in the earth, (which then) build the soil up. Since we’ve been dropping the manure in the fields instead of running the cattle in the corrals, I’ve seen improvement in the soil,” he says.

“I see how the corn stalks disappear into the soil and I’m really keen on this idea of the healthier soil and the dung beetles. The cattle are building soil health,” he says. It’s the miracle of the cow. “She turns that worthless slough grass into real good food for people.”

In Parke’s mind, Riomax® is part of that. “The whole idea of Rio helping the cow utilize what she takes in, to me is the answer.”

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