Get 'Er Covered
On This Lewistown Ranch, Everything Has To Perform.
Jesse Burleigh | Lewistown, MT
The Winter That Sold Him
Burleigh remembers the season that changed everything. "We had a real hard winter, full feed the first week in October. December, it opened up, everything melted off. We had some grass." He went to town looking for lick tubs, the cheap kind he'd always ran, and came up empty. "I was the last one and didn't have any of the cheap lick tubs. They had the Riomax tubs in there."
The guy selling them told him something that kept him up that night: put the tubs out, one per fifty head, and don't feed them tomorrow. Just let them graze.
"I didn't sleep all night," Burleigh says. "Next morning at seven o'clock, half are out grazing, half are chewing their cud, laying down. Right there, I was sold.” What followed was three weeks of no feeding at all, just cows out grazing on their own. When snow came back in January, he went back to feeding, but the tubs had already made their case.
"I kind of was forced. I couldn't find any other tubs in town," he chuckles. "That time, too, I didn't realize I didn't have to have mineral out there. But looking back, I noticed the cows didn't go back to eating the loose minerals, so apparently they were getting what they needed out of the Riomax."
There's an old rodeo truth Jesse Burleigh likes to bring up: they don't give you a check back at the end of the day if you don't get one covered. It doesn't matter if you're talking about a bronc ride or a bull. If the animal underneath you isn't performing, neither are you.
Turns out that same logic runs the whole operation, cattle and horses both.
Burleigh's family is only the third to run this ground since it was homesteaded generations ago, and he's raising the next ones to take it on. That kind of longevity doesn't happen by accident. It happens because when a hard winter shows up—and in Lewistown, MT, it shows up —you find a way through it.
Doing The Math
Burleigh is the first to admit the sticker price threw him. "It was very expensive. It threw me back pretty hard. Hay was $240 a ton, too, so I was throwing that back and forth." What changed his mind wasn't the price, it was how long the tubs lasted. "When I did the figures, it worked out, it was forty cents per head per day by the time we’re said and done with it. That was a lot cheaper than feeding hay and mineral."
As drought conditions have eased, consumption has dropped further. "Last year we've been about two ounces per head per day, so they cut back half." During the drought years, when cattle were coming in fifty to a hundred pounds light everywhere else, Burleigh kept hitting his weights. He credits gut health. "If that gut's not working healthy, you're putting 12-14% protein on the ground. When we got on these tubs, we got knocked back to about 2% protein. The cows are actually getting more protein out of what you're feeding them."
During the worst of it, his herd ran half hay, half straw. "Our cows were doing great. No scours, calves coming out healthy, strong, running hard. Calving's been a breeze."
Fewer Doctor Bills, More Pairs
Last fall, Burleigh didn’t treated a single case of scours. One pneumonia calf, total. "These drugs are sixteen, eighteen hundred dollars a bottle. It doesn't last very long if you've got an issue break out."
That matters more in a winter like the one they just calved through—three feet on the level, below zero for most of February. "We haven't lost anybody since they've hit the ground. It's been incredible."
The math on herd size tells its own story. "Growing up, we ran about three hundred pair. I can see us running four hundred to four-fifty pair on these tubs, plus another hundred fifty replacement heifers. If I can run a hundred more head, gosh—we can get so much more improvement done. It's a life changer."
The Horses Have to Perform, Too.
Burleigh's kids rodeo, and the family raises its own colts, which means horse soundness isn't a side interest, it's part of the business. "The biggest thing for me is safety for the horses, and this product is very safe for horses. I use the cow tubs on my horses - got thirty head out in one pasture.”
For the performance horses in active competition, the family steps up to horse-specific tubs. The results, in Burleigh's telling, aren't subtle. His son's heel horse had a habit that dogged her for years. "She was always crow-hopping when you'd go to turn the corner and rope. Since we got her on that Riomax tub, she hasn't crow-hopped once. She's running a great pattern every time. I think it really helped her settle down."
He tells a similar story about an older paint horse belonging to a friend on the place. "Shoot, that horse—if he was on those tubs all the time, he was the first one down the hill. But if he had a week without it, even four days, it'd take him half a day to get down the hill."
The 60 pound horse tubs travel well, too. "We use those when we're going down the road with them, or during the good hard rodeo season, even at home." And for a family whose income depends on horses showing up ready to work, that reliability is the whole point. "It's not fun going out there and getting bucked off in front of a big audience if the horse isn't feeling good. And they don't give you a check back at the end of the day if you don't get one covered."
Calf Sale Day
Every fall, that year's hard work comes down off the mountain, literally. Burleigh's crew brings the cattle down slow, careful not to let them run weight off, and starts sorting: replacement heifers held back, steers and heifer calves weighed and shipped, cows sent back out to pasture ahead of pregnancy testing.
Last fall’s calves averaged 748 pounds coming off, up from previous years. "They did a lot better this year. I think we got them right about where we wanted—that seven-fifty average." Cows averaged around thirteen hundred pounds. "They're producing good," Burleigh says. The family's already looking ahead, working to build cow numbers over the next couple of years as grass allows.
It's a scene that's played out on this ground for three generations now, with Burleigh's wife, daughters, father-in-law, and a few good friends pitching in alongside him. His son would be there too, if college didn't have him tied up elsewhere. Someday, that'll change.
"I've been through the worst, and I'll never change," Burleigh says. "I hear a lot of people saying how expensive the tubs are, but for some reason I'm having more money in the bank at the end of the year. It definitely pays for itself."