60 Sick Feedyard Calves, 1 Fix, 55 Survived | #24 | THAT RANCHING PODCAST

There's an old truth in this business: a calf never gets over a good start. You hear it from old-timers, you hear it from vets, and you hear it again in this conversation with two Riomax dealers who are living it every day; one running cattle through a stocker operation in Northwest Oklahoma, the other backgrounding high-risk calves out of the sale barn in Edna, Texas.These aren't easy calves. Four or five days off the truck before you ever see them, no ear markings, no mineral program, digestion mixed up from the stress of the ring. And by the time you notice something's wrong, you're already behind.We talk about what's actually changed in calf health over the last few years — why the industry's answer keeps being a bigger, more expensive antibiotic instead of getting ahead of the problem. We talk about gut health, and why the real fight isn't at intake, it's two to five weeks in, when the stress catches up with them. And we talk about a sixty-head sick pen that everybody had written off and what happened when they didn't give up on it.There's also a six-year-old who explains the whole thing better than most do. You'll know it when you hear it.If you're buying calves out of a sale barn, running cattle through a backgrounding program, or just trying to keep your retreat numbers down and your margin up, sit down and listen to this one.In this episode:What's changed with incoming calf health, and why "just use a bigger gun" isn't working anymoreThe preventative approach that's cutting individual treatment numbersWhy gut health is the real battleground in week two through fiveA sick pen nobody thought would come back — and the numbers on what didWhy calves are gaining better than two pounds a day faster right out of the gateRiomax dealers: Jared Pachner (Northwest Oklahoma) and Robert Martin (Edna, Texas)Learn more at riomax.netNew episodes of That Ranching Podcast every week.