That Ranching Podcast

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.

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 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.

Kind of a weird topic, but we're very conscious of the livestock above the ground, like your cow herd, but probably not so conscious of the livestock below the ground. Now that might sound weird, but we're here to talk about that beautiful synergy where you're feeding life above the ground, feeding life below the ground. So a lot of people think of taking feed out, you're feeding your cow. What we're doing is feeding the bugs that feed the cow. When you're taking care of your soil, you're feeding the bugs that feed the plants. So it's a very strong parallel between feeding microbes in the rumen of a cow, unlocking nutrients, feeding microbes in the soil, unlocking nutrients. One set of unlocked nutrients goes to the cow, the other set goes to the plant, but it's all in one system, isn't it? When you start doing the math between increase your production by, we see ten to thirty percent, and then fifteen to thirty percent in feed savings on on Riomax. It's Welcome back to that ranching podcast where you join us around the kitchen table to talk about topics that really matter to ranchers, and I'm joined this morning by Daryl Pasquitz and Twain Manning. So kind of a weird topic, but we're very conscious of the livestock above the ground, like your cow herd, but probably not so conscious of the livestock below the ground. Now that might sound weird, but we're here to talk about that beautiful synergy where you're feeding life above the ground, feeding life below the ground. Starting with feeding life above the ground, Darryl. A lot of people think of taking feed out, you're feeding your cow, you want to keep them happy and healthy. And what we're doing is feeding the microbes, feeding the bugs that feed the cow. The same thing takes place when you're taking care of your soil, you're feeding the bugs that feed the plants. And that's what we want, is that nutrient dense plants that have high production. You don't only want a lot of them, but you want a lot in them. You want a lot in your plants that in turn goes on to feed the cow. There's such a strong overlap here between feeding microbes in the rumen of a cow and feeding microbes in the soil. Let's dive into the rumen of a cow, Twain. For the listeners, we talk about microbes every day. They might say this is sounding kind of weird. Why does it matter in a cow? When we feed the good bugs in the cow's rumen, they're more active, there's more of them. That means they're breaking down whatever she's consuming, the grass or the feed she's eating on a daily basis. And she's doing a better job processing it. So there's more she's getting more protein and more energy out of that feed. So in turn, she doesn't need as much feed to actually meet her daily requirements. So that's where we see the fifteen thirty percent feed savings on the Riomax tubs. It's awesome. So to sum up that feeding the microbes thing that sounded kind of fuzzy actually looks like fifteen to thirty percent hay or forage savings. So taking that same science, applying it below the ground, now we're feeding microbes in the soil. And the more life there is in the soil, the better job is done of unlocking nutrients, liberating nutrients, mobilizing nutrients and making them plant available. So it's a very strong parallel between feeding microbes in the rumen of a cow, unlocking nutrients, microbes in the soil, unlocking nutrients. One set of unlocked nutrients goes to the cow, the other set goes to the plant, but it's all in one system, isn't it? Yeah, it's where Q50 comes in really. It's our quest as a company to get to fifty percent ranch efficiency. When you start doing the math between Rhyzogreen, what we see of increased production, be it hay ground or pasture ground, and then really just forage crops in general, and then what we see with Riomax the fifteen to thirty percent feed savings, the financial benefits of being able to not only save feed but increase the production is huge over time. You were running some math on it earlier, if you can increase your production by ten to thirty percent and then fifteen percent to thirty percent in feed savings on Riomax, we're over fifty percent efficiency just on the math there. Yeah. And the numbers I took, Twain, were just historical data, you know, on Riomax fifteen to thirty percent hay or forage savings and on, and that's twenty years of data. Then on Rhyzogreen six years of data, ten to thirty percent increase in production. And we say production because that covers hay ground, which could be measured in tonnage, but it also covers pasture ground, which it's like more grass, just more grass. And I think of it as this Q50 journey is truly exciting for the people we serve because there's levers they can pull to increase their efficiency and hence increase their profitability, which comes full circle. Our purpose, what we live out here at Rio Nutrition is driving profitability back to rural North America. That's who we are. That's how we eat, sleep, and breathe, we do it without any apology. So Thanks for joining us on that ranching podcast. Thanks for joining us on that ranching podcast.

There's a lot of waste that goes on. No rancher anywhere likes the word waste. What was supposed to last a week is now gone, and they don't have anything for the next five days. You get way more peaks and valleys where they have it, and then they don't. And we know a cow does the best when it gets consistent daily intake of nutrients. So coming into summer, a lot of folks are faced with this decision. Do I do what I normally do or do I consider a tub option? Which one will get a rancher the bigger bang for his buck? Well, the one that well, welcome back to that ranching podcast, around the kitchen table, where we discuss topics that really matter for folks in the ranching industry. Joining me today is Daryl Paskewitz, Twain Manning. So coming into summer, a lot of folks are faced with this decision. Do I do what I normally do? You know, use a loose mineral through the summer or do I consider a tub option? You know, maybe not as traditional. People sometimes think of tubs as protein tubs only for the wintertime or cornstalk grazing. Let's talk about what is the best for folks. You know, we have a loose mineral. Riomax has a loose mineral. Obviously, tubs is the main thing we do. But just to sort of showcase the differences between loose mineral and tubs, what are some of the negatives that guys run into with a loose mineral? Yeah. And like you say, we have our own loose mineral as a company. So by no means, I mean, we're more just talking objectively. This is the the problems. There is windproof, you know, waterproof, and really waste proof benefit of the tub is you're not getting, you know, a bull a bull can't tip over a tub and it blows everywhere, gets wet and clumps up. Like, that's just some negatives as a as a rule of of loose mineral that you hear. There's a lot of waste that goes on, would you say that? Think of sorry. No. Was just thinking of that word waste. No rancher anywhere likes the word waste. Bull dumping it over or even the wind blowing loose mineral is very painful for for people to watch happen because that ain't helping nobody's bottom line. One of the things with a loose mineral versus a tub is that a loose mineral is more difficult to, keep out all the time. We know a cow does the best when it gets consistent daily intake of nutrients. Don't care where they're coming from out of the grass, or the feed, or the supplement. If it's eliminating peaks and valleys and you can have a program that delivers consistent daily intakes, the cattle do much better. So if you have put out a week's supply or two weeks supply of loose mineral, maybe the cow comes and devours it in a couple days, or, like you said, gets tipped over and what was supposed to last a week is now gone and they don't have anything for the next five days, You get way more peaks and valleys where they have it, and then they don't. The tub, we often see our tubs, for example, lasting three to four weeks when you put out a feeding. So it's there twenty four hours a day, day or night. It makes a big difference daily intake. The other benefit of a tub in general is the licking action. You probably got the stats better than I do on saliva production. Doctor Fransky always used the phrase saliva is the start of the digestive process. Yep, it starts right behind the lips, he used to say. Yep, so it's a natural buffer for the rumen and it's a key part of the digestion process. But the amount of saliva that a cow can produce, like you mentioned Twain, varies dramatically. I think different studies have shown that a cow could produce between ten to forty five gallons of saliva per day, depending on a bunch of factors like their diet, and in this case, in this discussion today, the tub, licking on the tub will greatly increase the amount of saliva a cow produces. You think it's important to note that saliva is high in pH and it's a buffering agent for the rumen? So it comes back to it's not just saliva for saliva's sake, but in that licking action, we're starting to make a big impact on the stability and the balance within that rumen to digest the grass that cow's eating. Yeah, the rumen environment, the engine of the cow. We wanna have a very stable functioning rumen environment. And that's a big, big part of it. But when it's if it varies between ten to forty five gallons, it's a huge variance. And and if we can impact that and create more saliva, the tub is a better option. If If you think of it, even if we, like for Riomax, have basically the same ingredients in our loose mineral or our tub, which one will get the rancher the bigger bang for his buck? Well, the one that aids digestion the most. And what you're saying is that licking action is just working, you know, in a natural system. I I think that's that's huge. But the other side of it, this whole waste idea, it really hurts, you know, like you get a rain event, which you're always thankful for moisture, but then you're if if you don't have a cover over your mineral and it clumps up and turns into a brick, you know, then you end up dumping that out. Nobody enjoys that. So looking at this through the lenses of what's gonna make the biggest impact on pasture and what's, you know, dollars and cents, what's the biggest return? Guys guys are also using the tubs. It's a lot easier with a tub to move it around, you know, or when you put your next tub out pasture utilization. So if there's an area of the pasture the cows don't typically go to, you can put it out, you know, in that area and they use it as a management tool. It's just a lot easier than a loose mineral bucket, you might say. Yeah. I remember a guy in Idaho telling me that he said there's parts of the ranch that the cows have never grazed before. Now with Riomax, they're they're grazing it. Well, that's music to his ears and to ours because we're getting more out of every acre. But he also said they're eating star thistle, which he said they've never in the history of this ranch have consumed star thistle. So what it's doing is you're working with the digestive system, that cow is in better shape to digest poor quality forages, but we're also, with the tubs as a grazing management tool, sucking them into the far flung parts of that pasture to help folks get more out of every acre they have. The final thing was a lot of loose minerals out there. They could be even a good mineral program, but they tend to not have the digestion side of it. Daryl? Yeah. When, when we're looking at a formulation, we want to do everything. We want to pack everything possible into that formulation. That's how we look at formulas as a company: what all can you put in there? And there's only so much room, but we have our formulas packed, jam packed full of minerals, vitamins, trace minerals, covering all those bases, and then doing everything possible we can in the in the form of digestion support. So you don't wanna overlook any of those areas. The the one thing guys do sometimes say is, well, I'm just gonna, you know, cheap out or skim by this summer and just use a loose mineral. It's a lot cheaper. You know, it's only thirty bucks a bag or fifty bucks a bag or whatever it is. But if you do the math, and I'd encourage you to do it on your own operation, what we find in over a six month period, a lot of guys are spending say twenty to thirty bucks a cow for their summer's worth of mineral, even on a a lower cost loose mineral could be upwards of forty or fifty on a more expensive loose mineral. And if you compare it to the Riomax tubs on average, because forage quality is good in the summer, we could have lower consumption on the tubs. You're gonna be spending typically in the neighborhood of fifty to sixty bucks a cow. So realistically, you know, we're only talking the difference of about thirty dollars a cow. Look. Cow calf pair, I should say. And we're talking twenty five hundred dollar calves right now. What a thirty dollars investment will get you in terms of feed efficiency. The cow's doing a better job breaking down their feed. They're not eating as much grass, milk production, increasing weaning weights, and then overall fertility conception rates as well. All those things add up and make a thirty dollar investment look like a pretty small blip on the radar at the end of the day. Yeah. Which comes full circle back to our purpose of driving profitability back to rural North America. And, when you talk about those levers we can pull, you know, grazing management, managing your resources, you know, weaning weights, fertility, these things are huge. So, well, that wraps us up for this episode of That Ranching Podcast. See you next week.

Is Riomax a breeding tab? I have much higher conception rates these days. What's not to like about that? All he says is I have less open cows and I have no It's really hard to go back and pinpoint what happened. You're six months out. If things dried up in June, right as you turn the bulls out, it could have a massive impact on your bottom line. We don't worry about what we can't control, do we? What we can focus on is what we can control. Sixty to ninety days prior to bull turnout really is when you want to start impacting breeding. Trevor, help us on looking at all the different ways that Riomax can help with breeding. Probably the first thing on most people's minds is what's in the mineral pack. But I want to talk about something that's probably a little bit more unique and and overlooked, and that is Welcome back to That Ranching Podcast. Joining us today around the kitchen table on this Thursday, we've got Trevor Greenfield and Twain Manning. So today, we're diving into are we diving into? We're exploring how do we help conception rates in your cow herd. Big question. Is Riomax a breeding tub? How does Riomax help with breeding? There's a lot to uncover, isn't there? Yeah. One one thing you run into is a lot of a lot of times, I mean, obviously, guys aren't preg checking till fall, typically speaking, if they're spring calving cow herd. So you'll be you're six months past when the bulls were actually first turned out by the time you finally preg checked the cows. And it's really hard to go back and pinpoint what happened last spring or early summer that had the impact, whether good or bad, you know, knowing what you did or you didn't do. If things dried up in June, as you turn the bulls out, it could have a massive impact on your bottom line or on the actual conception rates. But you're six months out and you really don't know what was happening at that specific time. And I think it's really important to know the things you can control that we often talk about is the supplements and what you're putting into those cows through that time period to maximize those results. Would you say? Yeah, I agree. We don't worry about what we can't control, do we? But what we can focus on is what we can control. And that is how we're going to supplement that cow to improve the nutritional success and give them the maximum chance. So Trevor, help us on looking at all the different ways that Riomax can help with breeding. Probably the first thing on most people's minds is what's in the mineral pack. I'll probably leave that one to Twain to talk about the, you know, copper, zinc, manganese, selenium. But I want to talk about something that's probably a little bit more unique and overlooked, and that is the power of Nutrizorb in Riomax, and that is the digestion pack. And this is a little bit different from your average spiel on why to buy our mineral, because this is how to get more out of what you've already got. Your pastures, your resources, with the power of NutriSorb, we not only get more protein and energy, but we get more of all the naturally occurring trace elements or trace minerals, vitamins, minerals out of that pasture. So the first thing is, let's get more out of what we've already got. And maybe that can lead on to then, as far as the supplemental trace minerals, maybe Twain could talk on that. Yeah, absolutely. One of the big things with our mineral package, Esqort, is we use a hundred percent protected minerals. So chelate crystal blend to minerals, but it's a hundred percent protected. What you'll find with a lot of programs out there is they'll use a partially chelated mineral. So they'll have some sulfates and oxides in their mineral program, which is a cheaper form of the mineral and less available to the cow. So when we're using the one hundred percent protected minerals, flax, and then as Trevor said, with Nutrizorb, those different ingredients really all work together to provide the results we see. Yeah, think that's the thing to summarize and to get your head around, isn't it? What we're doing with Riomax is we've got highly bioavailable ingredients and we provide a host of nutrients in there to feed the good bugs and improve digestion. So when you supplement a big range of minerals, vitamins and trace minerals that are highly bioavailable so the cow can use absolutely every piece possible, and along with that you supplement a bunch of ingredients that improve the feed conversion so they can get the most out of their feed, you have a powerful package. There's not any one thing that's contributing solely to the success. It's the combination and synergy of everything that we're putting in there. Yeah. We like to sometimes think of putting stuff into boxes and like, oh yeah, I got the flax in there or the zinc or whatever for breed up. No, it's looking at the whole picture, including the diet, like the grass that the cow is consuming. And just on the trace minerals real quick, with the one hundred percent protected key trace minerals, that is huge because when they're protected, we help them weather the journey through the rumen and get to the small intestine where they're absorbed into the bloodstream. It gives them the highest scientific chance of getting to where they need to go. And that is one of the levers, a big lever that we can pull to impact fertility and conception. One thing that we hear from guys is they want a breed up tub, you know, and they're calling about this two weeks before we turn bulls out, you know, and realistically, we're way behind the eight ball at that point, know, your sixty to ninety days prior to bull turnout really is when you want to start impacting breeding. So thinking about a breeding tub just in a box like you say Trevor, like we're going put the breeding tub out, you know, at breeding time or as the bulls get turned out. And I'm not slighting anyone that does that, but I would say to get the most bang for your buck or the most return on your mineral program, thinking ahead sixty to ninety days is critical to really get those minerals absorbed properly into the cow, get her levels up so that breeding season rolls around. She's ready to ready to roll. And I guess the bulls are the same, you know, they're half the equation. Making sure they're on a good supplement well prior to breeding as well. The term you use, like I need a breeding tub, almost makes me think of we're going to take our feedlot animal, you know, through almost treating it as a feedlot animal through the winter and into the spring and suddenly, Oh, we got, this thing's a reproductive animal. So we're going to give it a breed up tub. It's like, no, it's always been a reproductive animal. And we've got to be mindful of that. You said ninety days out and ideally, you know, year round or in the fetus of its mother. And if a cow, like if a cow needs a high level of copper and zinc and your key trace is manganese, selenium, your key trace minerals, like if she needs a high level of that just through breeding, why doesn't she need it through calving as well and then back it up through the winter third trimester, you know, as she's raising that? There shouldn't be a time when we're pulling levels down because we think we can get away from it. If it means impacting that calf's performance or the cows' health overall, that's as a company, we believe that if if they need it at some times of the year, they they need a year round to maximize performance. One, I mean, one of the other things, so we get guys sometimes that say, you know, hey. I'm well into the nineties on breed up or a hundred percent heard that before where they run the bulls year round or six months of the year. And in their mind, the vast majority of those cows get bred. I mean, maybe the, a lot of the cows do get bred, but over a six month window, you're selling the calves in a lot of different groups and it's really not a very good measure of your fertility. Whereas if we can get majority of those cows in the first twenty one to forty five days realistically, first couple cycles, that's when you know you have a cow herd that's fertile and performing at their maximum, and then you have a more consistent calf crop as well. Twain, have you had feedback from customers where they've seen they're getting more caught in the first cycle or more in the second cycle versus Yeah, we hear it quite a bit that the cows are more calves in the first cycle. But one of our guys this last year was talking to him. Said, yeah, it was back in January, I think it was. And I asked, I was like, oh, so when do you start calving? At Christmas. And I was like, well, I thought you were like February. He's like, oh, no, we are. But he said, last year we had couples right after some of the cows calved, got neighbors bull got into the pasture and got four cows bred. And this is this would have been within a couple weeks of them calving. Those calving. Those cows bumped up a couple cycles from when they had literally calved, got bred, and bumped up about forty five days roughly speaking. So that that just show I mean, obviously not an ideal scenario, but just shows what what the power of Riomax when you can get those cows cycling back faster. And that was a mistake, you know, that was a neighbor's bull type situation, but it tells a bigger story and that is with fertility and that reproductive performance, you tighten up your whole breeding season so that you get more caught in the first cycle, and then that directly flows onto more pounds, you know, a bigger calf, a heavier calf come weaning. I think there's two things going on there, isn't there? You've got the moving them up and it's what you can gain. You can get a tighter calf crop and a more uniform, get them all bred in the first cycle ideally if you could, and then along with that it's what you potentially could lose with them not cycling back, they're not nutritionally successful and that they aren't cycling back and they're not breeding and slowly they fall out of the program and you end up with a bunch of open cows. That's the other side of that. I was talking to a guy once and he said, yeah, I'm not too happy with the Riomax. And I was like, you know, what's going on? We take that seriously. And he's like, well, he said, have much higher conception rates these days. I'm like, what's not to like about that? Well, he says, have less open cows and I have no beer money. But I would say, you know, all all in the spirit of keeping cows in the herd, keeping your getting more out of your cow herd and more production, more profitability for your ranch. And less beer money. Yeah. That kinda sucks, but there's probably other ways. You could sell a bred cow or two if you have to, I suppose. That wraps us up this morning on That Ranching podcast. We look forward to seeing you back around the kitchen table next Thursday.

People hate seeing their cows all bunched up. And it has a real cost to it. Lower milk production on the cows, weaning weights, conception rates for fraud, pink eye. There's just a lot of things that just come along with fly pressure that sucks. There's no silver bullet to fly control. No perfect method, but you definitely can help it. Welcome back to this week's episode of That Ranching podcast, where we sit around the kitchen table and talk about topics that actually matter for folks in ranching. So we wanna talk about the fly issues in summertime. People hate seeing their cows all bunched up. You know, they've got all this grass, all this pasture, and the cows are bunched up in the corner. Dwayne? Yeah. And and it has a real cost to it. I mean, yes, there's the emotional factor that nobody likes seeing their cows bunched up, but it means higher stress on the cattle. So typically lower milk production on the cows, hurts weaning weights, can hurt conception rates for sure. And the cows get stomping and they'll step on each other's hooves. You can get hoof rot, pink eye from them, their tails flick any, the eyes are they'll irritate their eyes. So there's there's just a lot of things that just come along with fly pressure that sucks. They're really not grazing a lot while they're in a corner, are they? Like and probably not getting bred either standing in a corner and probably not the easiest for that calf to actually nurse all hunt you know, bunched up. They're a bad thing every which way. They don't They don't help anybody. They don't help anybody do anything. Mean, fly pressure varies on the year. Right? You get some years, dry years aren't too bad. A wet year gets real bad. And and honestly, even as a company, I mean, we're gonna talk about our our fly control products here. There's no cure all. Like, there's no silver bullet to fly control. Right? Guys try oilers, tags, they feed different items. There's no perfect method, but you definitely can help it. When you, control the flies, then you enable those cows to be cows and do what they need to do. And that is get out and graze, produce milk, nurse their calves outside, get bread, all of those things, and utilize the resources on your ranch versus being bunched up in the corner. But, Daryl, maybe you can speak a little bit to the technology or the ingredients we use for fly control and how that may differ from others on the market. It's an important thing how we go about what we do. As we said earlier, there's no perfect way, there's no perfect cure, there's no silver bullet, there's no thought even of trying to get rid of one hundred percent of all the flies. What we want to do is take the load off the flies to the point where they're comfortable. They're spread out grazing, they're doing what they're supposed to do. That's what we aim to get to. A couple of the products we've got, one of them is Repel. You hear the Repel term a lot being used often year round by a lot of producers, but through the summertime the benefit is it's got a powerful garlic extract product in there. A big proponent of pushing the maximum amount of repelling that you can do on a cow to repel the flies from spending time on the back of the animal or biting them. We can also do a formula that has the UltraCit IGR, so that's going after the fly population to reduce the number of flies that are around kill them in the larva stage before they become mature flies. The challenge with the IGR larvicide approach, while it works, there's two things. One is that if the neighbor's not using something, you're killing the flies on your pasture, they're coming over from the neighbors, that's a negative. The other thing is that it's not an all natural product. Although, like you say, we have it in one of our formulas, but I'm more from the results we see, I really love the way the Repel works, and that is, the name says it, those flies are repelled from the cow. They don't want to land on the cow. And in doing that too, we've got the heat stress benefit and all the digestive benefits and antioxidant benefits of those natural ingredients. So you're cutting a much wider swath and just, you know, going after a certain The other thing when you're working through the manure is there's a lot of your horn flies lay their eggs in the manure, but there's a lot of flies that don't. So your face flies in different things that can travel a lot further distances that you really, no matter how much you put in the manure, you can't control that population. So rappelling is really the best method. Rappelling is the best tool we have. The one thing I will add there is we hear from customers like, oh, I still have flies on my cows. You know, I'm still seeing some flies. A big question I would ask is, are they fighting them or are they just there? Because on a especially on a wet year when you got a lot of flies around, you're still going to have flies on your cows. There's, there's no two ways about that. But what we do see with the repel is you might have flies there, but they're not biting them. You know, the cows aren't bunching, they're not fighting them. And if your cows out grazing, I don't care how many flies she has on her, that is a clear indication that she is not being bothered by those flies. She's out there doing her job. If she's not fighting them, they're not bugging her. Let cows be cows and do their thing. One other ingredient that we have, and it's one of a bunch that we use, but is diatomaceous earth, and that helps with internal parasites, but it also is passed through into the manure, and that is an all natural product that works as like a mechanical kill for the fly larva in the larva stage. It's not an IGR, it's not a chemical or a drug, it's a natural mechanical kill. So that's in all the formulas, rest assured. And we have it at a higher level in all the Repel formulas we put a higher dose of it in. Bottom line is flies themselves obviously are a pain, but it's the cost of not dealing with them that ultimately hits the bottom line. Costs hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the North American beef market. And what it costs you is unrealized gains on your calves, unrealized milk production on your cows, unrealized conception rates, you know? So the cost is huge. What we're trying to end up with is cow comfort. There's no silver bullet. We're not trying to eliminate one hundred percent of all flies. You want the cows comfortable and you want them content. You want them laying down early in the day, they're content, chewing their cud, and they're very efficient animals. That doesn't happen when they're getting flies driving them crazy and they're stamping their feet in the corner of the field where it's nothing but bare dirt and a giant dust cloud, and they're all getting pneumonia and watery eyes. Yeah. The other thing, I was in South Dakota once and this guy's like, how come some calves have tons of flies around them, others don't? So we went out and looked, and he said, like, see that one there? And it was a droopy eared kind of a a little bit sick looking calf, you know, more of a suppressed immune system. And all the good doing calves had almost no flies. So he says, why is that? Well, it's because flies are you know, they go after the weak or immune suppressed animals. So if you got a healthy functioning cow herd, that's probably your best defense. And then repel is a a great way to keep them out and let cows be cows, be comfortable, graze, get bread, pack on the pounds, all those good things. That wraps us up for today's That Ranching podcast episode, and the better one is coming next week.