Cattle

Since we started using Sweet Pro our cows have held their condition through the winter. We have also improved in our weaning weight 20-30 pounds. We also use Sweet Pro Products with our 45 head of camp horses and have been very impressed with the improvement in being able to maintain a good condition; especially with our older horses.

Last fall we fence-line weaned 285 calves on our hay meadows and SweetPro’s KafKandi. They immediately took to the Kaf Kandi and consumption was right where it was supposed to be. The calves seemed to hold good body condition, and health was excellent with having to treat just one in 60 days. As with anything new, we were a bit skeptical of weaning the calves on the tubs for the first time. We were very impressed with the results and really appreciate the convenience of the tubs.

My brother Ryan and I had attended a Ranching for Profit school and we adapted pieces of their philosophy of minimal winter feeding for what we needed on our ranch. We had increased the size of our operation and needed to be able to do more with less work. In order to minimize both the time and cost expense of feeding hay, we stock pile enough forage during the year to be able to utilize a winter grazing program and once every 10 days they put out enough SweetPro supplement calculated to last the herd until the next deliver. I’m not saying we never feed hay. We do when the snow gets too deep, but I’d rather be doing something else than feeding $150/ton hay all day every day. Feed efficiency for us was a good selling point. Range conditions can make feed efficiency hard to quantify but we did our own field trial, and put the SweetPro up against what we were using at the time. At the end of the season, we liked what we were seeing with SweetPro

We were nothing less than impressed with the results of our replacement heifers last winter on the SweetPro blocks. With only grass hay, KafKandi blocks, and Redmond salt, the heifers came into spring in perfect condition – cycling like crazy. Health throughout the winter was excellent and their performance was right on target. We actually witnessed a reduction in the consumption of hay which significantly reduced our input costs. I think that the chelated minerals and the digestive aids which help the animals utilize lower quality forages are very beneficial. Feeding the tubs every ten days is very convenient and they are also very easy to handle. Having access to the product that has all of these benefits is very exciting in today’s world of agriculture. At this point, I’m very comfortable recommending the SweetPro and Redmond salt combination. It sure has done the job for us.

Our portable Arrowquip chutes have greatly improved the scope of our rural veterinary practice and have afforded our clients the option of safe, stress-free, efficient animal handling.

 

For manual chutes, we really enjoy the durability, ease of use, and quiet operation our portable Q-Catch chutes provide

We wintered our cows and coming first calf heifers on FiberMate 20, Redmond salt, and long stem hay. This spring, we were pleased with the healthy and vigorous calves. We like the value of the balanced minerals and protein provided by the FiberMate 20.

We expect a cow to go out there and make a living. We don’t feed a whole lot of hay unless we get deep snow where they can’t get to the grass. I’m calving a bunch of three year olds at my place right now and they haven’t had any hay all winter. We had a lot of snow in December but it blew off some on the ridges and those three year old are in excellent condition. In the winter time we are supplementing the cow. She’s going to get enough energy out of the grass but she can’t get enough protein. The SweetPro is different than the other supplements we’ve tried over the years in that you are feeding the microbes in the rumen. If you are feeding the microbes correctly, she will digest the roughage and utilize it. Breed back had been good, really good. We feed supplement to our yearling heifers, actually starting before they are weaned. They will stay on it, year round, until after they calve as three year olds- the toughest year of their lives. They are facing a lot of physical demands as they are still growing, feeding their first calf, and we are asking them to also re-breed. Last year he reported 99% bred on the three year olds with only one open cow, and believes their feeding program deserves some of the credit. I’m not saying it will for everybody, but it’s worked very well for our operation. There are a lot of folks who graze off all their grass during the summer and feed hay all winter. We just think that’s too expensive. SweetPro is not the magic bullet, it’s a management tool that you have to use in conjunction with a lot of other things you are doing, but we wouldn’t be using it if it didn’t work well for us

Just thought I would drop you an email and let you know some of our results over the course of the winter. We fed the backgrounder tubs to about 1250 head of yearlings, and Redmond salt and conditioner to the other 1250 head of yearling on our place. On a bad year we suffer from about 120 cases of coccidiosis in our yearlings. This year we only doctored one (and we are not even sure if he was actually sick with it or not). Although we still had some foot rot out of one truckload of cattle that came in our sickness was next to nothing this year, which was good considering how bad of a winter we had. The product really works. Thanks. Just a little side note here about the gains we have had with our yearlings on SweetPro and Redmond products. Over the last week we have sold about 600 head of yearlings in two bunches. They were started out on the backgrounder tub and then switched to FiberMate 18’s part way through the summer. They ate about .75 lbs per day of the tubs and were space fed as well. We had Redmond salt on the side and they were just on summer rangeland and we still gained 2.99lbs on one bunch and 3.02 lbs per day on the other. These particular cattle didn’t have fly control and no growth hormones either.

I can really tell the difference on the performance and condition of my bulls since I’ve been using SweetPro. What I really like about it is that it really keeps my bulls healthy. They really muscle up on it, it keeps them fresh and their stomachs working well. My bulls travel better since they have been on the supplement

My calves (weaned onto the Kaf Kandi blocks) finished 32 days sooner and weighed 30lbs more than my 10 year average I think it is the blocks.