Shane and Lindsay were invited to join an episode of That Ranching Podcast, with host Trevor Greenfield! Watch the episode below.
38 | The Truth About Cattle Tubs: Is It All Hype? – Riomax® 360
"Nobody wants to inherit a break-even business." That's how North Dakota rancher, and one of our owners, Shane Maddock, sums up why a ranch has to pay before it can become a legacy.
Shane and Lindsay ranch north of the town of Maddock, ND, and are raising four kids. Every decision on their place runs through one question: "What's best for the soil, and what will make the most profit?"
They lean on mob, cell and bale grazing plus cover crops, modeled on the bison herds that built the plains' deep soils. Shane prefers "regenerative" to "sustainable," because a degraded resource should be rebuilt, not just maintained.
He keeps score partly by watching manure. Before switching to Riomax mineral tubs, he says, pats (manure) lasted a year or more; now they break down in about three weeks. The Maddocks also park tubs on patches of invasive bluegrass so the cattle's impact pushes it back.
The results they report are financial. In a D4 drought year they cut pasture needs from 5–6 acres per cow to about 4–4.5. Their corn silage is tracking 25–30 tons an acre against a local average of 15–20. By Shane's math, that adds up to running 120-plus cows on ground that used to carry 100.
The payoff is what they can hand down: land and cattle that work, and enough of a business that their kids might come home to it. For anyone curious, Shane suggests starting with the North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition, the Sand County Foundation, or NRCS.
Source: That Ranching Podcast, Riomax 360. Results as reported by Shane Maddock.
