custom mineral program...

[smcgrath76]

How many of you use a custom formulated mineral program?
If so do you have the program reformulated to your feed test results each year?
Do you test pastures and formulate a summer program?
Where do you source your mineral?

[PureCountry]

I'm curious to see the answers on this one, as we're in the process of formulating a mineral program right now. Been using fortified TM blocks for a few years now, and want to try the loose mineral to compare cow condition and overall herd health. I'm trying to stick with a company that's Canadian owned, and use natural or organic ingredients if possible, such as kelp meal and diatomaceous earth. It's been interesting to say the least. Everyone wants to tell you what you need and sell you their premium product.

[grassfarmer]

Many of our views on this were posted on the "bottle baby" thread below. I'm still undecided on the best choice for my operation. We have used kelp a couple of summers and liked it - at $40 a bag it's expensive but at the 42 gram/ day level recommended by the company works out about the same as the recommended 100 grams/day of a (cheapish) $22 a bag mineral(both @7 cents/day)
We have been feeding a $22 mineral at the 100 gram level in silage over winter to load the cows up prior to calving and are happy with this part. I feel the industrial type mineral goes well with the industrial silage we feed (of highly intensive farmed land)We have never had a silage sample that needed anything other than a basic $22 mineral supplied.

The cows love the kelp but would eat way more given the chance - in reality are we feeding them a half ration at 42 grams/day? We get good results with it but we might get the same result feeding a half ration of the $22 stuff - summer grass after all should be less lacking in minerals than conserved winter feed shouldn't it?

[PureCountry]

Did you get your kelp from VS in Ponoka?

[rkaiser]

A few thoughts on Kelp. It is basically a very healthy plant. Full of micro nutrients available in a very natural state. However it is a plant and is very palatable to a cow. Grassfarmer is using it in a very limiting way and this is good. When we had it available in a free choice setting, the cattle would eat it like candy. Especially when the cattle where being confined on our paddock grazing, and pushed at all to clean up.

The only way that I would consider going back to kelp would be in a limiting way like grassfarmer is doing. The filler in the mineral we are using is flax. Not only a plant derived filler, but a much underestimated oil product which we hope to enhance CLA and good trans in our new feeding protocol.

Some of the ingredients in natural minerals are simply sexy. When have we ever heard of cattle eating kelp for instance or how about garlic. We need to take a practical approach some times and try to use products that cattle would find on their own if we did not have fences around them. Their are lots of natural source micro nutrient ingredients that are actually being used in some of the conventional mineral programs. Just have to find the right people to talk to. Sam at VS Feeds is an excellent info source and will lead you right. They sell the "Natural Farmworks" product line, but also custom build with products from both the conventional and "Natural" line.

[grassfarmer]

We used the kelp from VS feeds last year but used Ultra-Kelp supplied out of BC a previous year. We seemed to get much better results with the Ultra Kelp but that may have been due to a better grass growing year too. The fact I like about kelp is that the minerals are in the same balance and ratios as the minerals in blood, because sea water contains basically the same minerals and ratios as blood and the kelp absorbs them.

According to Joel Salatin you should never restrict kelp - he says cows always gorge on it initially and then cut down to a reasonable level after a week or so once their depleted mineral levels are corrected. At $40 a bag with a lot of cows I'm frightened to try this approach! Actually he argues that only the Thorvin Icelandic kelp is worth using as it is geothermically dried. He claims that no one else has as good quality kelp to start with as Iceland and that drying it using natural gas as they do in Canada destroys a lot of the goodness. Thorvin kelp is available out of the US but costs around $80 a bag I believe.

[PureCountry]

As usual you are a wealth of knowledge my friend.

[grassfarmer]

Further to the last post after speaking to both suppliers I learn that Ultra-Kelp supplied out of BC (but harvested in Atlantic Canada) is in fact sun dried. The kelp that VS supplies is artificially dried but at a low temperature over a period of time. With that knowledge plus my previous experience with the Ultra-Kelp I will opt to use it again this year and see if we get the same result we got with it the last time. Time will tell.

[farmers_son]

It is my impression that cows do not know what they need and will eat anything that tastes good to them. I would suspect that since kelp is an ocean plant that the cattle like the salty taste.

I have never feed tested my pastures although I routinely test my winter feed. I do believe our pastures vary and notice on some pasture the cows consume much more salt than on other pastures. The only nutrient deficiency I have ever seen on pasture is grass tetany and we keep magnesium on hand all the time "just in case".

I realize that soils differ throughout the province and that some soils possibly may be deficient in various minerals, at least some years. If the grazing cattle are not getting enough of a particular mineral in the grass because of a soil deficiency then perhaps more benefit might be realized from adding that micro nutrient to the grass rather than the cow. That way the grass benefits too, more grass equals more feed for the grazing cow.

I also suspect that nutrient requirements vary between cows and that simple culling will remove the cows that for whatever reason are not able to absorb enough of a particular nutrient where her herd mates would do just fine on the same pasture.

I do feed minerals during the summer grazing season but have never been sure if I needed to. For that matter I have never been sure that the mineral I buy actually provides what the label says it does.

I note the concern about a possible deficiency of minerals but notice there is no mention of possible toxic effects of minerals. At high levels many minerals can be toxic. If kelp or some other mineral source really provided high levels of micro minerals I would expect to see some kind of toxic level of one or more micro minerals built up over time.

[rkaiser]

Balance is the word farmers_son. We have to know that when we change one thing - other things change. Had a discussion with my nutritionist about sulfur the other day. I like to keep sulfur and zinc levels up in our mineral. He said that sulfur ties up selenium and that we need to use caution, ----- Then I talked of what I believe about the selenium issue that we here about every day in the nutrition business. Yes Alberta has sulfur emissions from gas plants etc. that rain down on our crops and feeds - but we also have this other chemically enhanced thing called fertilizer that rains down on our crops and feeds as well. As soon as we change the way our crops and plants grow we change the contents as well. I strongly believe that we are depleting selenium and vitamin levels in general by adding fertiliser to our land. Yes we can take samples and build a mineral or a supplement of some kind to change that once again but maybe we could also look at the source of the problem in the first place.

As far as the kelp issue - as I have already said wonderful plant --- likely no fertilizer and an abundance of micro nutrients. Same with the barley greens that the Natural Farmworks company switched to due to cost. They built the right growing medium and conditions to create a product that rivaled Kelp. Now the folks who started the company are in the nutraceutical business and Natural Farmworks went back to Kelp.

If everything else in the cows diet is right - Kelp will likely be a good addition to the diet to insure proper micro nutrients. As far as a fix up to bring things back that we have changed for the worse - it will cost you too much money folks.

[cswilson]

I might sound like a bit of a heretic but shouldn't our cows kind of be able to function on what is produced on their home ranch or at least close by. I haven't found alot of kelp beds in northern Sask. lately. I'm not saying it isn't good stuff but kind of exotic feed for an oild black baldie cow to rely on. There's cows have lived long productive lives in our neck of the woods and never got more than blue salt. The more you push things production wise the more you have to finetune your supplementation programs I think.

[farmers_son]

You tell them Cswilson. I agree 100%.

[Cattleman]

Couldn't agree more cs, there is something to that natural selection theory I believe. Our main focus on our farm is marketing hay, with the beef business where it is today, there is no money in feeding good quality hay to beef cows, our cows pretty much ate dusty weathered hay all winter, and just had salt. (I will admit we had a large waste though as well) We also calve in March, and believe it or not, most of our cows are bred, and calving was 100%. Our cows are low maintenance scavengers, and they seem to do just fine. I don't want to start tweaking the formula now. It may all sound very redneckish..but we have a vet in the family.
Believe it or not we even run purebred cows, and they survive, and are pretty well all bred, with minimal minerals, no plugs, no injections, etc.....and they still funcion...anyone looking for bulls??lol

[grassfarmer]

I don't claim to be an expert on mineral supplementation, I have raised the same questions as farmers_son on previous threads - do we need minerals? and if so how much? How much do you spend per cow in a year supplying minerals and salt farmers_son, cattleman or cswilson? I'd be interested to know as I am always looking to eliminate or reduce any purchased input costs.
I would certainly be happy to discontinue salt supplementation, I don't know anyone in Europe that fed salt to cattle and I doubt if they need it here either. Minerals I'm not so sure on yet as I don't have enough experience of Canadian conditions.

[rkaiser]

Not much arguement from this guy either. If your pastures are clean and free of chemicals and fertiliser - your air free of acid rain and such from the local gas plant, and your winter feed grown under similar conditions. We do put up fences however folks, and we do live in Canada where access to those things that cattle, or shall we say Bison or Deer, used to access on their own.

I could not agree more with Cory when he talks of pushing it. I would not take a chance on non supplementing,
hormone added, feed fertilised cattle.
Taking a chance on a natural approach is enviable and I do envy those of you who have found it working on your land. Condition of the cattle and hints like retained placenta in the spring will be the first things to tell you if it is not working. If your genetics are strong enough - you may be able to even overcome things like that and get those cattle bred back and working.

And by the way Cattlemen - you should have one of the best bull sales in Western Canada if folks truley looked at your program and understood it. Natual selection is aways better than dressing up.