Saying that change is coming is about as earth shattering as saying the sun will rise again tomorrow. 

Having traveled around the country a bit in the last month, I have had the chance to hear some reactions from beef producers and Allied Industry Associates on the upcoming Voluntary Removal of some antibiotics and/or antibiotic claims from feeds.  Removing some antibiotics from feeds is certainly a change for us.  The intent of the rule is to reduce the amount of antibiotics used in animal agriculture.  You will still be able to use most antibiotics to treat or prevent diseases, but using antibiotics for claims to increase feed efficiency, or to increase rate of gain, will come to an end after December of 2016.  Antibiotics in feed for prevention and treatment of diseases will remain available, but will require veterinarian oversight in the form of a Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD).  If you wish to use allowed antibiotics in feeds in 2017, you will need to have a good working relationship with a veterinarian.

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Remember that old advertisement that stated, “We don’t make a lot of the products you buy,… We make a lot of the products you buy, better?” It was actually trademarked for a time, by BASF Corporation.  I have always thought that it applied very well to how CRYSTALYX^® works.  I might change it just a little, to state that, “We don’t make a lot of your assets,… We make a lot of your assets, better.”  

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Having just returned from the Cattle Fax Outlook seminar last week, I would say the message for cow-calf producers was that 2014 and 2015 could be looked back upon as our most profitable years in the cow-calf business.  That is not to say that 2016 forward will not be profitable, quite the contrary, but, as the cow herd (and calves marketed) begins to truly increase in 2016, there is certainly the opportunity for the old economic law of supply and demand to kick in.   Of course, demand can always increase and change some of those projections.  I believe we all know that developing countries have a greatly increasing desire for, and ability to purchase, animal protein.   We usually think this market is most all pork and poultry, but there were certainly indications that beef will benefit from this increased need for protein.   Suffice it to say, we have a number of very profitable years ahead in the cow-calf business.

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Beginning this week in August, you will notice that we have changed the formulation of the “HE” CRYSTALYX^® products. These were some of the oldest CRYSTALYX^® products in existence.  The “HE” in their name used to stand for “High Energy”.  I say “used to”, because since I got involved with formulating the CRYSTALYX^® products over 19 years ago, I also got involved with the marketing of them.  I noticed that most every promotional flier we had on CRYSTALYX^® products at the time, usually listed “high energy” as the first bullet point.  Having access to the energy values of the various formulas, I could quickly see that the energy contained in ¾ pound of CRYSTALYX^® was approximately the same as ¾ pound of corn.  Now I agree that corn is relatively high in energy compared to straw, but I would struggle to promote CRYSTALYX^® as high in energy, given that you could get the same amount of energy in ¾ pound of corn for much less money.  We began having the “High Energy” bullet points removed from our advertising materials, and I slept better at night.

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Have you ever wondered who gets paid to think up names for cars, or any new product?  You know, great names like Charger, Road Runner, Chevelle, Mustang, Cougar, and Corvette. Those names had some meaning behind them, and hopefully it translated quickly, when you heard someone mention them.

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This year, the CRYSTALYX^® fly control products have been reformulated to include organic/chelated trace minerals.  Those products include:

• CRYSTALYX^® IGR MAX
• CRYSTALYX^® IGR PRO
• CRYSTALYX^® ROLYX^®  MAX
• CRYSTALYX^® ROLYX^®  PRO-MAG

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