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Justin A Ramirez, M.S. - Livestock Nutritionist

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Justin A Ramirez, M.S. - Livestock Nutritionist

Howdy! I am a livestock nutritionist with experience and graduate education in various species. Thank you for stopping by.
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I’m a livestock nutritionist and have been consulting in the field for various species for over 13 years. I earned my Masters of Science in Ruminant Nutrition with a minor in equine from Texas A&M University in 2014 and my Bachelor of Science in Animal Science from Texas A&M University-Kingsville in 2010. In addition, while working on my masters, I taught the Feeds and Feeding and Intro to Animal

Science lab for 2 years. My wife Kristy and our 2 children, Witten and Lyndie run our Simbrah and Simmental cattle business focusing on show cattle. My certifications include: Artificial Insemination for beef cattle and Certified Veterinary Assistant. My goal in my consultations is to help people connect the dots between experience and what research suggests can improve programs. I like to bring the classroom to the ranches and farms I work with. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to contact me with all of your livestock nutrition needs.

08/04/2026

Excited for this session here at Texas A&M Beef Cattle Short Course. You’re never too far in your career or too old to continue learning.

Your replacement heifers today are your milking/breeding herd tomorrow and how you feed and manage them now sets the tone for their entire productive life. I like to think about it like this: The heifers you raise right the first time are the ones that don’t cost you twice. 💪

08/02/2026

28 days post artificial insemination.

It’s amazing how much hope and anxiety can fit into a small tube of blood.

This video was taken while I was collecting a blood sample from one of our percentage Simbrah females, 28 days after artificial insemination. Within minutes chute side we’re able to determine if she’s bred or not.
In those minutes of stress waiting to see if we get 2 lines leaves me time to think.

Since calving, shes been facing higher energy demand in addition to healing before she’s ready to cycle again, we’ve been hoping all of the pieces came together.

Now it’s a matter of did we catch her in standing heat at the right time? My wife and I check heats religiously!

Did I do my job with an insemination timed correctly?

Did I handle the semen properly?

Was her body on time with fertilization to occur?

Will she maintain her pregnancy through those critical first few weeks?

There are so many variables that have to line up before a calf is ever born. This blood sample is a milestone that tells us whether everything has gone according to plan…so far.

As a nutritionist, it’s also a reminder that reproductive success doesn’t begin on breeding day. It begins months before with good nutrition, proper body condition, sound herd health, low-stress handling, and day-to-day management.

We also have to take into account what the environment is providing and decide accordingly.
Believe me, my brain and my wallet tend to have conflicting ideas when it comes to our personal program.

Moments like this are why I enjoy what I do. When I have my rancher hat on, I’m excited about what new genetics are in the works for next calving season. When I have my nutritionist hat on, it helps validate the nutrition program I’ve implemented is working as it should.

Every breeding season is another opportunity to stack the odds in our favor and hopefully celebrate nine months later when a healthy calf hits the ground.

PS, this percentage Simbrah, Billie, was confirmed bred via Idexx Alertys!

God Bless and Gig Em!

07/29/2026

Howdy!

Next week I’ll be attending the 2026 Texas A&M Beef Cattle Short Course in College Station.

If you’ll be there, I’d love to meet you! Whether you want to visit about cattle, horses, nutrition, or just introduce yourself, feel free to stop me and say howdy!

One of my favorite parts of Short Course is learning what’s new from some of the best in our industry and bringing those ideas back to continue helping producers, including myself, make practical, research based nutrition decisions.

Looking forward to it! Hope to see y’all there! 👍

07/25/2026

My feed program is the same but my horse is starting to lose weight, why?

After spending all day outside in this Texas heat at Port A, my family and I are feeling it this morning. We’re tired, sore, and probably need a little extra electrolytes and amino acids in my coffee to recover after a full day at the beach yesterday. 🏖️

Our horses and cattle aren’t any different.

One of the biggest mistakes I see is assuming yesterday’s feeding program should still meet today’s requirements.

Maybe the pasture forage quality has declined.
Maybe you bought a new load of hay.
Maybe activity has increased.
Maybe heat stress is raising maintenance requirements.

Well, maybe the feed tag and hay didn’t necessarily change, but the animal’s needs sure did.

This is part of the equation in my experience I don’t think most horse owners or cattlemen take into account as much as they should.

Before blaming the feed or supplement, ask yourself:

Has your horse’s environment changed more than the feeding program?

Sometimes it’s not that the feed is falling short.
It’s that the nutritional target has moved, this is KEY!!

That’s why nutrition isn’t about feeding the same thing every day, believe me, I have to remind myself all the time.

It’s about continually matching nutrient supply with changing animal requirements.

Remember, supplementation is supposed to help bridge the nutritional gap between forage and your animal’s requirements. Those requirements are not static and change with the environment, just like ours.

07/18/2026

Flaxseed doesn’t build TOPLINE. There, I said it.

Over the past few years I’ve come across many horse owners on my farm calls, in addition to those in online Facebook groups who are adding flaxseed, chia seeds, or rice bran to improve topline in horse diets.

And that certainly got me thinking about a few things…

Are we giving too much credit to the ingredient itself and not actually looking at the nutrients it contributes to the diet? I’ve attached that info for your review.

Now, let’s compare it to ourselves as humans for just a second.

If you decided to start working out because you wanted to build muscle, would simply adding flaxseed to your breakfast or dinner make a noticeable difference?

Probably not. Well….Why though?

Because we understand that muscle is built from amino acids(the building blocks of protein) and calories provide the energy to support that process.

Now let’s connect that same concept back to our horses.

Flaxseed is a valuable ingredient, don’t get me wrong. It contributes calories, fat, and omega-3 fatty acids, all of which can have a place in a balanced feed program.

BUT if a horse’s biggest nutritional limitation is protein quality or amino acid intake, adding flaxseed alone may not produce the topline improvement you’re expecting.

You may see improvement over their topline because there is “cover”, however I bet once you start increasing level of activity, you’ll soon see that topline start to melt off. Because that “cover” is actually fat from excess energy.

In my experience, some of the diets I come across are compensating for the lack of nutrients, primarily energy and amino acid content. And horse owners are feeding these types of ingredients to compensate.

There is so much focus put on the supplements/feed/grain side that the forage side tends to take a backseat and subsequently becomes underfed in many of the programs I come across. At recommended 1.5-2% body weight, that’s the bulk of your horse’s diet. Let’s look at that too.

That’s why I think we sometimes ask the wrong question.

My challenge for you is instead of asking, “Should I feed flaxseed?”

Maybe we should first ask,
“What nutrients are my horses actually getting in their daily diet?”

One of the goals I always have when going in to my consultations is taking the time to calculate the numbers that are actually going into your horse’s diet.

I like to call this my “Cowboy Math”. For those I’ve done this for, they think it’s eye opening and then it’s followed by, “that’s pretty cool. Can you show me how you did that again with your phone calculator?”.

That allows YOU as the horse owner to see what is really limiting and make more confident decisions about what direction to go in.

Whether we’re limiting in protein, digestible energy, amino acids, vitamins, or minerals, the diet is influencing genetics, let’s make the most of them… after all, you paid for those genetics right?

Every ingredient has a purpose.

The key is understanding what that purpose actually is.

If you’d like help understanding your horse’s diet, let’s partner up to see what’s really going on.

Gig ‘Em and God Bless.

07/11/2026

Soy, soy, soy! I’ve heard talks a lot of things about soy over the years and I’ve finally decided to write a little something about it given it’s definitely a hot topic.

Are we talking about soybean meal, soy oil, soy hulls, or unprocessed soybeans. … is one of them or all of them the culprit? Or…. Are we asking ourselves the wrong questions?

Over the last several years, I’ve watched soybean meal become one of the most controversial ingredients in the equine world.

I’ve heard it blamed for inflammation, behavioral changes, hormonal issues, and allergies.

As a nutritionist, that naturally made me curious.

So I asked myself a simple question:

“What does the research actually say?”

Here’s what we know.

• Properly processed soybean meal is one of the most extensively researched protein ingredients used in animal nutrition. One of my preferred ingredients in various species including equine and beef.

• It provides an excellent amino acid profile, particularly lysine, along with other essential amino acids involved in muscle repair, tissue maintenance, enzyme production, and countless metabolic processes.

• Based on the current body of peer-reviewed research, there is no convincing evidence that properly processed soybean meal, fed at practical inclusion rates, routinely causes systemic inflammation in healthy horses.

Here’s what we don’t know.

If a horse improves after switching to a soy-free feed…

Was soybean meal actually responsible?

Or…

Did we change something else in the process knowingly or unknowingly because we simply changed feeds that claim to be “soy free.”

Because when we change from one feed to another, we usually change much more than one ingredient.

We may have changed:

• starch

• sugar

• calorie intake

• fat

• fiber sources

• amino acid balance

• vitamin and mineral concentrations and sources (organic vs inorganic sources)

• feeding rate

• forage intake

• turnout

• exercise

• overall management

That’s a lot of variables changing all at once.

Yet it’s easy to point at one ingredient and conclude,

“Soy was the problem.”

Here are the questions I would ask.

How much soybean meal was actually being fed?

If a feed contains 5–10% soybean meal, and the horse is consuming 5–8 pounds of feed per day, how much soybean meal is the horse really eating?

Is that amount biologically significant?

If someone believes that amount caused inflammation or an allergic response…

What research supports that conclusion?

Those aren’t rhetorical questions.

They’re honest questions.

Because I haven’t found research demonstrating that practical feeding rates of properly processed soybean meal routinely cause inflammation in healthy horses.

That doesn’t mean soybean meal can never be an issue.

Just like people, individual horses can have genuine sensitivities or allergies.

But when a food allergy is suspected, veterinary dermatologists generally consider an elimination diet followed by a controlled reintroduction (challenge) trial to be the most reliable way to determine whether an ingredient is truly responsible—not simply relying on assumptions or one laboratory result.

Think about it like this…

Imagine your truck starts running better after spending the weekend in the shop.

During that visit you:

• changed the oil

• replaced the air and fuel filters

• installed new glow plugs

• rotated the tires

• spritzed the inside with leather conditioner

Would any mechanic confidently say,

“It was definitely the fuel filter.”

Probably not.

Too many variables changed at the same time.

Nutrition works the same way.

When we change a feed, we often change dozens of nutritional and management variables simultaneously.

Before blaming one ingredient…

What else changed?

My takeaway…

My goal isn’t to convince anyone that soybean meal is “good” or “bad.”

My goal is to encourage us to think critically about the entire feeding program. Do you really know how much soybean meal is in the feed you’re feeding or since you see it on a tag you assume it’s at levels that are high enough to cause issues?

Keep in mind, feeding a 1250 lb horse 6 lbs of feed is 0.48% body weight and 25 lbs of hay is 2% body weight.

If a feed has a 10% inclusion of soybean meal and you’re feeding 6 lbs a day, that horse is getting 0.6 lbs of soybean meal per day or 0.048% of its body weight.

For perspective, on a body-weight basis, that’s roughly equivalent to a 150-180 lb person consuming about one standard candy bar worth of food. While species aren’t directly comparable, it illustrates that the amount of soybean meal being consumed is often much smaller than many people imagine.

Did that move the needle throughout the day, maybe, maybe not unless it’s a true allergy.

Good nutrition isn’t about finding something to blame.

It’s about asking better questions, interpreting the evidence, and making decisions based on biology—not assumptions.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is this:

The best nutritionists don’t start with answers. They start with questions.

Hope this helps yall understand this hot topic a little better!

God Bless and Gig ‘Em!
⸻

07/11/2026

Howdy!

The best time to start feeding a calf isn’t after it’s born… it’s before it’s ever born.

I was visiting with a good friend of mine, Andy Guerra this week about calf health, and it led to a good discussion on what actually happens during pregnancy.

Everything a developing calf needs in utero has to come through the placenta. Oxygen, amino acids, glucose, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients all rely on the dam receiving an adequate diet first. If she’s deficient, the calf is working with whatever nutrients are available.

If the water available to her is high in iron, sulfur, or calcium carbonate, aka hard water, it could reduce the availability of key minerals like copper and zinc.

Once that calf hits the ground, the placenta’s job is finished.

Now colostrum takes over.

That first meal is crucial because it provides antibodies for immunity, along with energy, protein, vitamins, minerals, and bioactive compounds that help get the calf off to the right start. After that, milk becomes the primary nutrient source until the calf gradually transitions to forage and supplemental feed like a creep feed or developer.

That’s one of the reasons I spend so much time talking about body condition, forage quality, and mineral programs. Nutrition isn’t just about maintaining the cow—it’s about supporting the developing calf long before we ever see it.

Healthy calves don’t start at birth.

They start with healthy cows. Nutrition is preventative medicine. Many of the outcomes we see at calving are influenced months before calving ever begins. This is why I stress that whatever you feed your animals is either helping or hurting your investment.

Cattle are no different than your 401k, they’re an investment that you have direct influence through management and their diet.
Hope this helps you understand this topic a little better.

God bless and Gig ‘Em!

05/26/2026

Howdy!
One of the most rewarding parts of what I do is seeing hard work, consistency, and management decisions come together in real-world results.

My friend Gio called earlier excited after preg check results came back:
95 cows bred out of 98. I thought we’d hit 75-80% but that goes to show teamwork makes the dream work.

Results like these are never one single thing. Reproductive success is influenced by many moving parts:

* nutrition
* body condition
* mineral status
* forage quality
* timing
* overall herd MANAGEMENT!!

What I appreciate about working with families like the Benitez family is their willingness to stay proactive. We consistently work together collecting samples, reviewing data, evaluating forage conditions, and making adjustments when needed rather than waiting for problems to show up later.

Nutrition is not just “feeding cows.”
It’s managing a system as a team. Everyone plays a crucial role for the business to yield success.

Strong reproductive performance is often a reflection of months of management decisions happening behind the scenes long before preg check day arrives.

Grateful for producers who trust me to be part of their program and thankful to see good cattle management continue paying off.

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Seguin, TX
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