Last updated on July 6th, 2026 at 01:04 pm
WELCOME TO THE TABLE!
That Ranching Podcast is a weekly sit-down around the kitchen table to talk about real opportunities for the men and women in the ranching industry. Hosted by the folks at Riomax, we talk about what’s working for ranchers, opportunities to pick up the herd's performance, and ultimately, put more dollars and cents back in the pockets of the folks making a living out of ranching. From mineral nutrition to management decisions, we dig into the why behind the what—including demystifying the science behind Riomax tubs without turning it into a sales pitch you didn’t ask for.
New episodes drop every Thursday morning—so be sure to tune in and join us on our journey of 'Driving Profitability Back to Rural North America.'
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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.
Three young ranchers sit down to talk about the future of agriculture, family legacy, and why staying in rural North America is getting harder every year.
They discuss rising land prices, corporate ownership, startup costs, community, and the responsibility their generation feels to keep family ranches alive. It’s an honest conversation about risk, opportunity, and why helping your neighbors—not competing with them—is still one of agriculture’s greatest strengths.
If you’ve ever wondered what the next generation thinks about the future of ranching, this episode is worth listening to.
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.
This episode of That Ranching podcast features 2 Riomax dealers who share their experience running backgrounding operations with high-risk calves purchased from auction barns. They cover the challenges of managing stressed animals that have been separated from their mothers and exposed to various health risks.
That is the best price that you can get. That may not necessarily be the best thing for you. Hey. Welcome back to that ranching podcast where you join us around a kitchen table talking about real opportunities for ranchers. I'm Dave Basquitz. I've been with Rio since twenty eleven. My dad and uncle Trevor own the company. And today, we have Malcolm and Lauren with us. Today's question is is what is the most cost effective way to buy a Riomax? Warren, kick us off. Yeah. I suppose first you'd have to look at how many cows you're gonna be putting it in front of. We we got different tiers on the on the discounts. Five ton would be a five percent discount, half load or ten ton would be a twelve percent discount, and then a full truckload twenty one ton would be a fourteen percent discount. So on a full load, the fourteen percent discount, you would save five fifty five dollars a ton. And then if you get it on a promo, that would be another hundred dollars on top of that. So on twenty one ton, the fourteen percent actually saves you thirteen thousand six hundred and fifty dollars roughly. That'd be the fourteen dollars plus the one hundred dollars promo. Yeah. And then you take a half load just to do that math real quick. It's roughly four seventy five on the quantity discount and then another hundred bucks if you get it on a promo and then boom, that's five seventy five. And if a full load is too much or a half load, we do have the five five ton five percent. That five percent actually saves you roughly two hundred dollars for a ton. And then if you get that on a promo as well, that'd be three hundred dollars a ton discount. Yeah. It really comes back to you don't wanna overstock. Let's say, if you're a smaller herd, maybe you have to borrow money for part of the time, you gotta factor that all in, but you have full load would be the best quantity discount. Then what would you say, Malcolm, from a container or formula standpoint would be the, you might say, the most cost effective way to start on Riomax? Yeah. I mean, if you're serious about looking at getting started with the Riomax program, the very best way to purchase the product would be in a two fifty pound tub and then being our I'm going to say our base product, but what I mean by that is there are other alternatives that had other things added to them, but it all starts out as the base. And our base product is the PG360. So if you buy the PG360 in a two fifty pound tub, like Lauren already mentioned, the discounts. But the very best way, as far as price wise goes, is at a full truckload, which is your fourteen percent discount. And then we have four promos throughout the year that if you get in on that promo, that's going to be roughly another one hundred dollars a ton. And that is the best price that you can get. That may not necessarily be the best thing for you because as Lauren mentioned, how many cows are you going be on? Are borrowing money to purchase that amount? So every ranch is going to have their own situation, but that is the best way to buy it or most cost effective way to buy it. Yeah. And it comes back, like you said, each ranch is different or each time of year is different. If you wanna get fly control, you know, Riomax has two different fly control options that may be the most cost effective way to do fly control through fly season. And then if you look at a container option standpoint, we have the one twenty five pound biodegradables or one twenty five pound plastic or the sixty pound bio bricks, the biodegradables, that may make more sense for you, more of a logistical or hoisting around standpoint. They do come with a little added cost because there's more packaging and more labor to it, but it all comes back what makes sense in your operation. That's good, and you were mentioning the fly control. So just I try to be clear with everybody to understand, like, the PG three sixty is what everybody gets. The only difference is we add fly control to the PG three sixty, and we have a couple of different options for fly control. But always keep in mind that the PG three sixty, everybody gets all the time. The other thing you'd wanna look at is if, like for a new customer getting started, we do have our cost guard, so that covers a ninety day window. So you wanna make sure you got enough to run x number of cows for ninety days at a third of a pound. At minimum. Yeah. Buy at least ninety days worth. We often say if you're gonna buy less than that, if you just buy a tub or two, like, we'd rather turn you away and say, Hey, we'd rather you not do that. Like, let's roll with a ninety day. Yeah. Yeah, I think and that's the reason we refer to it as a program. It's really your best result is going to be as a program, and a program is something that you do year round. So our type of product takes a certain amount of time to even get in the animal to the levels that it needs to be. So that takes time, and that's the reason we ask for at least ninety days. Because some of those results take the minimum of thirty days, and that's the very earliest ones. And then you've got results that might be three months, six months, a year even, so Yeah. And back to your comment, Lauren, on the third of a pound, really, that's on the the high side where we see an average more right around that quarter of a pound. And sometimes if the feed quality is really good, might see that closer to an eighth of a pound. But back to the the third of a pound, that's that's a guaranteed amount where the cows will not consume over that as long as you have them run for a ninety day period because that first two to three to four weeks, we usually see a bit of a higher intake because they're getting rolling, you might say, or levels built up. Something new. Yep. Yeah. And it's always hard to know exactly how long that's gonna be because every herd's different. You know, we've seen some that it never does go over that third, but we see somewhere it goes a couple weeks or, you know, there's different amounts of time. But the good thing to know is that however long that time is, it's guaranteed. So they know you can figure out to the penny what the max amount that that's gonna cost you. Yep. And then how it's figured is the average over the ninety day period, so it might peak and valley a bit, but the average over that and then, yeah, we always say that cost guard is really taking the risk off your shoulders and back on ours. I I think that it's pretty unique. I mean, we know it's unique in that cost guard situation, but I've had people say, like, the one thing they really enjoy about it is they know no matter what, it's not gonna cost more than this amount, whatever that amount is. Whereas most people, or I would say a lot of people anyway, not, you know, ranchers don't necessarily know what it's costing them per day for their mineral program. They just put mineral in or if they're using tubs, go buy another tub or buy a tub Another round out and Yeah. Another round out. Yeah. I guess just to really summarize then the question of what's the most cost effective way and quantity and time to buy Riomax, and really comes back to depending on your operation, but full truckload of PG three sixty in the two hundred fifty pound plastics on a promo. And like you said, there's there's four promos. We'd obviously love to talk through container options, whether fly control makes sense. You might be a grass fed operation, which are different formulas, but really, it comes back to what makes the best sense for you. Well, that wraps us up for this morning. As always, driving profitability back to rural North America. Don't forget to tune back in Thursday morning. From the kitchen table on that ranching podcast, have a good day.
What’s the most cost-effective way to buy Riomax? Dave, Malcolm, and Loren break it all down in this one.
They cover the quantity discount tiers, the promo windows, container options, fly control add-ons, and why buying a full truckload isn’t always the right call, even if it’s the best price.
We get guys that have been fighting issues. They end up having very lightweight calves. When they get that fixed, it's not uncommon to see them go up a long ways, even up as high as one hundred pounds. While that isn't necessarily what everybody sees, often we're seeing forty or fifty pound increases, but you can make dramatic improvements through a number of factors. There's a lot of factors at play to get a one hundred pound increase in weaning weights. And we can remove all the roadblocks and help express that genetic potential, it all ends up in terms of calf weight gain. That's what it's all about is unlocking the potential. And we're just gonna kinda unpack the reasons behind those those numbers. Hey, guys. Welcome back to That Ranching podcast. Joining us here this morning, as you probably well have known, Daryl Paskewitz, Trevor Greenfield. And wearing out this kitchen table. Yes, sir. Daryl, you were saying you had a customer once claim he got a hundred pound increase in weaning weights. Do you believe that? I don't know. That sounds like a stretch. We get guys that have been fighting issues, challenges, maybe it's environment or nutrition supplement challenges that whatever combination of factors, they end up having very lightweight calves. They get that fixed, they supplement well, they improve digestion on the cattle, and they're getting the cow ticking at maximum performance. It's not uncommon to see them go up a long ways, even up as high as one hundred pounds. Doctor. Hall told us a story about a customer that he had to do the same thing. While that isn't necessarily what everybody sees, it's often we're seeing forty or fifty pound increases. You can make dramatic improvements through a number of factors, can't you? Absolutely. Yeah, there's a lot of factors at play to get a one hundred pound increase in weaning weights, like you're saying, and you probably got to have a good year along with it. But what we see with Riomax on average is a ten to forty pound increase in weaning weights fairly consistently. And we're just going to kind of unpack a few of the different things that we the reasons behind those numbers. The first one, and most importantly, is really Nutrizorb. So what we're doing, feeding the good microbes in the cow's rumen and in the calf's rumen and really helping them do a better job breaking down the feed and forage they're consuming. For the cow, that means she's pulling more protein, more energy out of every bite of feed she consumes or grass she consumes. So that's in turn not only is she producing more milk, but she's actually producing better quality milk. So we had a dairy a few years back that did a bit of a side by side comparison with Riomax. They saw a fifteen point two percent increase in the butterfat content of their milk. So you think about that, every pound of milk that that cow produces is not only can she produce a bit more of it, but she can also produce a higher quality milk going straight to the calf. Second with Nutrizorb, is that calf doing a better job actually as it gets old enough to consume feed, it's doing a better job breaking down the grass and the feed it's consuming as well. Well, even the mother's milk it consumes, right? It's getting more out of everything in its diet, which is for the first bit mainly mother's milk. Then it starts to graze a little bit and copy what mom does. Then as it comes up on grazing, same thing. We're extracting more out of anything in that calf's diet. So between that and more milk from mother, the mama cow, and better quality milk, it's kind of a no brainer that we see this ten to forty pound increase. To your point, Daryl, like maybe the outliers out there that have seen a one hundred pound increase. We're not saying everyone's going to see that. But when you have genetics, and every ranch does, they've invested wisely in genetics, and we can remove all the roadblocks and help express that genetic potential and work with mother nature in terms of, like we said, milk production, milk quality, getting more out of the grazing. It all ends up in terms of calf weight gain. Yeah, and we don't want to confuse that with just fattening them up, is it? This is actually growing and developing the calves. These are frame growth. Yeah. Yeah. Not butterfat. Yeah. We were talking about butterfat in the milk, you might think, well, we're just fattening the calves, but that is allowing them, like you said, to express their genetic potential and grow and develop how they should. It's it's kind of like guys use creep feed to try get weight gain on calves, but that's more putting Putting fat on calves. Fat on. Yeah. Which which is is I'm not gonna comment on that, but this is very different. This is like framey. You won't comment that I will. But you put a bunch of calf fat on the calf. They're gonna end up getting weaned off and into the feed yard. And for the first couple weeks, they're gonna be going backwards wearing wearing that fat off. And we wanna see them hit the feed yard and start gaining from day one. It comes back to building a bigger calf. I mean, weaning a bigger calf, having more sale weight, but also the appetite that the buyer has for your product. Shouldn't use the word product because that's what McDonald's calls their burgers. But if you have that demand from the feedlot because he knows that that thing takes off instead of going backwards like the one with back fat. With calf fat. Calf fat. One of the other factors that impact your weaning weights are when the calf's born. Obviously, the age of calf at weaning. And if you got a ninety day breeding window, those calves that are born at ninety days versus calves that are born in the first couple of weeks are typically there's a pretty big difference in weight obviously there. Your genetics today's genetics, are the what does the calf gain per head per day? I mean, I don't know. We're talking earlier on some of those curve benders as you call them that they can get up. I mean, you know, what were you saying? The calf weans at seven hundred and is born at seventy and they're two zero five day old calf, they're gaining over three pounds a day, You know, so if you figure a calf gains two and a half to three pounds a day and you can even bump it up one cycle, twenty one days, you know, at three pounds a day, that's sixty pounds per calf that you bump up a cycle that you're potentially gaining. That when when we can get those cows bred in a tighter window, you know, have more cows calving in the first cycle, that means you're weaning essentially an older calf crop, more consistent calf crop and packing the pounds on. Exactly. That gives some insight into how potentially you could get a one hundred pound increase or a very big increase. If your genetics are doing two or three pounds a day on the calf gain and you just simply moved up ten or twenty or fifty cows a cycle. Along with that, maybe you suppress some disease challenges or issues that may be stunting some of the calf growth and you soon unlock a big differential, don't you? Yeah, that's what it's all about. And our purpose driving profitability back to rural North America is unlocking the potential. One part of it is the reproduction, you know, getting those cows into an earlier cycle. The second part of it is helping that calf gain better because she's, you know, getting more out of mama's milk, more out of the grazing, higher butterfat in mama's milk, and we just wean a a bigger calf. Absolutely. Guess that's all for this morning, folks. Thanks again for joining us on That Ranching podcast. We'll see you next week.
Can you really add 100 pounds to your calf weights at weaning? Daryl, Trevor, and Twain sit down to dig into the real numbers behind weaning weight gains — and lay out exactly what it takes to get there.
Heat stress is a big topic, and a big part of that is rumen health, their feed intake, their milk production, and those all lead on to negative impacts. If they go off feed, everything else goes off as well. She's not producing the same amount of milk or the same quality of milk that directly hurts the weight gain on that calf, right? Yeah, and finally, ultimately it goes right to the bottom line. Going to cost you one way or another. Your cow is running into a lot of heat stress and they're not breeding up as good, they're not producing as much milk, they're not giving you the weaning weights. A lot of people think of heat stress as, oh, let's treat that symptom. But when a cow is heat stressed and she goes off feed, there's a much bigger problem at play. That is step one. Step two is anything we can do to improve circulation, put ingredients in there, flow increases. You get more blood to the extremities of the animal. That's a big determining factor on how cool that cow is gonna stay. Welcome back to that ranching podcast. Trevor Greenfield and Daryl Paskewitz here today. We're gonna talk a little bit on heat stress. Daryl, kick us off. Yeah. Heat stress is a big topic, isn't it? Especially in the summertime. See, run into a lot in January in Minnesota. Every year, we get questions about it, and it's a factor that impacts the performance of cattle, doesn't it? And at the end of the day, what we're wanting to combat is the negative effects of it. You've got an animal that experiences very high heat and humidity, and then they start to you start to see symptoms of heat stress. And a big part of that is the rumen health, their feed intake, their milk production, and those all lead on to negative impacts, don't they Trevor? Yeah, well you've often spoke, Daryl, about rumen function, which we know so well with Nutrizorb, having a functioning rumen that's breaking down your forge and you got that balance. And that is key to heat stress in itself. A lot of people think of heat stress as, oh, let's treat that symptom. But can you maybe walk us through more, what is the cause and what else are we doing besides just adding, you know, like say some miracle drug or miracle ingredient for heat stress? Like you mentioned, the first thing we want to do is make sure those cattle don't go off feed. Of course, in the beef industry we don't necessarily measure the amount of feed they eat every day, do we? The dairy industry does and they can see it by the hour. But it works the same in whatever type of cow you're running, in that if they go off feed, everything else goes off as well. Maybe they're needing to put on body condition or they're needing to cycle because we're trying to get them bred back or we're trying to get them to produce milk. As soon as they go off feed, all of them spin off effects are detrimentally impacted. If we can provide nutrients and digestion assistance to keep that cow on feed, that is step one. Step two is anything we can do to improve circulation. We can put ingredients in there to further improve vasodilation and then a big word. He just said a big word. What does it mean? If you're going improve vasodilation, that means you're going to have to do something to increase blood flow. Vaso is blood vessel, dilation is make it bigger, kind of like you get your eyes dilated, which I never enjoy. I've never done that before. So think of it as a garden hose. If you have a restricted garden hose, it's harder for the water to flow through it and you have higher pressure. And if it's bigger, dilated, then you have easier flow and lower pressure. So think of a cow. First of all, I love to, you know, we love the effects of Nutrizorb where we're pulling more out of every mouthful. So we're helping that whole digestive efficiency. So now we've got extracted nutrients. And if we have a really healthy transportation mechanism to get it to all the organs, the immune system, the reproductive performance, all through the extremities of that cow, because we're affecting the transportation of those nutrients. So that's huge. But in handling stress, that cow can't sweat like a human. They manage stress by circulating blood and that's what cools the extremities of the body. And you know even one ingredient alone, powerful garlic package that we have in at a real high level in a Repel product or Fly-Bye, some of our formulas, that ingredient alone is extremely powerful on vasodilation, on increasing circulation. So there's a lot of individual ingredients that work together synergistically to give the outcome of better, more comfortable cows. Flow increases, you get more blood to the extremities of the animal. Out East Missouri, we hear of it quite a bit as a fescue toxicity. You know, guys worried, and that's really is when the blood flow is constructed to the extremities, which is, is that vasoconstriction, Trevor? It is. That's where you take a garden hose and now it's smaller in diameter. But I, you know, we're so passionate. We talked about the rumen and Nutrizorb and getting more out of every mouthful. So that's nutrient extraction, right? But now nutrient delivery is where the blood flow is able to take it to the organs, the reproductive organs, the extremities. And that kind of goes hand in hand with the whole digestion piece. Yeah, it does. And like you said, it's the same as some of the other negative ones that whether your blood vessels are constricting or dilating, then that's a big determining factor on how cool that cow is gonna stay. So Daryl, maybe walk us through a out on pasture middle of summer cows that are not suffering from heat stress. How do they perform versus ones that are? Yeah, you're gonna see these cows be way more comfortable and they're gonna be out grazing, they're gonna be eating feed and having a healthy rumen function, they're gonna be ruminating. And as a result, they're gonna be staying in better condition than a cow that's experiencing lots of heat stress. And as another result, they're going to be producing a lot more milk and a lot better quality. So really heat stress has a direct impact on weaning weights. Because if mama cow is heat stressed, her her digestive system is off kilter, she's not producing the same amount of milk or the same amount same quality of milk that directly hurts weight gain on that calf. Right? Yeah. And finally, ultimately it goes right to the bottom line. It's it's gonna cost you one way or another. Your cows running into a lot of heat stress and they're not breeding up as good, they're not producing as much milk, they're not giving you the weaning weight that you're hoping for, that's all costing you money at the end of the day. And to be clear, this isn't something that we just started doing this year. You know, we do hear of it a bit as other mineral companies and what have you maybe putting peppers or whatever in their mineral to help with heat stress. Which is not bad, but would you say a lot of times the industry focuses on trying to treat the symptom, you know, treat heat stress. Whereas we're trying to understand, wait, when a cow is heat stressed and she goes off feed, there's a much bigger problem at play. And that is the whole digestive system, which we work on 24/7. You know, getting more out of every mouthful, having that balance, having that good functioning rumen, it trumps just a little cure for heat stress, you know, it's more fundamental. What we do for digestion, we've been doing for twenty years, is helping that rumen function, is keeping that animal cool, then the digestive ingredients do have an effect on vasodilation to help with blood flow and ultimately keep those cows cool and keep weight on the calves and ultimately keep money on the bottom line. Do have anything to add for we? No. We've gone on long enough. Thanks again for joining us around the kitchen table for that ranching podcast. We'll see you next week.
Most producers reach for a quick fix when they see heat stress — but in today’s episode, we discuss why that’s the wrong move. Trevor, Twain, and Daryl break down why heat stress is really a rumen and circulation problem, not just a temperature problem. When cows go off feed, everything unravels: milk production drops, calf weaning weights suffer, and breeding performance tanks. The guys walk through how keeping cows eating, and improving blood flow through vasodilation, is the foundation of a cool, productive cow — and how that translates directly to dollars at weaning. A 20-year philosophy, not a seasonal gimmick.
Thinking of the summer and thinking of a ranching operation, a lot of us are in the mindset of how can we cheapen up? We've got to watch our costs in any business, anywhere. So for ranchers, looking at ways to sort of cheapen up. We've to lower input costs or we're just going to skate by, you know, the cows are doing good out on grass. Is that a good approach? Maybe a decision that saves you five to ten grand in mineral costs or supplement costs through the summer is a decision that on the back end could cost you thirty or forty thousand in results. What you don't see is what you didn't get. You know, you didn't get cows bred. You have some light calves, some sickness. Those are things that you don't see what that cost you. There's so many things at stake right here in the summer. Cows are looking good. The stress is not there. So that is where we tend to think we can kinda coast. We're busy investing in that next year's calf crop. We're impacting the weaning weight all summer long. So much that we do in the summer that has a bigger impact on your profitability than any other season. Summer's when you make your money as our rancher. Well, welcome back to that ranching podcast where you join us around the kitchen table to talk about real topics that matter, that can impact the lives of folks in ranching. I'm joined this morning by Darryl Paskewitz, Twain Manning. Let's have some fun here as we talk about the topic at hand, and that is thinking of the summer and thinking of a ranching operation. A lot of us are in the mindset of how can we cheapen up? We gotta watch our costs in any business anywhere. So thinking of profitability, thinking of, okay, we've to run a more profitable operation. So I might tend towards how can I cheapen up in the summer? Is that a good approach, Twain? I mean, I get it. I'm looking at overhead expenses all the time myself. Yeah. Well, I think guys got to look at what they're spending versus what they're getting. You know, that's a common thing that we hear in the summer is we got to lower our input costs or we're just going to skate by, you know, the cows are doing good out on grass, we're going to put much into them, which is if you can get away with that well maintaining results is one thing. What we commonly see is maybe a decision that saves you five to ten grand in mineral costs or supplement costs through the summer is a decision that on the back end could cost you thirty or forty thousand in results. You get to the end of the year, you sit down with your accountant, it's pretty easy to see what you spent. But what you don't see is what you didn't get, You know, you didn't get cows bred, had some second calvers that they fell off, you have some light calves, some sickness, those are things that you don't see what that costs you in weight you didn't get to sell at the sale barn. Yeah, they don't have a line item on your financials saying, here's all your unrealized gains, or here's the pasture that you didn't optimize and the cost of it. Daryl, what else is at stake here in this? Like if we step into a rancher's world, what else is at stake during the summer trying to help profitability? Do we cheapen up? Do we not? We want to look at how can we save money? What can we do there? And how can we make money? And ideally you can do both. You can cut where you can cut and maximize absolutely everything that you can make more money on. You can get not only, as you mentioned, twenty more cows bred, but you can get them bred sooner. How many are we missing that could have been in the first cycle and they weren't? Where all can we maximize and optimize more? We improve weight gain, can increase the health and performance of our calves, the growth and development. All these different areas that end up giving you a payday sometime in the future. This is pretty profound. There's so many things at stake about the payday he talks about right here in the summer when, you know, it's greened up, cows are looking good, there's not a blizzard, you know, there's not snow going sideways, all that the stress is not there. So that is where we tend to think we can kind of coast for a little bit. And to Daryl's point, so many things at play here. You know, we're talking conception rates. We're busy investing in that next year's calf crop. And then the calf outside, you know, we're impacting the weaning weight all summer long. Better managing your land resources, getting more out of every acre, getting more out of every mouthful. There's so much that we do in the summer that has a bigger impact on your profitability than any other season. Did you have a quote on that, Twain? Actually, one of our customers, a rancher in Nebraska, what he's told me before is summer's when you make your money as a rancher. In wintertime, you're trying to skate by, you know, keep your feed costs down, run an efficient cow, but really the biggest levers in your operation that you could pull to make more money is in the summertime. So I would say whether it's Riomax or not, stopping and taking a good hard look at what you're spending versus what you're getting. We'll have guys call in and maybe they're doing what sometimes is referred to as a feel good mineral. You know? It's just a mineral you're putting out there because you you feel good that the cows are getting something, but really not very good quality, doesn't have a lot to it, and you're not getting the results. Like Daryl was saying, cows aren't getting bred in the first cycle if they're getting bred at all, herd health maybe not quite where you want it. Those things cost you money. And you got to stop and look at what does an upgrade in your mineral program cost. I mean, to take Riomax, a real easy example. It might cost you twenty dollars or thirty dollars to supplement a cow on on a cheap loose mineral through the summer. And Rio is going to cost you about fifty dollars to sixty dollars a cow, know, just ballpark figures, of course. But you take that math for thirty dollars or forty dollars a cow, that's not a lot of investment when we're talking weaning weights, conception rates, herd health. So you you got to run that math and see what makes sense. That's good. So for the viewers or the listeners, I guess it's a podcast, so it's more of the listeners. Twain, maybe just go over some of those numbers with us, what we see with the use of Riomax in terms of conception rates, weaning weights. Yeah. On average, it's a three to ten percent increase in conception rates is what we see. And then a ten to forty pound increase in weaning weights. And then the bigger one, you know, that a lot of guys don't think about, but is the fifteen to thirty percent feed savings. You know, you got a year like this and coming in, it's dry, things are looking like it, you know, hay prices could be going up or guys could, I don't want to say it already, but having to wean early, that sort of thing. Every bite of feed you save today is a bite of feed you got this fall, you know, and an extra day or an extra month, you don't have to be feeding those cows. I think it's a very important message, especially for twenty twenty six. A lot of folks are facing the pressure of drought and the reality that comes. Saving grass with the use of Riomax, fifteen to thirty percent is not a nice to have. It's an essential on a year like this because from the very time you turn out your cows to pasture, you're starting to extend that pasture or the grazing capacity all summer long, so that you're able to push further into the fall before you have to start feeding hay. Now, when there is drought, we see hay prices elevate. And so if we can put off that hay date, and a lot of times we hear this from our customers, put off my hay date sixty days. Well, you know, you figure out the value of that, that can really dollar up. And all of these decisions that we're trying to coach and educate folks on is how can we actually drive more profitability to every ranching operation across North America. Daryl? Yeah, think that's exactly right. I think you can take and write out different ways that you could save money and then do the same thing and write down ways that you could help your ranch make money. This is where you look at what can you increase, could you get better nutrition into a cow, what all takes place? You're getting better body condition, you're going get better milk production, and better milk quality. All these things are spin on effects. If you start to take better care of your cows, you get better nutrition into them, you improve feed conversion, you improve the digestion capacity of that cow. She's converting plants into usable protein and energy and turning that into next year's calf or the calf at the side, growing and maximizing that potential. I was thinking when you said better care of your cows or better cow care, I think that better better cow care is a good one liner. Think of it. We're getting more out of all these resources. You've got cows. We're getting more out of them in terms of your conception rates. You've got grass or acres. We're getting more out of that. You've got soil. We're getting more out of that. You've got all these levers that you can pull to get more out of what you've already got. A lot of folks are making decisions based on the dollar sign, whether it's the USD or Canadian dollar, and that's good. But to wrap up, think we need to look at your upfront cost in terms of what's this mineral program going to cost me through the summer, and then overlay that with it's actually a much bigger dollar sign, and that is what is the result of that decision? What's the return in terms of weaning weights? I should say conception rates first. Weaning weights, stretching your pastures, putting off your hay date, reducing sickness, getting more milk. Some customers have commented that the consumption on any program drops way down in the summer because the cows are getting good groceries, grass is good, you know, and so that can sometimes lead to, maybe they don't don't need it. I can just cut it out. What do you think about that, Daryl? And what you refer to as summer, that that's a good summer conditions we often see that, isn't it? If you get into poor conditions, poor grass quality, you're in drought, those kinds of things, conditions might be tough. And then you may see the consumption start to climb back up as conditions deteriorate on the pasture or feed, whatever you got going on. And there you'll see the cows self regulate according to what environment they're in, their feed quality is, or maybe feed volume. And that's the beauty of having a product out there and supplementing good quality nutrition and digestion ingredients in a free choice form that they can take in as they see fit. The words the term self regulate, Daryl uses, is very key here because those cows don't need a lot, but they do need something. And I would far rather have product out there through the summer and let them self regulate, but it's there as your pastures start to cure out and your protein and energy levels start to decline, that those cows can self regulate up. You know, there's an old analogy of an airplane. You know, airplanes don't take off straight up to thirty thousand feet. Main reason is it's too expensive, it uses too much fuel. I guess Learjets can do it, but it ain't cheap. So how they take off is like this, you know, very gradual incline. And that I see it exactly the same with cows in good conditions. We're not talking about droughty conditions in the summer right now, but in good conditions, they might not eat a lot, but it's a slow incline versus if they didn't have it in front of them and then suddenly end of August, early September, your forage starts declining and you throw tubs out and suddenly they gotta get up to that thirty thousand foot elevation. It costs the rancher more to do that than have that slow incline in terms of cow consumption. And with that, we'll wrap up on that ranching podcast. Remember to like, subscribe, follow us all you can tell your mates. Join us next Thursday. Join us next Thursday morning around this kitchen table. Where's the bagels? I was told there'd be food. How's the bacon coming?
What does “cheapening up” in the summer actually cost you?
In this episode of That Ranching Podcast, Twain Manning and Darryl Paskewitz dig into why summer is the most critical — and most underestimated — season for ranch profitability. The cows look good, the grass is green, and it’s tempting to coast. But the decisions you make right now are setting up your entire year-end.
The hard truth? A $5–10K cut in your summer mineral program could quietly cost you $30–40K in results you never see coming.
If you’re thinking about cutting input costs this summer, listen to this episode first. Summer’s when you make your money. Don’t coast through it.
What if you could get more out of the land you do have without buying? If a piece of land came up next to your ranch, what money wouldn't you pay for that that twenty percent more ground? Let's say you're running a hundred cows right now and you could run another twenty on the same ground. What is the limiting factor? You know, a lot of guys, when they think of profitability, they think weaning weights and conception rates. One thing that a lot of guys don't think about is Welcome back to this morning's episode of That Ranching podcast. I'm joined here this morning with Trevor Greenfield, Daryl Paskewitz. We're here to talk a little bit on one of the bigger levers you can pull in your operation. You know, a lot of guys, when they think of profitability, they think weaning weights and conception rates are kind of the biggest metrics of success. And and although those are both very important, we wanna impact those as well. One thing that a lot of guys don't think about is the carrying capacity of their operation. Trevor and I were talking a week or two ago, we were saying, you know, if you think about it, if a piece of land came up next to your ranch, you could increase your ranch by twenty percent. Let's just say, you know, you could grow your ranch, buy some more land. What money wouldn't you pay for that? That twenty percent more ground, Daryl, your ranch a little on the side. What would you say to that? I think it's highly important to understand how you can improve efficiency, increase efficiency. If you think about it this way, you know, let's say you can, you're running a hundred cows right now and you could run another twenty on the same ground with what we see on Riomax where, you know, between fifteen and thirty percent feed savings that translates to grass, Trevor, as you often remind us. Yep. Carrying capacity. Just unharvested hay. And so you could pull another twenty calves off the same ground. I think there's been studies that have shown about, what is it about eighty five percent of a rancher's inputs are feed or forage, I guess, including grass. So you think about that, you have twenty free calves. Yeah. You got the cost of running those extra cows or keeping those heifers back. But those extra calves that don't have a feed bill attached to them are highly profitable to the operation. Do you think, Twain, sometimes the ranch size or the number of acres you have is a limiting factor to growth. People might have a thousand cows and that's all they can sustain. They may have an appetite for growth and they want to get to twelve hundred, but they can't because they don't have the resources to sustain it. And so I think that talks to a bigger question, whether you're one hundred cows or one thousand cows, is what is the limiting factor? And what if you could get more out of the land you do have without buying? I mean, a chunk came up next to you, you'd probably want to consider buying it. Yeah. We're not saying don't buy it. But what if it didn't come up and you still want it to grow? If you think all the people we work with, from, you know, guys in New Mexico that run eighty or one hundred acres to the cow down to we have customers over in Missouri that they're running a few acres to the cow. Missouri or Missouri? I've heard it both ways. And then you go, I mean, all the way up to guys in Northern BC that we work with and we hear it consistently regardless of the stocking rate, regardless of how many cows they run, is they can't find more land. It's the limiting factor for the vast, vast majority of Western US and Canada running cattle? Would you say? Well, Greenland's available. It's not looking for you. So one of the other things that's going along with that is if your cows eating ten to twenty percent less feed, you have a whole spin off effect right there. Whether you're using that extra grass to increase your stocking rate or increase your carrying capacity and bring in more cows or keep more cows or not, you still have the cow using less feed and not putting on miles, walking around chasing feed. They're laying down earlier in the day. We hear this all the time, don't we? That they're conserving energy, they're getting their needs met earlier in the day. They're producing more milk and higher quality milk and getting better weight gain on those calves, but it's not at the expense of increased feed consumption, is it? I was going to say to that, Darryl, let's say you're not wanting to, with the price of cows or heifers now, you don't want to buy more. But to your point, if they're running more efficiently, which they are, we're able to then graze more days. You may not graze more cows, that's an option, but you may say, well, I just want to stay with a thousand head, not twelve hundred. Well, you can stretch out the capacity of your acres so that you're grazing more days. Fifteen to thirty percent hay savings is usually, or hay or forage, is usually measured in the wintertime with feeding hay because you can count bales. But it's the same on pasture. That efficiency number is the same. And whether you're wanting to increase your herd or just run more lean and mean, I had an old guy tell me efficiency never goes out of style. Well, I I think it's more difficult to maybe measure it when you're season long grazing. Some people are turning cows out on grass first thing in the spring and take them off when the snow hits in the fall. And we've seen people comment that they've have noticed that even even on season long grazing, they watch their grass production and they monitor that very closely and they do see a difference. But it's even more noticeable when you're in really small paddocks or you're maybe moving the cows once every seven days and all of a sudden they get the cows on Riomax and get these cows spooled up and get that digestion engine, the rumen, very healthy and working better. And suddenly they go from maybe seven days to nine or ten or eleven days, And it's noticeable within just two or three weeks of getting the cows on the tubs. And really whether you use that grass or you don't, for some of our customers, it's just the insurance policy of knowing that you got that extra feed available so that on a year like this, guys are coming in, they're worried, you know, maybe of the drought and what have you. I would say there's plenty of our customers that would have some, you know, dead forage from last fall that they never used. They just left, you know, looking after their ground. They're coming out this spring and they got that forage to get started with and then they spray stockpiled forage. You're not pushing your ground nearly as hard while still being able to pull a number of calves off. You know, guys have loans to meet and what have you, they have to pull a certain amount of calves off their ground each year to cash flow it. For sure. And I've heard it in reverse, guys not necessarily not wanting to build their herds, but in drought years where a lot of the neighbors have had to sell down, and guys on Riomax have been able to maintain their numbers because of that efficiency deal where we're squeezing more out of every mouthful, hence we're getting more out of every acre, we're running more lean and mean, And they are thanking us today when markets are so good that they didn't have to sell down like so many of their neighbors. So we've talked about Riomax and that Rhyzogreen kind of inserts here too, a little bit on it, a lot a bit. Yeah. Yeah. But you were talking to that fellow in Wyoming the other day. He was complaining in a good way. He said he's using Riomax, so he's conserving forages. He's got stockpiled forages and stockpiled hay, but he's also using Rhyzogreen, so he's getting more production out of his land. And he said, right now, I'm in a situation where I got more grass than I need and more hay than I need, and I don't want to buy more cows. Right? So that's, that's just a warning. These are some of the bad things that can happen using Riomax and Rhyzogreen. But then he said, well, what I might do is just take cattle in, you know, and think of that. Now, now he's got another revenue stream. So when we look at Q50 and this quest to get to fifty percent ranch efficiency, it opens up more opportunities for revenue streams. Not only is he, you might say, drought proof, like he's got stockpiled forages, he's sitting in a good position where he can now take in more cattle and add more revenue on top of his same land base. In a lot of ranch country, one of the things is that the limiting factor to forage production is water, simply the volume of moisture. And you have the snowball effect as soon as you start saving forage and reducing the amount of feed that cow is eating. The more cover you have on your land, the more shade, of course, on the soil. We all know that the temperature of the soil drops dramatically as soon as it's covered and has good More than ten degrees. Dramatically, yeah, it is a huge, and if you're not evaporating the water off, you're going to grow more for forage next year. And the other thing to that point on Rhyzogreen, we see we change the soil structure, So for every inch of moisture you do get, whether that's rainfall or snow melt or irrigation, we're getting more into the soil versus less runoff. Well, let's leave you with this question. What would you do with twenty percent more land or twenty percent more resource in your operation? Give it some thought. That's one heck of a question. Is this part of the wrap up? Yeah. Thanks for joining us this morning on That Ranching Podcast. We'll see you next week. You have one week to contemplate that question because we're gonna be back. We're coming back at you as foot rot, pink eye and summer pneumonia next week.
What if you could increase your carrying capacity by 20% without buying more land? In this episode of That Ranching Podcast, Trevor Greenfield, Daryl Paskewitz, and Twain break down one of the biggest profit levers most ranchers overlook: forage efficiency.
Most producers focus on weaning weights and conception rates — and those matter — but the real question is: What’s the limiting factor in your operation?
The guys discuss – Increasing carrying capacity – Running more cows on the same acres – Feed and forage efficiency – Drought resilience – Riomax and Rhyzogreen results
If you could pull 20 more calves off the same land base… what would that mean for your ranch?
What causes foot rot, pink eye, pneumonia, and summer sickness in cattle? In this episode of That Ranching Podcast, Trevor Greenfield and Daryl Paskewitz break down the hidden nutritional deficiencies behind herd health problems — and why treating sick calves is only part of the cost.
The scary part? For every calf you treat, there could be seven more subclinical and underperforming.
They dive into:
Summer pneumonia & immune health Foot rot and pink eye prevention Why mineral deficiencies matter The hidden performance loss most ranchers never see Bioavailable minerals vs cheap mineral programs How Riomax helps cattle perform from the inside out
This episode is all about prevention, performance, and giving cattle the best chance to thrive all summer long.
Healthy herds don’t happen by accident.
