That Ranching Podcast

If there was ever a time to get out of your box and try something new, this might be the best time to do it. Well, welcome back to That Ranching podcast. Today, we're have the privilege of being in Red Lodge, Montana joined by Terrill Ostrom. Terrill, go ahead and introduce yourself to the, listeners. Hi. Terrill Ostrom with, Lazy TM Livestock. We're a cow calf stocker operation here in the, Red Lodge, Roscoe, Fishtail, Montana area. In the last three years, I've become a dealer for Rio. We appreciate you being part of the family. The discussion today relative to the turbo boost calf starter program is to hear from Terrill a little bit in terms of the work you do as a broker and if we can just go up thirty thousand feet to understand the industry and the needs of this industry from where you sit and from how you see it. It all kind of goes hand in hand. Not only do we run the cow calf and stocker operation, but I also have a a brokerage business. That business runs under the auspice of Crossroads Cattle Company. Right. And Crossroads is the company that I clear through. It's owned by two gentlemen based out of Austin, Texas, Les Callahan and Jenning Steen. And they're very very gracious and very professional in that brokerage company. They're kind of our back office support. So we're able to trade cattle, through the barns, through videos, and more importantly, rancher to rancher direct in the country. The the firm itself, probably handles upwards of two hundred and forty thousand cattle a year. And what sort of area do they cover? You know, that's that's why I like working with Crossroads is because we don't we don't we're not set with any geographic locations. We basically buy cattle from California to Georgia, a few into Florida. So that'd give you an idea. Washington State and then send cattle up into Minnesota and that part of the country. So no geographic boundaries. Yeah, that's great. As the listeners would realize, where Rio has been operating for twenty five years is in the cow calf space. We're known for the tub that pays for itself and feed and forage savings, hay and forage savings alone. And coming out into this country, I see grass. Obviously, there's a lot of drought affecting Wyoming, Montana. I was in Kansas yesterday. So that's the cow calf side of it. What we're launching in September is the Turbo Boost program, which is a calf starter program just for the first sixty days. And so we can get into that in a bit here and go over some data we have. But, Terrell, talk to me a little bit about, what are the needs or what are the risks or what are the headaches and frustrations of dealing with these calves, whether they're unweaned or weaned and and shipping and commingling and sale barns. Obviously, you're doing stuff that takes a shortcut around that and makes it easier for folks, but walk us through how people are feeling and what the headaches and frustrations and, you know, in that space. Through the brokerage, we see cattle coming from all different kinds of backgrounds and we see anything from a put together sale barn type animal to a a really country fresh calf with two rounds of modified live around it branding, which is traditional, and then another round two to three weeks prior to weaning. So we see cattle at all different, spectrums and and all different, levels of, stress put put on those calves. One of the goals of everybody that touches one of those ball and calves is is least stress getting them started and getting them hydrated and getting them coming to the bunk. And so I think anything that we can do to supplement that and enhance that experience, anything that we can do to make that transition easier, less stressful, think would be a benefit. Right. And so if we have less stress, what is the product of that? What's the end game for reducing that stress in that whole transition? The the end game is to eliminate the number of treats that you have and and definitely then, you know, we know that we're not gonna be a hundred percent. There's gonna be that percentage of cattle that that you're gonna have to treat. But, if we can lower that number of treats and if we can and and once again, and if we if we have that immune system fine tuned prior to creating the stress on that animal Yeah. Then I think that we'll much better chance of success. And we still might have that percentage that we have to doctor, but we might eliminate those retreats. And I think that we'll have a better chance of whatever we choose as our method of treatment, we'll have a better chance of that working. Exactly. Well, I think we've got two things going on here. If we take the turbo boost program for starting calves and just put it to one side, what Terrell has alluded to is really building the foundation and that's what we do, that's what we eat, sleep and breathe is on the cow herds, you know, the cow is the factory and she needs to be have good mineral status and you have that fetal programming and it starts, you know, in in the cow. Now we fast forward and say, well, if a calf has been on Riomax, its mom's been on Riomax, we still have a stress event at weaning whether we like it or not. But it's less of a stress situation than, say, for example, a calf that was mineral compromised, didn't have good levels of mineral and and had a compromised immune system. That's kind of where where we are in the cow calf space. But stepping into these the starting program with the turbo boost program, we're looking at, you know, thousands of calves from all over the country that may or may not have had a sound foundation, if you like, to start with. And then the question is, how do we navigate that journey and that stress? Because a stress event will ultimately lead to a disease break or challenged immune system. So let's just talk about, let's say for example calves that are not have not been on the Riomax program. Maybe they've been shipped, maybe they've been commingled at a sale barn, they've had a compromised immune system and they hit that feed yard or that stocker operation, you know, they're coming off the back of that big stress event. How does that look now? We've seen all different scenarios given that situation. I think that anything we can do ahead of time like you alluded to but if we get into that situation where nothing's been done ahead of time, then I think anything that we can do to keep that gut healthy is really a big consideration. With the advent of the turbo boost paste and then having the turbo boost in the tub. Right. So for that constant exposure again to maintain that gut health, I think that that's the key. Well, as Terrell says, gut health is huge. The gut is the number one immune organ. You know, if you had a dead calf and you post it, you don't find, oh, here's the immune system. It looks like it was weak or compromised. The immune system is throughout the body, but the gut is the number one component of that immune system. So just to bounce back to the turbo boost program, what it is is on arrival, those calves get a dose of the turbo boost paste. That is like an on ramp to an interstate. Get them up to speed, very powerful dose, and get it get those levels up. Then they're exposed to the turbo boost tub for sixty days. What that does is it's like getting them up to speed on that on ramp but then hitting the cruise control and setting the trajectory of that calf's life in the feed yard in that first sixty days. And you talked about gut health, it's a lot more than that. Sure, it's gut health, it's stimulating the appetite, feeding the good bugs in the rumen, but then tying up and flushing out the bad guys, helping against the scours, helping against the disease causing organisms. But then really the genius of it is fueling the immune system and triggering an immune response. And that's where we see these all natural ingredients that we're using that science helps to reduce the dependence on antibiotics. I have a dream and people say, Maybe that's all it'll ever be. My dream is to reduce the dependence on antibiotics that there is in the feedlot industry, and many people laugh at that. Well, already in the trials we've done summer of twenty twenty six, we're seeing that happening. I didn't say eliminate, but reduce. And so the things we're measuring is number of treats, number of retreats, death loss, and of course weight gain in that sixty day starter period. I can share some data that we've got from early trials. We've been doing it in Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle where obviously there's a lot of cattle being fed, and then East Texas. So Oklahoma, where we did a turbo boost pen versus control, five point two percent treat rate on turbo boost versus fifteen point two on control. And a two point two pound daily gain versus a one point eight eight on the control, so a point three two pound difference there. Texas Panhandle, seven percent treats versus fourteen, and retreats point nine five percent versus four, and then zero death loss versus five percent. So these are this is directionally what we're seeing. Early data, I get it, but directionally, it's it's what we expected. When we formulated the turbo boost program, I sat down with smart minds in the industry, PhD nutritionists. I said to them, I want new sheriff in town, both barrels blazing, everything you know how to fight off disease challenges naturally without relying on antibiotics. And half of them laughed at me. The quest goes on to figure out you can fight diseases off by having a strong immune system, one, but by having an immune response mechanism, two. And so in East Texas, the trial there, treatment's down thirty percent, retreat's down thirty percent, and weight gain at two point one pounds on the turbo boost program versus one point six in the control. So there we have a half a pound daily gain. And so it's not all about daily gain, but ultimately, that's what you get paid for in the feed yard. And, I'll loop in doctor Ryan Rathman from Texas Tech where he talks about energy redirection. If you have a really sound, strong immune system, Terrill, less of the energy in that diet will go towards fueling that immune system and more will go to weight gain. I mean, it makes sense. So his thing is, you know, health equals weight gain. And so that's the way we're approaching it. You know, you've been on the road a lot longer than me and I respect your seniority in this space. From what I've said and from some early data, how is that gonna be received by these folks that are starting calves? I'm not the data nerd that you are and I say nerd in He's calling me a nerd. Yeah. Say that in a very respectful way. But but I do know twenty some years ago, I looked at some data on first treat versus second treat and at first treat and I I wouldn't want anybody to quote me, but I I know the the statistics are staggering. First treat on an animal for respiratory, specifically respiratory, which that's ninety five percent of the problems that you have Yes, sir. From the stress. At first treat, that animal has a twenty percent chance of being select of of downgrading from their genetic potential of a prime or choice carcass to a select animal. If you go one step further and you retreat that same animal, he has a higher than eighty percent chance of going from a prime or choice animal down to a select or a no roll type animal. So that in itself, just the meat quality aspect of eliminating those treats and the economic effect of that is just huge. Do you couple that then with today's animal and you take the average five weight calf that's worth somewhere around five dollars a pound and you're and and if you're restricting his gain in that starting phase, that first forty five to sixty days by by any percentage monetarily, that stacks up really, really fast. So anything that you can do to attain the the goals that you just just stated in in your very limited trials because I know they're limited. They're you're just starting. Right. And so anything that we can do to to to get the number of first treats and and those retreats down, think, not only from a carcass quality standpoint, but also from a getting them cattle to the bunk and getting them up and rolling and not taking away from the genetic potential of those animals to gain and convert. It's a no brainer. You've referred to genetic potential a few times and you know, the industry as an industry, we're very forward thinking, progressive looking at genetics. But along the way, there's all these roadblocks, hurdles you might say, that prevent a calf from reaching its true genetic potential. That's kind of sad but it's real. And so when you speak about those ones getting kicked out into select, the whole meat the beef industry is incentivized and graded on marbling. Am I correct? That's the definition of select choice prime. Yeah. That's how we measure success in beef production Right. Is, you know, not only monetarily, that's ultimately, what we're trying to to attain. So anything that we can do to let them maximize their genetic potential just just adds value to your operation. Absolutely. So to just dovetail off of that, what Texas Tech said was that when they did these meat quality studies, feedlot animal that had been subject to sickness and had immune challenges versus a healthy calf that had a really healthy immune system, same diet, same genetics, that had much better marbling in the one with the healthy immune system. Now that's a no brainer, might say. But I would say, guys, it's it's the same diet. We've just done a better job of redirecting that energy to where it'll actually pay versus having energy just fueling your immune system that's trying to cope with these disease challenges. So it all comes down to this one big measurable, and that's weight gain, but then quality in terms of, you know, what you're incentivized for in in your production. We've talked about the starting. We've talked about meat quality. You've mentioned getting them up to the bunk faster. That's a a huge thing with our program is getting them we have a old we had an old nutritionist that said for years, for feedlot cattle, healthy, hungry, up at the bunk. He said, I don't care what the program is. I want healthy, hungry, up at the bunk. So that's what we built the Turbo Boost program around, driving those three levers. But glad for any other insights into this this space that we're talking about. Well, think most notably just just in our in our local business here with, you know, limited use of the turbo boost paste, but last fall on some high risk type calves. And we had one local, darter backgrounder yard here, using the paste. His comment was, you know, normally his cattle, upon initial pull, he would be in the quote unquote sick pen, for anywhere from two to seven days. And with the advent of the turbo boost paste, he was returning a lot of cattle after first treat back to the home pen within two days. Wow. That to me said it all and and, you know, he was he was a believer right up front just for that simple reason. Yeah. I think this recurring theme we keep hearing and you've alluded to it is the number of retreats. Because when you get that second you got a doctor for the second time, yeah, you're getting a big knock as far as your grading. But sometimes those end up being chronic in the sick pen and they don't go nowhere. If they die, it's hard to make money on a dead calf. If they're flat lining, well, it's hard to make money on a calf that's not gaining. So this is getting that immune system dialed in and then having that immune response. We're not going to say there's no stress or no challenges. There's weather going like this, you might have other stress factors. What we're trying to do is build into that calf the ability to deal with stress and respond. And I call it that immune response activation. It's like a if you think of a military base, you know, an immune system is like a military base. It's equipped, it's ready, it's armed, it's got, trained troops. But as soon as there's a threat, that military base goes into high alert. And that's like the on switch on the immune system in a calf. And that's what we're working so hard, with our technology, all natural technology, to equip that calf with the ability to fight off those disease challenges from the inside out with its own immune response. You know, I'm not privy to the ingredients that are in the turbo boost but I think one of the one of the key features is that appetite stimulant. Yes, sir. Because if you keep that belly of that calf full, happier he is, the less stress you put on him. The, you know, the nutrition is there and it's readily available and that keeps that immune system tuned for that small amount of time. I think that's a huge benefit and and that's the comments that we've had in again in the limited use that we've used that the comments from anybody that's used it is those calves are sucking right to the bunk. They're staying hydrated. And I think that that's one of the keys that is being attained. That's great. I appreciate the feedback. As we wrap up, any thoughts on the the industry, the optimism, potential risks? If there was ever a time, I guess, to get out of your box and try something new, this might be the best time to do it in my mind because look at the dollars you got to work with. When you got a the average five weight calf bringing anywhere from twenty five hundred to twenty seven hundred dollars a head, You got a lot of these big calves dollar and up anywhere from twenty seven and a half to twenty nine hundred dollars a head. There's a little extra jingle left in the pocket. The ranchers are being rewarded right now. So if there was ever a time to step out of your box and try something new, I think this is this might be the time. To maintain the health of that animal is key in in the success of your operation. Absolutely. Well, Terrill, I stand in awe of ranchers and folks like you that are stewards of the land. And I think we need to encourage this spirit of stewardship of our extra jingle. Everybody, we're thrilled and and ranchers deserve it, but I think we need to be also wise stewards of that extra jingle. My my input on that would be look at it so in a way that you you use your money to make money. Don't sometimes if you're having a really good year, you can almost get lax in your in your how you manage that. And if we can use that to make wise decisions for the future, I think that's a a great whether that's genetics or whether it's stepping out of the box on other nutrition or, you know, upgrading the the carrying capacity of your ranch or the way you manage it. Well, that concludes us, on today's That Ranching podcast. Thanks for joining us, and we will see you next Thursday.

I am the same guy with the same passion and the same care and the same heart. Welcome back to that ranching podcast where we address real topics around the kitchen table and further to discuss the comments, the naysayers that we appreciate on social media. So another really common question that we get is around price. So I see one day Anita said, it's worth the same as other companies, two hundred and twenty five dollars and a bit more, not six hundred dollars. It sounds like she might have been from Canada. Yeah. That's correct. Not by the words she used, but just by the price she quoted. So thanks for that input. Duane, what would you say to that? Jeez. Giving me all the tough ones here today. Well, I I can start it off. No. Fair enough, Anita. When I go to the local Ford dealership and I need to buy a pickup for a a new hire, let's say a new sales guy, you know what my first question is? And it's stupid, but it is. It's like, how much is that one over there? And what about that one? And the the Ford salesman, who I know quite well, he looks at me and he says, well, first of all, I mean, I can give you the prices, but what are you trying to get done? Because that one will do x and y and that one will do ten times that. The common denominator is price, so they're like, they start comparing price versus price, which is very fair. What I would like to educate folks on is it's more about what you're trying to get done and then looking at your cost per head per day. With Riomax, have a very concentrated product that they don't need to eat very much a day, one eighth to one third of a pound. And so the cost per head per day is usually the same or less than the El Chipo tubs. And so we just wanna educate folks what are you trying to get done? Like, what's the result of this product? And then what is the cost per day? But that's probably I'm probably off the rails. No. I I was actually the cost per head per day was the first thing where my head goes is upfront cost is one thing. What does it actually cost you? You know, Riomax is a a lot more concentrated. So when you say cost per head per day, cows are gonna eat less of the tub. So a two hundred and thirty five dollar tub, if they eat four of them to one Riomax tub, you know, you're spending just about a thousand dollars in the same time you're spending six hundred and thirty five here up in Canada or, you know, four ninety five here in the US. What I would say further to that, like you said, Trevor, is the results. So okay. So we we look at it and there there's definitely times when we're by far cheaper on a per head per day basis, so it's an absolute no brainer to switch to Riomax. Then there's times when we might be even on a cost per head per day, we might be double the cost of your loose mineral program. In which case, we need to say, alright, if we're gonna do Riomax and it's gonna cost me double, I'm gonna be investing, you know, maybe it's fifty dollars ahead or whatever that cost is over this time period. Now, what am I looking to get done for that extra investment? We may need to look. What what are you currently doing? What results are you currently getting? And if you're gonna invest the six hundred and thirty five dollars in a Riomax tub, what what are you getting that isn't in what you're currently doing? Because there there's reasons why we we cost what we do, and I Trevor, you could say this as the owner, but if we could make a tub for two hundred and thirty five bucks that would do the same thing that the Riomax formula currently does. We'd probably have two hundred semis backed up over here instead of twenty. But my the the point is we agree and are sympathetic that these are very reasonable questions because people do judge things upfront on price. How much is that one? How much is that one? Back to the Ford dealership, imagine if I'm trying to pull a gooseneck trailer, I go there and I say, what's your cheapest pickup? And he says, these Ford Rangers are super reasonable. He's, what are you thinking, just run the kids to school every day and have a weekend truck? I'm like, no, I'm pulling a gooseneck with this thing and he's like, okay, you're gonna need to think of a f three fifty. We wanna get people what they need to get the job done and don't forget to do the due diligence on your cost per head per day. Awesome. So another question we get is folks saying that they never got back to me. I had over consumption or I had some issue, and I feel like they didn't hold up their end of the bargain. As a family business, that is definitely not the experience we want for any any producer. I think it would be fair to say, Trevor, if we agree with this statement, but as a as a company We usually agree, but not always. We've had a fair bit of growth here over the last few years, and we're very thankful for it. A lot of cows joining the Riomax herd, a lot of new dealers joining Riomax, and it's been an awesome journey. With that comes some growth challenges. So when there is situations where, hey, you know, you'd reached out and someone hadn't got back to you, we very much apologize for that. The same token, we there is situations that it does stuff falls through the cracks. So what we would ask is if that's happened to you, please get in touch. You know, if if it if we see something on Facebook, we do our darndest to reach back out. Otherwise, if you shoot us a text, give us a call. You can Google it. Just call our main number. One of the girls will answer and send you over to one of our territory managers or business development guys, resolve twenty four, anyone that's available there. I think it's an absolute priority that if you have a problem or a challenge and you've been a Riomax customer or a Rhyzogreen customer, that we get that that addressed. Would you say? Yeah. Again, I'd say I'm sorry, and it's definitely not the experience that we wish for you, and, we take it seriously. So like Twain said, get in touch. We wanna take care of you. Just another thing to note on that is our dealers, our dealer network, we very much value them and and they are ranchers first, you know. So for for some of these guys, especially in remote areas or poor reception areas and, you know, let's say we're in weaning season or maybe calve the heart of calving. There may be times when there's a couple weeks where that dealer is flat out from dawn till dusk doing what they do on their ranch. And we don't blame them for that. We knew that when we got them started as a dealer. But if there is a challenge where you're not able to get a hold of your dealer or you, you know, maybe that just hasn't the message hasn't got through and back to us. It's not backdooring the dealer to just pick up the phone and give us a call as a company and say, you know, here's my dealer, here's who I work with and this is what I'm running into. We work very closely with our dealers to help service their customers as well. Absolutely. Just reach out to us directly if there's any challenges there. We wanna make sure we get you taken care of, be it through the dealer or just us directly as a company. You're still under them as a as a customer, but we wanna make sure you you have a good experience regardless of of how you're currently getting your product. I will say that and it's not an excuse, but with rapid growth because of the results that guys are seeing, there is growing pains. There is, you know, hiring good people, and I was hearing of a no fence collar company that was growing so fast that they they just simply couldn't hire people fast enough. So is that a bad company? Probably not because something they're doing is working, but damn it, can they hire faster? I very much sympathize with your pain if that's how you're feeling, and I assure you that we will take care of you. And if you have fallen through the cracks, that is not acceptable in our books, and we apologize and wanna make that right with you. Just on that, Trevor, with the hiring talk is as a company, we also do we we wanna make sure we have good people that can answer your questions and do a good job looking after you. So to be quite frank at Riomax, we don't hire anyone and everyone. If we are hiring someone, it we do take a lot of time to put in training to make sure that they're, you know, they're servicing the the industry how we want them to be servicing them. So, you know, if we get someone that comes on board it, it may take six months to a year to fully train someone into their role at a Riomax. And so I'm not saying that as an excuse or, you know, even apologizing for it. It's just more of the facts of it is as we expand and as we grow, we're gonna continue to to do what we can to make sure we're servicing all of the western half of US and Canada. There's challenges that come along with it and we're doing our darndest. Thinking back a quarter of a century ago, which seems like a while, I was a one man band in a one car garage driving an old Buick LeSabre. And at that point, I could control everything our company did because there was only one touch point. Okay? I am the same guy with the same passion and the same care and the same heart, and yes, we've grown, like I said, because of the results, folks. See? And we will strive, might and main, to do the right thing by the people we serve. And if we've let you down or if you feel let down, I am sorry. We wanna, work with you to resolve that, and, please, reach out to us. So I think that wraps us up for this episode of That Ranching podcast. We will see you next week.

There's customers that go so far as to ask us to pay him five thousand dollars to not badmouth us on social media. Welcome back to that ranching podcast. We're thrilled to have you. This is the next episode of the naysayers on social media and how we respond to that. Darren says, I heard they're so good they quit eating grass and hay altogether, lol. I haven't tried them. I wanted to, but I know a couple guys that did and didn't see a difference. Now firstly, when we're hearing that feedback, I would challenge were we measuring the results? Some of the time what we hear is if they didn't do it for long enough or it wasn't in a situation where they could actually measure that performance, it is tough to see results because the cows didn't have enough time to acclimate to it or there was no comparison to know what what the results were. And an example of that, a guy using Rhyzogreen. We have plenty of these pictures where you can see the side by side difference, and guy saying, you know what, I can't see from the road the visual difference, and so I feel like it didn't work. I'm okay with that, but what we go and do or encourage him to do is cut a sample, you know, like a square foot of plants from the treated and then plants from the control, this is alfalfa, and invariably what you see is you have less atrophy on the rhizogreen, in other words, you have more leaf growth closer to the ground and less yellowing of that stem, and that equals tons. Right? But if you're not weighing it or you're not measuring it, you're just eyeballing it, I get it. It might look like there's no difference, but that's an example of if you don't measure it, you won't know how much it helped. It's like me complaining back to the Ford dealership that this was supposed to see increase in fuel efficiency on this new EcoBoost, and he says, so have you been measuring? And I'm like, no. No. That's that's a dumb example, but What what I will say when we did a study a few years back on our customers, we asked for feedback on if they felt like Riomax paid for itself in their operation, and eight out of ten ranchers said it paid for itself. One and a half said not sure yet, still deciding, and then half a rancher or five percent said no. And I think what that highlights there is, does it work for everyone or with the environmental changes that happen year on year with ranchers? There's scenarios absolutely where something didn't go quite as planned. I think that would be stupid if we wouldn't say that that, you know, there's times when, like we said in an earlier episode, the science works. We know when we're feeding the rumen, the microbes inside the rumen of a cow, we're gonna have an impact. Now, we've had it year over year where if someone's comparing to last year and there's a drastic change in the forage quality or, you know, maybe they got rain one year and didn't get rain the next. There there's things that change that are gonna drive the cows needs up and down and that can vary results quite drastically. So those are scenarios where there is times ranchers, you know, they maybe use the product. And if we're comparing to last year, they ate the same amount of feed. But if we did a feed test on the actual grass, the forage quality this year is that much less or poor quality than the year prior. So there there's environmental factors, I think, that play a massive role. Now is every Riomax customer across all of US and Canada one hundred and twelve percent happy with the Riomax program? I don't think that'd be a fair thing to state. No. I mean, we've got mother nature and a lot of variables, but that's not an excuse, that's a reality. And to anyone that feels like they haven't been taken care of, I apologize. That's not what I want for you. What I want for you is that we can work with you to help resolve the issue, and if it comes to a point where we can't resolve it and you don't want in and and you've got your reasons, we would we would shake hands and and leave like gentlemen, you know? But to Darren was it Darren's question? Yes. And he he said maybe a bit of tongue in cheek, but I appreciate the the humor and the challenge, Darren. Can I feed my cows nothing? You know, get by with no grass or hay? Something like that. The answer is no. If you follow the marketing, you'll hear that usually it's between that fifteen and thirty percent hay or forage savings or extending your pastures by the same fifteen or thirty percent. So we are not claiming to eliminate hay or or grass from the diet. That is still your global nutrition. And like Twain said, when you have global nutrition declining, it it will need to be compensated with something. So we're not by any means saying that you can get by without global nutrition. Riomax is a supplement and that means supplement. Fifteen to thirty percent is what we typically see. We have seen higher, but that's the the numbers we see. Definitely not a hundred percent. I was just gonna add. So now if if you are in the category, maybe you've you've tried Riomax, you didn't feel like you saw the result you're looking for, absolutely. Let's let's talk about it. I would say from a Resolve twenty four standpoint, which is our customer service team, is we wanna be in touch with you. And what we would ask, and I'm just gonna put this out there, is there may be things that we ask you to do or some corrections to make to the program. Know, if the forage qualities change drastically or something that our team can see that would make Riomax fit better in your situation or actually just help your herd as an overall, we ask you to take those recommendations seriously. We work with a lot of third party people looking at liver biopsies from cows. We look at a lot of different things. So when we have a problem, we take it seriously. But then when we make recommendations, we ask for that to be followed. We've we've had it in recent times where there's customers that we've had one or two that I can think of that had challenges and then wouldn't take the recommendations of our team. So in turn, we didn't have the results we were looking for in the Riomax program. And then we've get got some negative feedback on that and we had one go so far as to ask us to pay him five thousand dollars to not badmouth us on social media, which I can say this with absolute conviction and assurance as a family business and knowing what Riomax stands for. We are absolutely not going to pay someone money to not talk about us. Now, if there's a legitimate challenge or we've had overconsumption or something that we can go back to the Riomax product and say, hey, we legitimately owe this person money for something that actually happened in their situation. A hundred percent, I think, Trevor, you'd back this up. We we're not afraid to to make things right if that's what it comes down to. And I've personally, if we've had we've had over consumption cases where customers on the program, they had over consumption, they quit. I've seen Trevor go take them a check for that over consumption amount, not expecting their business back just to make it right. I'm not saying that to flatter you, that's just that's the kind of company we are. But when we're in the situation where someone's almost trying to hold us over the barrel and say, hey, if you don't pay me money, this is we're not gonna stand for that. Yeah. Don't treat us like a corporate giant. We're a family business, we have a heart, we care, and we want to work with everybody, do the best we can, like Twain said, if there's a problem that you feel has not been resolved, reach out. I will say because of our growth, because of the results we see, it does bring out some heel biting that we never saw before, you know, when we were a tenth of this size, no one said a boo squeak. And just because we're growing, because of the impact we're making on men and women that we serve and we appreciate and we we eat, sleep, and breathe, you know, the needs of these beloved people, don't knock us for that. So that wraps us up for this week of That Ranching podcast. We'll see you next week.

I don't know if people feel shortchanged every time they chew on a KFC drumstick. Colonel Sanders back in the day probably said, look, folks, let's just keep this one in the family. Welcome to That Ranching Podcast. Thanks for joining us around this kitchen table where we discuss things that matter to men and women in ranching. What we're gonna discuss today is some of the naysayers on social media and answering some of their challenges which may or may not be reasonable fair challenges. And by the way, anyone that's contributed on social media, we seek to respond and to do it in a fair spirit. We're not here to argue with anybody or have a a fight, you know, on on Facebook, so to speak. So there is times when we will ask people to take it offline. We're not we're not trying to hide anything. We're more trying to have a a conversation that sometimes just isn't best to be done in public. And and I think most of these questions are legitimate. They're naysayers, but they're still legitimate, and we want to address those. For those that are just trying to pick a fight or whatever online, we're not a corporate company, so we're a family business, so please don't. But Marcus, what are we getting for some of the feedback? Alright. So I see this one a fair bit, but mister Schmidt says, pretty hard to buy a product if they don't list their ingredients. What do you say to that? Reach out. We definitely we have a request to tag form on the website. Now the one thing we used to actually have the tag on the website. This would have been several years back, if I remember right, Trevor. And the one thing we run into a fair bit, people tend to misread tags or potentially they've been trained how to read a tag maybe a little bit differently than And our product is so fundamentally different that it's like asking to see a Tesla and looking in the hood to check the engine out and saying, well, it doesn't have a motor. We can share the ingredient list with with you, but what what what really needs to come first, I think, and correct me if if I'm if you think differently, Duane, but is a understanding of how fundamentally different Riomax is? Because just a tag will likely con confuse you. A big example on that Trevor is actually the the protein level on the tag. Yeah. So a lot of people when they're looking at a protein tub, their first thing is, well, what's the protein tub? As you would. As you do. As as you would. Now with Nutrizorb, our digestive pack with over twenty digestive ingredients, what we're doing is helping that cow pull more protein and more energy out of her feed. And build microbial protein. Hundred percent. But doesn't come on any put that on a tag. So and I hope it doesn't come across as trying to deceive anybody or trick them because they don't know what they're buying. Absolutely. If you're looking at buying Riomax and you wanna see a tag before you purchase the product, fair enough. We would just ask that you reach out to us directly as a company. We'll get you that tag sent over, and one of the guys would likely give you a shout just to address and go through the tag with you to make sure that when you're looking at it, you know what you're looking at and you can see what you're buying. And we've done it multiple times, but even having someone send over what they're currently using and we can pull up a bit of a tag comparison for you so you can see, hey, you know, for anyone that doesn't know, the retail price of Riomax is four hundred and ninety five bucks for a two hundred and fifty pound tub. So we're gonna be triple what a normal tub is. If you're looking to spend that kind of money, probably want to know what you're buying. Can I tell a story? Yeah. Absolutely. This is probably fifteen years ago in Alberta. A good customer called me up and he says, I've taken your tag and I've shared it with my nutritionist, and he's plugged it into his software, it's telling me that my cows are losing x amount of body condition by the day. And I said, that's terrible, like I'm very sympathetic, I take that seriously. Tell me, what are the cows looking like? You know, I'm just, in my mind, I'm just thinking of these skeletons, you know, out in the middle of a Chinook. And he's like, well that's the crazy thing, he said, the cows are fat if anything. And I said, mister customer, either you believe your nutritionist or you believe the cows, but in this case, you can't believe both. And that's just an example, nothing against nutritionists, nothing against the feed program, but it was confusing because they were not factoring in the foundational difference of Riomax. Hence, why we don't just frisbee out tags to everybody right away because there's a few steps before that. Trust that makes sense. Just to follow that on real quick, the other part that people are curious about is the Nutrizorb is like, hey, if they won't tell me what all goes into this thing, how do I really know what's going into my cows? Makes me think of why Coca Cola hasn't publicly listed their recipe, but I'd be glad to know what your thoughts are on the NutriSorb side of things. I think that's a good a good challenge, honestly. There's five main components that make up NutriSorb. Yeast, prebiotics, probiotics, fungi fuel Enzymes. Enzymes. Thank you, Trevor. For the person that's wondering what all is in that, I mean, there's twenty different components and and you've well listed out the five categories or classes. I suppose sometimes people are wondering, does it have a drug or ionophore or a chemical or a coccidiostat or does it have something in there that I'm already doing or or something that will kick me out of an all natural program. So I would say upfront, Nutrizorb has been all natural long before all natural was cool. All of those ingredients that Twain listed off, which serve to squeeze more out of the diet and to extract more nutrients out, not just protein energy, but all your minerals, trace minerals, vitamins that are naturally occurring in your forages. Nutrizorb will extract more out of everything. So very much a natural product. Back to the Coca Cola example, Marcus, and there'd be dozens of other examples where in this case, our family business protects the recipe. As you can understand, we're probably not gonna put our intellectual property up on a billboard that we've spent almost a quarter of a century building. KFC, they have their proprietary recipe for their chicken which has been protected for many years. I don't know if people feel shortchanged every time they chew on a KFC drumstick that they didn't know exactly what was in there but old colonel Sanders back in the day probably said, look folks, let's just keep this one in the family because we don't want the chicken shop down the road doing the same thing. We're just a family just making sure that the customer is at the center of everything we do, and then, yeah, we're probably not gonna just tell the world the secrets of a family recipe, much the same as grandma didn't wanna share her brownie recipe because it was hers. The other question that I see coming in a fair bit, mister Frattinger is saying, someone told me they're made in the same place as one of the other brands, just different label, possibly just good marketing. So I think there's two questions to that is same place, different label, and the other part is these repeated claims about it just being good marketing. Those are both good. I appreciate people like Trevor had said earlier, there's some fair challenges out there. Just to address the the one about the different, you know, same product, different label. If you've heard that they've they're made in the same plant You're right. You're you're right. Yeah. Thanks, Trevor. So as a as a company, we do have plants that finish our tubs for us. And Trevor, you could maybe go into this a little bit more, but I'll just do a quick high level. Yeah. Here at in Redwood Falls, Minnesota, we premix Down the road here. And put together all our main components, really the guts of Nutrizorb and Esqort, the the main things that go into the Riomax formulas that really set us apart from everything else out there. That is all premixed in house here, and we ship out those premixes to plants around the country that then produce tubs for us. So yes, produced in the same plant. No, not the same tub with a different label. I've had it for years where people said, if it comes out of x y z plant and we use multiple plants around the country, it's probably the same thing. The only thing that is the same would be the molasses that is nothing but a carrier to the ingredients that deliver the mode of action. But a very fair challenge. So is it just marketing? We believe in marketing as a tool to speak to the wonderful people we serve and get the message out there. We wanna help others you know, with seven hundred and fifty thousand mother cows on the program and and folks seeing this hay savings, forage savings, weaning weights, conception rates. We wanna just help others as we've helped them. People wanna be part of a winning brand, so we have people getting on video for us. People are enjoying the journey and they wanna do good by their neighbors and friends within within the ranching industry. So I don't really talk call it marketing so much as is spreading a good message that can help other folks. If I if I could just jump in here, couple things is one is you've probably seen some of our customer testimonials. There are ranchers that there's there is some of our dealers, to be totally transparent that shoot videos for us as well that talk about what they've seen in their operations. Which stay ranchers at heart? Again, they're they're ranchers. They're ranchers first and foremost. You know, our dealers are ranchers that then turned into Riomax dealers. In many cases, they've grown up since they were little in that area, and they're not gonna put their reputation on the line to sell a couple tubs. That I can assure you. You know, the the ranchers, dealers we work with. But then in the main, the videos we get are from ranchers that are just Riomax customers. They have no stake in it. I can assure you they like getting on camera about as much as Trevor and I do or possibly less. Which is not a lot. But Marcus, you're, you know, you're in charge of shooting a lot of these videos. How much do we normally pay people per episode? Absolutely zero. Sometimes we've had requests for payment or a certain amount of swag or something, and I will not not that I don't think it's worth it for their help, but I will decline it because I don't want them ever being bribed or incentivized to share the message. I want it to be whatever they honestly think, whatever they honestly feel, and only that. So Marcus, then if if there's no payment, no swag, no bribery, what is motivating these people to get out of their comfort zone like we are right now and do what they do on camera? I think it's on the basis of helping other ranchers. Like, most of who's seeing these videos and and who's impacted by them is local ranchers that say, hey, that guy's not that far down the road, he runs a similar type of operation, and he's seeing these results. And so I think they feel motivated to if they found a good thing that's actually adding performance, putting dollars on the bottom line for their operation, enabling them to grow, they feel like it's the least they could do to help spread that message and help their fellow ranchers. What does that look like? Like, if you're gonna go ask someone, pretend I'm Rancher Joe, how do you reach out to me and ask me to shoot a Hey, Rancher Joe. Would you ever be willing to share what you've seen on the tubs to help out fellow ranchers? That simple. People just respond to that. Yeah. Sometimes it's a little back and forth of what it means to actually get on camera and that it's Well, might say, why? I ain't a real good talker. You know? I'm not I'm not no good at speeches. And I think those are some of the ranchers we've got the best content with. We don't need no smooth talkers, we just need real people that are part of this journey and they wanna help their fellow rancher. That is the genius to this and to all, I think there's well over four hundred just on our YouTube channel as as we speak, and then, you know, on other social platforms and to me it's not a marketing campaign, it's a movement. They're winning on their ranches in terms of, you know, actual tangible measurements like financial ROI, return on investment, and they just want to help others win. I think ranchers are a very special breed, salt of the earth, and so willing to help the neighbor with branding, help the neighbor at weaning time, help the neighbor if there's a fire or a sickness and it's that same thread that runs through, they they have good results. I'm not saying we're the only tub on the market. I'm not saying we're the only family business in the industry, but they would just wanna spread that word. They're like, this is a winning brand. I'm winning. You know? Let's be part of the journey. Thanks again for joining us on That Ranching podcast. We'll see you next week.

Over the years, a lot of guys have said, you gotta have clinical or third party data for me to believe you. Twenty twenty four did studies across Idaho, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington states. Twenty four, twenty five, Nebraska and Arizona in twenty twenty five in Texas, and then finally, it's in Nebraska on corn silage. I'm saying, well, we kinda knew that already, but thanks. Welcome back to that ranching podcast. We get people that say your data's anecdotal. Where's the concrete concrete proof in what what you're doing? Be it rhizogreen or the tubs, the paste. They wanna know what what the concrete proof is. So Trevor, what would you say on on that when people are saying all our stuff's anecdotal? I have mixed emotions on that. Gotta understand where people are coming from. I I think they've got reason to be skeptical because they've got fed a lot of claims. Like, I'm sympathetic with why they say that. I would say that what is the definition of anecdotal? Because if you got seven hundred and fifty thousand mama cows on the program, these are guys that have been in the industry for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years, and they're making a conscious decision to use Riomax. I don't know. What's the definition of anecdotal to start with? When I hear anecdotal is people saying, oh, it's just hearsay or it's just, you know, someone that it's feedback that isn't very concrete. You know? And and when we're talking to producers, and we're getting videos from guys or feedback from guys, we had had one this morning actually out in Montana. Producer that he'd sent in those pictures to Rodney on the on the rhyzogreen. And on his alfalfa, you know, he'd he'd done a side by side comparison. He was at three and a half ton to the acre on the treated ground with rhyzogreen and three ton to the acre on the untreated. And pictures. Pictures to show the the leaves. With less atrophy. Yep. And in his case, as a producer, what he was saying is normally has to buy about eight hundred ton of feed. And this year, with the way things are looking, if he can get that half a ton to the acre across all his cuttings, he was gonna be at about an extra seven hundred and fifty ton of production. Yeah. And so we're talking large scale production here, and that was gonna eliminate pretty much eliminate his need to buy feed this year. That to me is not anecdotal because he's got he's got his own comparison Half a pivot versus the other half the pivot. He's got the tonnage. He's got the pictures. You can see where the leaves go almost all the way to the ground on the treated versus the other. That is not anecdote. I think anecdotal is like, I I feel it was better. I think it was better. And it's like, how can you trust that? Right? It it's just someone's opinion. But I would say what backs up a lot of what we do in our numbers, both on rhizogreen and Riomax, is these trials where guys have done a side by side comparison, or they're like a sixty year old rancher, and he's comparing what he's seeing this year to historical average or historical data, not just like last year or one good year or one bad year, but, like, for his lifetime. And he's like, I've never seen calves wean this way, or I've never seen cows graze this part of the pasture ever. That to me takes it from anecdotal to, okay. We've got some concrete comparisons. Yeah. I I would hundred percent agree. And these are these are ranchers that they don't really stand anything to gain from feeding anyone a line of BS to be quite frank, you know. They're they're just guys helping each other and I think we see it be it, you know, with the products we offer at Riomax or otherwise is ranchers do rely very much on other ranchers experience with different products and different, you know, machinery and all sorts of different things. They learn off of each other. You know, if one guy's doing something that works pretty quick, see a lot of other guys looking at that thing and wondering how they can implement it in their operation. I think it's important in ag that that we do rely on each other to some degree because, you know, when when a guy can say, here's what I'm seeing, here's what I've done, you can kind of base your judgment or decision off of that a lot more, I think. What gives our customers confidence is that when we're seeing these trends, you know, let's say hay savings or increased production on Rhyzogreen or weaning weights on Riomax, etcetera, when they're seeing these trends and it's consistent from the Panhandle of Texas to Missouri to Alberta to the Rocky Mountains in Montana and Colorado. I mean, these are vastly different grass types, different soil types, even different breeds of cattle, different elevation, different rainfall. There's a lot of different things there. When we see these consistent trends on the levers that we we can impact, such as conception rates, weight gain on calves, hay and forage savings, stretching your pastures, herd health, increased production and tonnage on the rhizogreen side. It's that consistency that that drives the validity. Yeah. But then, I guess, Duane, I I got a a bit of a pet peeve. Over the years, a lot of guys have said, you know, you you gotta have clinical or third party or university data for me to believe you because you're just a family business, how would I believe you? And and I'm like, well, this is our data, like, on Rhyzogreen, sixty six on farm trials. Ninety plus percent win rate. Yep. Yeah. Which I'll I've some of the big corporates in the seed industry talk about sixty to seventy being, you know, world class. So at ninety percent, we think, like, this is awesome. But then guys are saying, we we need third party validation. So we went ahead and and did it starting in twenty four and twenty five, and it's continuing. They don't do that for free, in case anyone's wondering. Well, that's where my pet peeve comes in. We get all this work done, and it comes back and it validates what we already knew. And I'm like, why do we have to pay for that? Because we already knew that. I was just gonna jump in real quick. So I wanna know what do you guys actually have that is proven in the lab that is scientific that is hard? So we've got two sets. One would be on the Riomax. One would be on the Rhyzogreen. We've done three different studies on manure and measuring the leftovers in the manure on Riomax cows versus control cows. That study was done in twenty twenty two. We did three separate studies measuring the leftover for undigested fibers leftovers on Riomax. The average across those three studies was fifty one percent less leftovers. And then you referred to mineral. People often wonder how quick can you get that mineral level up. You know, they know we have esqort, is a hundred percent rumen bypass or protected trace minerals, your key trace minerals. And so we did a study there doing liver biopsies, which is the truest measurement of the mineral status in a cow. This was done in twenty twenty one. Within forty two days, the copper level in the Riomax cows increased a hundred and twenty eight percent. One other study that I'd like to share. In twenty fourteen, we worked with the University of Minnesota to determine the effect we had on the TDN or total digestible nutrients in a cow's diet based on the use of NutriSorb. They did studies on grain and forage. They saw an average of three percent increase in the TDN, which is huge. The way the professor communicated to us, doctor Alfredo DiConstanzo, he said, it makes a poor quality hay function like a mediocre quality hay, and it makes a mediocre quality hay function like a high quality hay. Marcus, that's some, response to the the you know, looking for actual scientific evidence, and, and and that journey continues. We're not gonna stop doing these kind of studies, but we're also not gonna stop the flow of all these pictures we get and testimonials and feedback where, you know, Twain mentioned earlier, these guys that get on video have no incentive to do this besides that they're part of a winning brand. They wanna help their neighbors win. Winning begets winning, and these guys are just part of that journey. And, of course, we've been feeding microbes in the rumen of a cow since two thousand six. We've been sharpening the saw all along, and today, we have over twenty different digestion ingredients in that NutriSorb. So University of Minnesota listening to us, they're probably gonna say it's time for another study. Just some other concrete third party validation studies on Rhyzogreen. Twenty twenty four, Agrellas did studies across Idaho, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington states. Saw an average increase in production on alfalfa of twenty five percent. Twenty four twenty five, AgriThorb, another third party verification body did studies in Nebraska and Arizona and saw a thirteen point nine percent increase in production on alfalfa. Agrellis, in twenty twenty five in Texas did a study for us and saw a fourteen and a half percent increase in production on alfalfa. And then finally, Agrellis did another study for us in Nebraska on corn silage and saw a twenty four percent increase in feed value. We're not talking quantity now. We're talking quality. So there's a a snapshot. There's more coming of concrete third party validation that I'm saying, well, we kinda knew that already, but thanks. And another story, is a guy I was talking to. This is years ago, and I said there's been a trial, know, university trial, and it shows this and this and this. And he said, I really don't care what was done in a little sterile lab in Minnesota. I don't care. He said, what I care about is real world results where the wind is blowing and the snow is coming sideways and we're in high elevation. He said, I wanna know how your product works in the real world, not in a damn lab. Now I'm not saying labs or universities or third party validation is a bad thing, but I am saying we gotta keep balance because if all we had was sterile lab data, you know, probably ninety percent of our our customers wouldn't trust it, and I don't blame them. And and you you've probably if you've seen much on Riomax, you've you've probably seen some of our customer testimonials, and I think that's kind of the backbone of our our results, so to speak, is when when we can talk to a producer and say, k. What are you doing? You know? How is this working for you? What results are you seeing? And to take what you said earlier, across the country, we see with Riomax, we're helping pull more nutrients out of the feed. With Rhyzogreen, we're, you know, increasing the nutrient uptake by the plant. So decreasing feed consumption, increasing production across the board. But what that looks like in each region and in in each herd does vary. If you go up to the north country, north country being say Montana, they feed a lot of hay in the winter. And for them, if we talk about stretching feed or getting more out of that hay, that means decreasing feed consumption. Pretty obvious. So you know a guy that's feeding thirty five pounds of hay, now he's, you know, maybe feeding thirty pounds. So rancher in the North Country, he can relate to that and say, oh, so if I could save, you know, fifteen, thirty percent of my feed, here's what that would look like in my scenario. Now, if you take that down to a rancher in say Western Oklahoma or totally different story. Now, yes, we're still helping pull more out of that feed. The cows are able to get more protein, more energy out of what they're eating, so they don't need to eat as much. But in that case, that's gonna look like either decreasing the amount of grass they're consuming through the winter. So, you know, more stockpiled forage in a drought situation probably means don't have to sell as many cows. Or for a lot of them where they're caking, they're actually reducing the amount of cake they're putting out. If you turn around, took that story back north, that that would I mean, they'd appreciate it up in Montana, but not a lot of guys feed cake up in Montana. So there there's that context that So so the the guy in Texas says, don't talk to me because I don't feed hay. And the guy in Montana says, don't talk to me because I don't feed cake. But the principle and the mode of action and the science behind both of these scenarios is exactly the same. That was a bit of a roundabout way of saying, I think it's important that we, you know, hear from the producers across the country what they're seeing. So we're just gonna pause here. We have a definition of anecdotal coming in. Alright. So the the definition of anecdotal, it refers to information, evidence, or accounts based on personal experience, casual observations, or stories rather than on rigorous scientific research, statistics, or proven facts? Okay. What I would challenge myself as to to ensure that when there is a customer testimonial that it is rigorous and it is based on proven facts, not just, yeah, I think my cows look better, I think we saved hay, or I think there was more alfalfa per acre. You know, I'm a big stickler for pictures like this, side by side comparison. Here you see to the line where rhizogreen was applied, or like this. Here's a manure picture. You can see the, Riomax manure versus control. And I was talking to a guy that had challenged us about being too anecdotal. And when he started to see these manure pictures that we we get from our customers, which tells tells the customer what's going on in the rumen, he said, that's science that you can see. There's a lot to this. I appreciate a challenge from a customer like, wait. I think you guys are too anecdotal. So that we can make sure that it is more valid and proven and rigorous, and then at the same time, limit ourselves to doing all of our studies in a sterile white square box of a lab in Minnesota. Just on the the anecdotal side of things is one one thing we're very serious about as a company is when our customers are, you know, potential customers, someone's interested in the product or interested in Rhyzogreen, we strongly encourage doing your own trial of sorts. On the Rhyzogreen, just before we wrap up, if you look at this picture, it shows a guy in Nebraska that did what we call a tarp study. He laid a tarp down and then sprayed rhyzogreen over top. You can see where, rhyzogreen impacted the growth and where it did not. It's as simple as that. Well, I have guys and they say, well, hey. Listen. I'm not a trial farm, so I'm not gonna I'm not, you know, just putting two groups of cows, exact same cows in separate pastures and measuring it for a full year, which is understandable. But to some degree, when we're looking at starting on a I'll give you an example, just had a customer the other day, he runs about five hundred cows and he was looking at starting on Riomax. His father's a little skeptical, just kinda getting rolling and he was interested in trying it but not wanting to, you know, do everything. And I was like, perfect. If you're not gonna do the whole herd, they had, you know, they have some purebred cows and then they have a couple hundred head of commercial cows. They're gonna start with the purebred herd. So we got, I think about three hundred cows on Riomax currently. There's two hundred commercial cows that are gonna be kept separate and they're gonna be measuring those results, the feed consumption and tracking conception rates and those results. Now for them, they're able to do that fairly easily. For some people, you know, maybe they some of our guys will start with the first calf heifers or some of the guys will start with the majority of the herd and keep, you know, fifty running age cows separate. But some way to know that if you're gonna do Riomax for six months or a year, at the end of that six months to a year, what is success for you as a rancher? I think is extremely important because if you don't have a way to measure results on your operation, it doesn't have to be scientific. You know, we don't have to go into the lab and figure out what the rumen fluid's doing in your cows. It's more important though that you can say at the end, I was looking for this result and here's what I achieved with or with rhizogreen because if we don't have that, it makes it very tough for you as an operator to determine, hey, was this worth the financial investment, and is this something I wanna continue in my program? Is that fair enough? It it is fair. And if you if you understand where we're coming from, it's we are customer centric, rancher centric. That's at the center of everything we do. So as Twain said, we wanna help folks make that decision that is right for them, whatever that decision is for or against Riomax. And we have no problem with a guy saying, well, what did you say, Dwayne? A guy says, well, tell you what. I'll give you my worst group. Bring it on. Bring it on. Bring it on. Three words. Bring it on because we're so willing to showcase the science and the mode of action and the results. The point is we want folks in agriculture to be able to make those decisions that are right for them. And then it's not they got fed a line of BS or they got sold a product. It's like, no. They they did their due diligence, and they said this works for me. And then you do get guys that say, I've been studying you for two years. I've been watching you. I've heard all your data, and I wanna put everything on it. Yeah. That that's awesome. And but I would still say to that producer, alright. Hey. Six months time, what sort of measurables do you have to be able to say this is what Riomax is? Is such a good point. With our customers, we always, you know, what are you trying to get out of this deal? This is about driving results. Are you what are you after? Are you after hay savings specifically, or is it weaning weights you're trying to bump conception rates? What is the holistic picture? We gotta walk a mile in your moccasins and understanding what you're trying to get out of a deal. Even if you do the whole herd, we still wanna come back and say, how how are we tracking? Are we winning or we losing? Yep. And at at the end of the day, hopefully, we've conveyed through this is we do have concrete data that we've done with third party verification, University of Minnesota. And then we've also got what some people would call anecdotal. I I don't think a lot of what we see is anecdotal. I mean, is it's stories from guys, but it is facts. You know, when you're looking at pictures, you're looking at the numbers side by side comparisons. Those are very important to what we do, helping ranchers make good decisions for their operation based on what other ranchers are seeing in similar geographical areas. And then last but certainly not least is as you're looking to start on the or Rhyzogreen program is making sure that you have a way to do your own study of sorts. Be it, like we said, might be the whole herd, but you at least know the the results you're looking for. So with that being said, thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you next week. Thank you.

I'm standing in the highest priced lick tub in North America. Now what might surprise you about Riomax is ranchers that would describe themselves as I'm a cheapskate by nature. We pinch our pennies. I am the penny pincher. Are really the folks using it. Now these ranchers that not only expect Riomax to pay for itself, but they expect to see money back in their pocket. Throughout the video today, we're going to talk about the results we see on the Riomax program, the science behind those results and why we see the results we do, and last but certainly not least, crunching the cold hard numbers on what it looks like to feed By the end of this video, you'll know if is a fit for your operation. So how did this tub come to be? To understand where this tub came from, we gotta go all the way back to two thousand two. The year was two thousand two. The Winter Olympics were in Salt Lake City. Kenny Chesney released the good stuff, and Trevor Greenfield started selling vet supplies out of a tiny one car garage in Vesta, Minnesota. He didn't feel like a business founder. He felt like a frustrated man selling me too products. It's vanilla flavor. He thought back to lessons on digestion in high school and asked himself, how could I help impact cattle digestion in ranching? With no answers, he reached out to a longtime cattle nutritionist who sat down and taught him one on one how to feed rumen microbes. By feeding rumen microbes, you squeeze more out of every mouthful. Makes sense. Right? In two thousand six, Riomax was born with a single digestion ingredient. Fast forward, the digestion technology pack has gone from one to five to ten to fifteen and now more than twenty components, helping ranchers save fifteen to thirty percent on hay or forage, which is why they say it pays for itself. Hey. I'm Jake. So we've been called fufu dust, snake oil, you name However, there is over half million cows currently looking on the Riomax tubs for four main reasons. First and foremost, fifteen to thirty percent feed savings, ten to forty pound bump in weaning weights, three to ten percent bump in conception rates, and just to cap things off an increased health, less sickness in the calves, cows staying content, hair coats flicking off to name a few. Their hair coats in the spring was like a copper penny. But to bring it back and focus more specifically on the feed savings, after all that is the main reason guys are using the tubs, What we're doing is we're feeding the microbes in the cows rumen, helping them to digest the feed more efficiently, so in turn, that cow needs less of it. This can look like increased carrying capacity, reducing protein supplement costs, cutting back hay, or utilize some poor quality grazing while keeping that cow's body condition where it needs to be. Whatever that looks like, bottom line is Riomax has to be making you money or you shouldn't be using it. Now I get it. As a rancher, there are literally hundreds of products on the market that are all claiming to be the next best thing. And we've all heard that snide comment, if I use every product that claimed to add fifty pounds, I'd probably wean in thousand pound monsters. Now with Riomax, what most folks don't know is there's two main ingredient packages which make up our secret sauce. I'm gonna hand it over to Lauren and he's gonna reveal them right now. Hey. I'm I'm Lauren and work with the ranchers across the southern US. One of the comments I get from them is, you know, everybody's out trying to sell the next best thing or snake oil is what they actually call it. Thought to myself, oh, it's just another snake oil. So we're we're here to explain the two main ingredients that make up the Riomax to where we're seeing it driving profitability back to North America. So what is Esqort? Esqort is made up of copper, manganese, zinc, and selenium, your four key trace minerals. According to doctor Hall, copper deficiency, selenium deficiency, zinc deficiency are the most common deficiencies recognized in cattle across North America. Industry standard, if you're feeding a mineral that says it's chelated, it's gonna be twenty to thirty percent chelated to seventy to eighty percent sulfates and oxides. Copper sulfate is actually a bactericide. There's been university studies by doctor Spears that show that the sulfates and oxides actually have a negative impact on the good bacteria we're trying to feed in the rumen, and that's where you start getting your antagonist or your tie ups. So by the time that copper sulfate gets to the small intestine, it's become to be absorbed through the cell wall, so there's one way out out the back end of the cow. And there's studies that show as that copper sulfate leeches into your soil, it's gonna have a negative impact on the good bacteria we're trying to feed in the soil as well. On the Esqort package, package, the copper we're using is is completely protected or or completely available to the cow. So with the with the Esqort, we're focused on getting as much of that mineral into the bloodstream with higher levels and more availability. And it was the first time ever that anything had come back with adequate zinc and copper and kind of made me a believer that it wasn't just snake oil. So using that higher quality mineral, we're seeing increased conception rates, increased herd health. And then the the probably the biggest thing is the the cows are cycling back quicker after they calve. So so you start tightening up your calving window. It's not uncommon for guys that have been on the Riomax program going into their second, third year to all of a sudden get eighty percent of their calf crop in that first cycle. I would say eighty percent of our calves are born within the first cycle. That extra twenty one days in in that first cycle is gonna make a huge impact on your weaning weights. We ship the heaviest calves that we've ever shipped from the Diamond Cross. They're about thirty eight pounds heavier than normal, which I think was was definitely part of the Riomax program. So that's all thanks to the quality of the escort package in the Riomax just getting more done with less. Nutrizorb is really the second second part of the the tub or if you wanna call it the protein side of the tub. It's made up of enzymes, probiotics, prebiotics, yeast, and fungi fuel. So what we're focused on there is actually feeding the microbes in the rumen. If we're building up that microbe population, hyperactivating them, they're they're able to break down, utilize the forge more effectively and efficiently. University of Minnesota did a study back in two thousand fifteen on a grainer forage. They consistently bumped the TDN by three percentage points. So we know we can take whatever forage is out there scientifically and give it a three percent bump. So we can take a poor quality hay, make it act like a mediocre or take a mediocre hay, make it act like a good hay, and just help get more out of out of what you got there. So not only are we feeding the good bugs, but we're also tying up and flushing out your your scour scour bugs. So baby calves, see less sickness when they get on the tub. Stalker calves, less sickness. But really, where where we see the biggest benefit is the fifteen to thirty percent forage savings. By building up that microbe population on a efficient rumen, a cow can get up to eighty percent of her protein from microbial protein. The microbe life cycle is less than a half hour. When they die, they become a true usable source of protein. So it's an indirect supplementation versus your traditional direct fed supplementation. So if you think about this dart board as the cow's diet, you know, all thirty or thirty five Ow. That hurt. I was just putting All thirty or thirty five pounds of feed she's consuming in a day. The bull's eye in the middle represents her supplement. So be that a protein tub, a loose mineral, even the Riomax tub fits into that little two percent of what she's consuming. Now at the end of the day, whether it's a twenty or a thirty percent of anything, there's only so much protein you can squeeze into two percent of her diet and that's why at Riomax with Nutrizorb, the digestive package in the tub, we're focusing on the entire diet. Industry wants to try and see how much they can pack into that two percent. We're trying to see how much we can get out of the other ninety eight percent. So not only are we packing as much as we can in that two percent, but we're helping that cow utilize and break down her entire diet. So she's pulling more protein and more energy out of her feed, which is why we see the fifteen to thirty percent feed savings we do on the tub. We've been able to get twenty to thirty percent in savings on the hay that we've been feeding. Those cows are extracting more nutrients out of their feed and they don't need to eat near as much of it to meet those daily requirements. And while it all sounds good in theory, it might be kind of hard to visualize microbes like what Lauren was talking about. Now, what is easy to visualize is a change in manure. What we've been hearing from guys is that rather than the manure stacking up, it's kind of more like a pancake batter consistency with a little divot in the middle. And when guys are out in their field kind of checking their manure, which might sound kind of weird frankly. But I look at poop a lot. What they've noticed is there's smaller lignans or fibers which is showing us that we're just helping to squeeze that much more out of what you've already got. Now, we took this a step further here and I'll give me those. What we did is we did a handful of manure studies. We took a group of cows on Rio and a group of cows not on Rio, same feed source and same water source and thirty days in, we pulled ten pounds of manure from the group that was on Rio and the group that wasn't on Rio and we'd liquefied it and then ran it through an eighth inch screen. And what we found is group that was on Rio, there was fifty one percent less undigested feed. Where is this going? Well, it's not going out the back end. So what does that mean for you? It's staying in the animal to help with body condition and helping that calf development and that's why going back to the Nutrizorb, we're able to help ranchers cut back on their feed and forage cost. Now, this all sounds cool, but the question is, what's this gonna cost? There's two ways to look at our supplement cost. One is on a cost per ton or cost per tub, and the second is really the proper way to look at your supplement cost is what's it costing on a per head per day basis. So let's start with your upfront cost. Riomax on a upfront cost is four hundred ninety five dollars for a two hundred and fifty pound tub. Now, I know what you're thinking. That makes this a pretty dang expensive chair. But let's really let's break it down on a per head per day basis and see what Riomax compares to your other options. Now if we break it down with our low consumption, a cow's gonna eat generally about point two three of a pound on a per head per day basis. So that means Riomax on a per head per day basis is gonna cost you forty six cents per cow per day. But let's factor in the feed savings and see where that comes out. So obviously, we're here varying numbers, but let's just take this year, I think pretty conservative numbers to say a hundred dollars a ton for hay. And if you're feeding thirty pounds of hay per cow per day as a rancher, if we can save fifteen percent of that hay, that means that's four and a half pounds per cow you're not feeding. And at a hundred dollars a ton, that hay savings is worth roughly twenty two and a half cents per cow per day. So if we take the cost of subtract your hay savings, would get you twenty three point five cents per cow per day is what would cost you to feed. So let's discuss the protein tub. So for a lot of guys feeding the protein tub, there's too low of mineral levels in the protein tub, to actually get the cows daily requirements met, so they're feeding a protein tub plus a loose mineral or even possibly a mineral tub. In this case, we're gonna figure protein tub plus a loose mineral. So for a normal, say, a twenty or thirty percent protein tub, it's gonna cost you about a hundred and fifty bucks for a two hundred pound tub. Now a lot of those tubs run anywhere from three quarters of a pound all the way up to two pounds a day. For real easy math, we just said let's figure a pound a day. So if you got a hundred and fifty dollar protein tub, those cows are eating a pound a day, that's gonna be costing you seventy five cents per cow per day to feed that protein tub. And if we take a loose mineral for a lot of guys, if you're if you're doing a middle of the road loose mineral, say thirty dollars a bag at a normal quarter pound consumption, so, you know, four ounces per head per day, that loose mineral is gonna cost you about an additional fifteen cents. So if we compare, you got your protein tub seventy five cents a day, your loose minerals fifteen cents a day, you're gonna be spending about ninety cents per cow per day. So really when you sit down and do the math, arguably a protein tub plus a loose mineral is one of the more expensive ways to supplement your cows through the winter. So let's talk about cake and a loose mineral. If we take cake, you know, for a lot of our ranchers that we work with, they're they were feeding, you know, say two pounds of cake per cow per day, and this year, this stuff, I don't know, anywhere from I'm hearing three fifty to five hundred, but if we just say three fifty on the lower end Three fifty a ton for your cake, and you're feeding two pounds of it, that's gonna cost you thirty five cents per cow per day in cake alone. And if we take those earlier numbers we were running on your loose mineral costs, loose mineral is gonna cost you about an additional fifteen cents per cow per day. So between your cake and your loose mineral, you're gonna be spending about fifty cents per cow per day, not including your labor or the cost of the you know the pickup expenses to be putting that out on a daily or you know a couple times a week basis. Now maybe you're a rancher that says listen, my cows don't need protein, they can rough it through the winter, so we just do a basic mineral program or a mineral tuff. For most of our guys doing just a loose mineral, they're feeding a higher quality mineral program, so about fifty dollars a bag is what they would figure for a fifty pound sack of of mineral. With that same quarter pound consumption, you're gonna be spending about twenty five cents per cow per day to feed just a really good quality mineral program to the cows through the winter. So let's sum up our options here. We got our generic protein tub plus a loose mineral at about ninety cents per cow per day. We have our cake plus our loose mineral coming in at fifty cents per cal per day. Generic loose mineral program coming in at twenty five cents ahead a day. And last but certainly not least, we have our Riomax when we factoring in the feed savings coming in at twenty three and a half cents a day. So now you've got an idea on a cost per head per day where Riomax stacks into the lineup, especially once we factor in the feed savings. Now let's say as a rancher, you're sitting here and you're not interested in feed savings this winter just to be quite frank. You're looking at what am I gonna spend per head per day versus per head per day. So if we're taking that, your loose mineral is costing you twenty five cents a day. Riomax is coming in at forty six cents a day. So that's an additional twenty one cents per head per day we're spending on the Riomax program. Again, this is if you're if you're not as concerned about the feed savings. So let's just do some quick math on that. If we're say saying Riomax is gonna cost an additional twenty one cents per head per day, through the course of the winter or say a hundred and fifty days, roughly five months, you're spending an extra thirty one dollars a cow to feed the Riomax program. Now what I'd like to ask you, and I can't do this math for you, I'd love to help if you would like to connect, but if we're looking at twenty five hundred dollar calves and we're talking about a thirty one dollar investment in your herd, that additional per cow expense through the course of this winter, what are you going to get for your money? I'll say it this way, if you're feeding a twenty five cent a day program and you're totally happy, you feel like you're exactly where you need to be for results, and you're not looking to move the needle any further, well then quite frankly, Riomax might not be the best fit for you here this year. But I would say, if you feel like there's other areas you want to move the needle or you could be more profitable in your operation, let's look at that little extra expense we're gonna do the thirty one dollars ahead and say now what is the potential returns if I achieve those results? Hey guys, my name is Randy. Now, that sounds all fine and dandy, but what if my cows go through the tubs like candy? In a moment, I'm gonna reveal something to you that folks who are using gives them a lot of peace of mind. What I'm going to do is seek to explain to you the Riomax Cost Guard ninety in under a minute. What the Cost Guard ninety is is our guarantee to you that those cows will consume between one eighth and one third of a pound per head per day. Across ninety days, if that average is over a third of a pound, we're gonna reimburse you back down to the third of a pound. So one of the things that is really cool about the Riomax product is our forage balancer technology and what that is doing is that is allowing that cow to self regulate her intake based off the time of year. So if she's on good green grass in the spring, her consumption is gonna be a lot lower as opposed to coming into calving when she's building up her colostrum and getting ready to calve and pushing everything into that calf. Now, you might be wondering, hey, with that low of consumption, is that cow gonna get what she needs? How can you get all of that in a small amount they would eat a day? And what Riomax does that's different is we're building our tub to value point, not a price point. That means that there's no fillers in the tub and the cow is able to get everything she needs out of that eight to a third of a pound consumption. So in the Riomax product at a quarter pound, you're gonna have a lot more feedings than the tub where you're at a pound or a pound and a half per head per day. You can roll down the hill. So you've watched the video, you like what you're hearing, and your next question is where do we go from here? Let's get in touch. Establish what you're looking to get done, and then connect you with your local dealer. Before we do that though, there's two things we need to cover. Firstly, we need to establish how long we're gonna do the Riomax program for. When we're looking at it, for a lot of our guys, a minimum ninety day trial, that's what we recommend. But a lot of our guys for for them a trial period with Riomax looks like six months to a year. So knowing how long you're gonna do the program for and making sure you're committed to sticking with program for that long is essential to actually delivering on the results we've talked about. The second part to it, and most importantly, is you as an operation, you as a rancher, you know what success looks like in your herd. You know, we've talked a lot about what guys see with results, different things in the on the program, but to have what you want specifically to get done with your herd with Riomax is I would say the most essential part of it all. Once we're in touch, we can really talk that through, make sure you know at the end of six months or that year what success looks like on the Riomax program and exactly how the tub's gonna pay for itself in your operation. From our family business, thanks for watching and have a good one.

Unlike a lot of other industries, we're not trying to outcompete other people. We're we're helping each other. We're trying to keep each other around and, I guess, you know, have each other's back in that manner. Welcome back to this ranching podcast. Thanks, Zane. I'd say you're probably our youngest salesman on the force. So keep up the keep up the good work what you're doing out there. Sam, if you don't mind, why why have you stayed in rural North America? What Yeah. I think the biggest thing for me and my background is it's it's been a legacy for my family where I was raised out, you know, in the middle of Eastern New Mexico and and West Texas area. I want my kids to grow up the way that I did and that my granddad and his granddad did before him since the civil war. Basically, my family So how many generations are you guys on that? Seven. Wow. Yep. Yep. I think that Riomax plays a vital role in, you know, maximizing our ability to, capitalize on what we have and make and make more with, with the land that we do have. We talk a lot about profitability with the tubs, but it for a lot of guys, it's like you're saying, it's almost more than just profitability from that standpoint. Like, you gotta be profitable, but what it profitability enables is the way of life and and that side of it, think, is I don't know what you'd say, but I think it's pretty important for for rural North America as a as a whole because there's a lot of people that could relate to that. It's everything. It's, you know, just to have the privilege to do what you love and, you know, make a make a good living while you're doing it and help people around you. Everyone talks about the declining cow herd and the the big corporate people stepping in and, you know, having the ability to to sit there and and, you know, have a solution for people's problems and then and a way for them to navigate just to kinda have an advantage overall. And so I think it's been phenomenal in that in that aspect. Appreciate that. What what would you say, Roper? I'm from Montana. So it's, you know, once you once you get a piece of Montana, you never wanna you never wanna lose it. Everybody wants a piece of it right now. So that's a big reason why I wanna stick around here and kinda stay in the ag world too. I wasn't wasn't raised in the ag world by any means. We didn't grow up on a ranch or farm or anything. So this is kinda my way of getting my feet into it. Getting into helping out ranchers, good people, hardworking people. And that's just my way of giving back to and trying to get into it. The dealership side of things, you feel you got ties in? Oh, one hundred percent. Yep. Yep. Yep. One hundred percent. And there's so much that people are missing out on up there. And so that's kind of what my dad and I are trying to do is get people up there to kind of understand the possibilities of what they can do for themselves. That's good. Sam, what just you're talking about the corporate side of things. What do you think in twenty years, North rural North America looks like? I think that if if we're not careful that we, you know, we're gonna see these these people that are completely unconnected to the land actually, and you see it more and more as people just, you know, use land. They've got a huge booming business and they use land as a as a maybe a tax write off more than they're not running it like a business. We're not gonna be doing as much as we could with the land that we have. I don't know about you but we even see it where there's there might be someone running the ranch. They they know how to run a ranch but their hands are tied because they're not the one that makes those. You know, there's a money guy somewhere that's making that decision that isn't actually enabling them to run the ranch properly. Right. No. We see that a lot with a lot of the large ranches in New Mexico and West Texas is they just call them out of staters. But a lot of people that own them don't, you know, they're not seeing what's going on from day to day, but they're tying the people that are seeing it, their hands are tied. It's really crippled their ability to produce what they could. That's that's one hundred percent how Montana's getting. We're we're a pretty place, so people want a piece of it, but they don't wanna work it. Of the of the kids that you went to grade school with, roughly how many of them do you think stayed in rural North America? Maybe ten percent. Seriously? Maybe five or ten percent. A lot of people are moved off. They may come back eventually, but that's just from where I'm at. And is that just to go to college and what have you or is that actually going to find a job somewhere and moving on? A lot of them go into the oil field where I'm at. So Okay. Yep. It's for sure check. You don't have to wait for it to rain. In my school, I see like probably five people in my class and, like, maybe twenty kids that, like, move out of country. Oh, wow. And it's making kind of effect. Yeah. Like, the whole family moved off. Yeah. Wow. What would you say to a young person who wants to stay in rural North America but like financially that doesn't? It's not for you if you're not willing to take a risk. But if you are, then if you're willing to risk it all for that, then the reward is more than worth it. Yeah, the startup cost is insane right now for a guy to buy cattle, to buy bred heifers or to get, try to buy land anywhere. It's harder than it's ever been or even own a house these days. And so I think that, you know, if you're financially smart and you're careful with what you do, you know, it can be done but you've got to really want it and be willing to risk a lot for that life. Yeah. I think the easy way out would be leaving rural North America. You know, it's kind of their escape to get out of it and get into the city or wherever they're wherever they want to be. And I think that'd be kind of an easy way out and the people that stick it out, I I think they have a true love for it. I just like passing this rancher stuff. This rancher's, like, ability to go down to kids like me or even other kids. Like, even, like, putting your kid in a tractor and just getting him to feel that this is, like, this is a good life. Yeah. Absolutely. No it's a good life, and we don't wanna lose it. Yep. You like that life? Yeah. That's good. What's one thing about living in rural North America that you don't think you can do without? You know, the people probably. You just you can't get these people anywhere else. You know, if you broke down the side of the road where I'm from, it's one every five car stops instead of one every couple hundred. In Montana and in small communities where I'm from, it's, you know, everybody and that's just one thing. And and the connections you make and the relationships you make can take you a long way. So I think the the relationships is what I'd miss the most. I would have to say that too. Like like, community ranchers in Utah that I grew up and went to school with, like, I would hate to miss them. Like, I can talk to them. I couldn't deal deal with them, and it would just change a lot. Yeah. I think the relationships are kind of the beating heart of the of the, you know, rural North America, and everyone's looking out for each other. And unlike a lot of other industries, you know, we're not trying to outcompete other people. We're helping each other. We're reaching out and talking. Everyone talks, you know, and talking about what's worked and trying to keep each other around and I guess, you know, have each other's back in that manner. That's where I think a lot of people lose themselves is whenever they get out of it. There's not a community like that, you know? Yeah. People don't. Yeah. They they lose the care for everybody and it's just they're walking through their lives, you know. And a face is just a face. It's nothing to you that where we're from. It's a whole lot more. Do you feel a certain sense of responsibility like it's on your generation to to keep it alive? I would feel like keeping it alive would be the best thing, like, generations. Generations after generations would make life a lot better. Even making stuff like Riomax to keep, like, ranching and farming growing, like, equipment, it would keep a lot of stuff going. I'd do a job interview with this guy. Is a sense of urgency and some weight on our generation's shoulders to not only prove that we can make this profitable and do it and enjoy doing what we love, but also not keep our secrets to ourselves, our programs and things that we're doing. But when we have something that works, getting the word out is important because there's a lot of people that are you know, going out of business and it's too hard. Not everyone wants to, you know, calve heifers in negative twenty degrees. People that are willing to try, I think that sharing our tools and sharing our programs is important. So Yeah. I think that's that's good. Is it because it isn't like you said earlier, it's not like we're competing with the next guy. If you can learn something from him and he can learn something from you, well then you can both get better as an as an operation. Give you a better chance of staying in business and making it profitable. You know, it's on our shoulders to not only keep it running in in the family, but also try to keep it away from, you know, the corporations. They're getting a big interest in it while while this generation's losing it. So not only are they losing it, but they're picking up a lot of land and putting a lot of people out of work. And I've seen a lot of generational farms just sell out for the first time in a couple hundred years, couple hundred years. And it's pretty sad to see it. But, yeah, I think we have a big big role to play. Sam, so how do you feel like as a as a Riomax dealer? Obviously, you guys are ranchers as well. You use the product. How do you feel like you can help someone, you know, as we said, with the different tools? We're not selling something that we're not, you know we've tasted the medicine in in a sense. And this works, and it's worked for us, and it has made tremendous differences in our profits. And I think that obviously the biggest thing is, unfortunately, money makes the world go round as much as we'd like to get away from that. That's the truth. And this works. We're selling it because it's helped our neighbors around us and it's helped us put money back in our pockets. I think it goes hand in hand with helping our community and everything else. Yeah. No. That's that's good. What would you say, Zane? And Riomax has been helping through a lot of stuff, like even plants for the cows, for baby calves, for lambs, for horses, and it's influencing a lot on everybody. Like I said, personally, don't have my own herd or my own, you know, forage to put it on, but I've seen it help so many people and help ranchers hit contracts that they've never hit before and and help people hit tonnages that they've never hit before. And, you know, just making the most out of every every inch of your operation goes a long ways and makes them feel good, but it makes me feel good too. Yeah. Because it's one thing as a company for us to to be able to work with guys like you guys. We're just sitting here talking. We've had the dealers here this week. And to be able to have guys that are in rural North America, working with rural North America and and helping rural North America. It's not just about selling a product at that point. It's about trying to help the guys around us. And at the end of the day, if there's someone that it's not a fit for, hopefully, we'd be the kind of people that would tell them it's not a fit for them. Alright. Zane, do you wanna do our send off? What do I say? Let's see. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you next time.

Just keep using a bigger gun. Right. Yeah. Bigger bigger, more expensive gun. And and at these price levels, a dead one is expensive. He never knows what works. He just knows what doesn't work. You don't have to save that many calves to make a big difference. You know, if you don't poop, you'll die. Welcome back to That Ranching podcast. I'm Duane Manning, one of the family here at Riomax. Jared Pockner from Northwest Oklahoma, Riomax dealer, a superior rep, marketing cattle and and stuff like that. I'm Robert Martin. I'm from, Aetna, Texas, Riomax. New Riomax dealer. Do, some backgrounding in cow calf operation. Do you wanna kick us off, Robert? Maybe explain a little bit what you guys do bringing in cattle and then We have buyer order buyers at different auction barns that consolidate them at their place, and they they give them the paste. They give them all their different vaccines that and shots that worm them, and and then they bring them to us. And when we get them, we're already behind because it might have been four or five, six days. We don't know how long they've sit at the auction barn before they were ever bought. It's really a high risk calf and hard way to make a living. Yeah. So have you seen like, you're using the paste Yes, sir. Before they get there. What what have you seen? Since we started using the paste, we've noticed a a big difference in the the numbers of the ones we've had to pull in individually. And if I do treat them, I give them the paste again, and our retreats are our retreat numbers are down. It's way easier to preventative measures than once one gets sick, it's it's hard to bring it's hard to bring one back, especially a little a young one than most of the cattle we have, being so small, don't have any markings on their ears, and they they probably don't have any mineral in their past. They probably had never had anything done in probably ninety five percent of them are bull calves. So And and you we were talking earlier today. You were saying it seems like the last few years, health has been a lot tougher. It seems we're just talking a little bit, Jared, like on the Draxin side of things with it becoming more readily available for people. There's a lot more guys that use that where they maybe used to use LA two hundred or something to to keep using a bigger gun. Right. Bigger bigger, more expensive gun and and at these price levels, a dead one is expensive. Very expensive. When you get in a group of calves, if the the rancher maybe upstream has been using Draxin to treat all of a sudden It's not work. Block. There's not very many guns that are bigger than that. So So have you noticed to get those calves up on feed and we get them eating, has the turbo has the paste helped in in that regard? It could be the paste or the tubs because we kinda started at the same time, but we I did notice that it seems like they acclimate to the feed better, and I did notice you don't have as many belly swollen. And also also on their first group that we started with, at six weeks in, they gained I weighed them coming out, and they looked they looked great. And they gained two point one pounds. That's being cut. That's balling forty to forty five days in. Yeah. On a on a, like, two seventy five. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Two seventy five. And usually, we're in that first six weeks, whenever I'm turning them out to grass, if I weigh in before that, usually, we're about one one point five, one point six. Really? Because it So over half a pound a day better. Which is about twenty five pounds, which is a lot of weight. I was talking to a producer the other day from, actually, Oklahoma. We're doing some trials with, and he was saying that if you have to treat one, about guaranteed, you're gonna have to roll them back to the next group. You know, they they're set back that far. You're Yeah. Behind, basically. So you're saying they're seem like they're acclimating to feed faster, which were you you were telling me the other day, I think, that they're you felt like they're almost eating more right out of the gate on Yes. On Real Max, which in in this case is a good thing. Yeah. Great thing. Yeah. Need they need protein. They should be on they should be still having their mom's milk. Yeah. They have to get it from somewhere. Grass isn't gonna do it. Yeah. Everybody in the stocker business, when they're receiving highly risk calves like that, the number one thing they're trying to do is to get them on feed, back on feed. Yep. They've been through such a stressful deal. Their gut bacteria, everything's just gone, you know. And that's why I think the paste is a great deal for, you know, I had a customer that he was buying in Mississippi calves and same kind of deal, maybe a little bigger than what you're dealing in. He bought some of the paste. He says, I like it. I'm getting along good with it. But I'm gonna use a cheaper product to start with and then I'm gonna use the Turbo Paste on my retreats and stuff. And I just thought, it's ten bucks. It's ten bucks. It's cheap. Back to what he was saying about preventative. Why would you wait till you have to Yeah. Why would you wait? When it's ten bucks on a twenty two hundred dollar calf or whatever, you know, got in that sucker by the time you get to you. Yep. Ten bucks is nothing. You don't have to save that many calves. Yeah. Or or just than two hundred. Or just give them on feed. You know, just get them on feed and get them going. What, Daryl, though, he says is a calf never gets over a good start. Yeah. You know, from a baby calf, but it applies in the feed yard too. If a calf gets started properly, that makes a world of difference in performance. And like your calves, they get a bad start. Yeah. And you gotta come in in the middle and try to try to fix it. It's a hard job. It gives you the best it gives you the best shot at doing it. It's like the turbo boost gives them right away. Yep. Yeah. It gets right to them. And then, you know, the tub's out there. Then when they come out of the truck, they hit the tub first thing. I've got one customer that they buy in a lot of grass calves and they're getting them out of sale barns and stuff all the time. And, of course, they get them in and they process them and stuff. And then they get them back in in a couple weeks and they revac them and all. And he calls me one day and he says, oh, this group broke on me and everybody's sick. And I'm like, well, what's going on? He's like, well, they got whatever I gave them. I think we cause a lot of the problems That that we deal with, you know. And and I don't know if I want you guys to broadcast this out, but You know, I always used to say, like, if you're having trouble, don't ever call your vet. Because he never knows what works. He just knows what doesn't work. Because nobody calls him when it works, you know, when it's good. When things are good, nobody calls the vet and says, hey, look at this. You know, and every time you're in a, you're in a wreck with a set of calves and the vet will go, well, you got to bring them in and revac them. And then they tip over and you're like, oh gosh, I was a mess. And he says, well, would have really been bad if you hadn't revac them. And you can't well, maybe. I don't know. You don't know. But I think it's important to to treat those calves in a positive, you know, getting their gut back in shape and because if you think like if you're talking about like a calf like that, I mean, how long have they if they got hay at the sale barn, maybe, you know, by how long they've been off milk now, that's a massive gut change for that animal or even a, you know, a weaned calf. I was talking to Trevor the other day and you always hear when you got a cold, keep eating. Yeah. Right? Like you gotta you gotta feed a cold. Right? Well, what happens is the same with cattle is when they the first thing that happens when they start feeling down is they go off feed and that just kills that good microbe population and the bad stuff they So if you can keep that gut healthy, that's half the battle. They're going through that. Their guts are empty. They're and then and then we load them up with a disease challenge, whether it's through the sale barn or through vaccines or whatever we do, we just further stress them. And a lot of times you have to do it kinda in a a logistic sense like, well, we're working them. So we're gonna do this and we're gonna do that and Everything, all the respiratory, everything's tied to stress. Yeah. Gut stress, nice stress, stress away from its mom, stress with the new group, just like kids going to school. It's it's all new environment, new everything is everything is stress. But Yep. I've always thought that the gut stress was one of the hardest because it it seems like most of our problems come at week two and a half to to week four or five. It takes that long to get through their system, right, to where, like, a stress event typically is what precedes a health break. You know, if if you have that, but it takes a couple weeks for whatever reason, it's more incubating, like you say, or it's subclinical, I guess, is the easiest way to put it. They're not that sick yet. All of a sudden they start going off feet or whatever and then it breaks out. And it's not to say you can't treat them obviously. Mean, we're not trying to get rid of Draxin and what have you, but from everything you can do for gut health and getting ahead of it, or when you do treat them, getting that gut back going again is extremely critical to making sure it recovers. That customer you had that treated him with a sick So yeah, he had his sick pen and I think I think he said he had like sixty head or so in this sick pen and they were kind of chronic and stuff. He was like, we're not gonna be able to do anything with them. And he ran them through and and gave them the paste. And I think he said all but like five of them bounced back. Wow. And and got got back going where they were able to catch back up with the herd. And he he said within twenty four hours of giving them the pace, he noticed a difference Wow. In their activity and and just being up eating and being at the bunk and and doing that stuff. So, you know, that's kind of an anecdotal deal. But it it just to me, it makes sense. Like, you you gotta stimulate that rumen and they gotta be back on feed. Know, when I worked in the feed yard and stuff, that was that was a number one everything, you know. You you pull six, but how you get those six back on feed. That's where they need they need to start eating again. That's right. You know. Don't eat, you die. That's right. Is why That's a good thing. Well, so I got my little son, he's about six years old and he's walking around one day and he looks up at me and he goes, hey dad, you know, if you don't poop, you'll die. He's right. Well, yeah, he's right. He's kinda scorned about it from the other end. It's the same deal. Wise. Very wise. He is wise. He's a wise little kid. Well, I think we're about ready to wrap up. But if do you guys have any parting shots and That was mine. That If you don't poop, you'll die. You don't poop, you'll die. What a better way to end. Yeah. Hey. We'll see you next week. Alright. Bingo. Thank you, guys. Very much. Thank you. Alright. We got a little editing to do with that.