Mineral Supplementation for my herd

[miss_thenorth]

Ok, I have have a mixed herd of sheep, horses and a calf. I am doing away with grain supplementation. they are going to get only good free choice hay, and my horses will continue to get their beet pulp in the evenings. I have been researching the mineral and trace mineral requirements of all my herd critters. Here is the breakdown.

Dairy Cattle
Calcium
Phosphorus
Sodium
Potassium
Sulphur
Magnesium
Chlorine
Cobalt
Iodine
Selenium
Copper
Zinc
Manganese
Iron

Sheep

Sodium
Iodine
Calcium
Phosphorus
Cobalt
Sulphur
Magnesium
Potassium
Selenium
Molybdenum


Horses

Calcium
Phosphorus
Magnesium
Potassium
Sulphur
Sodium
Cobalt
Iodine

Selenium
Copper
Zinc
Manganese
Iron

They are all pretty much the same, except the cow needs chlorine, and the sheep need molybdenum.

Beekissed had recommended to me thorvin sea kelp and this is there breakdown:
http://www.thorvin.com/kelp_for_plant_analysis.htm
It has copper in it, but from what I've been told, sheep can't have copper. BUT, Thorvin does recommend their product for sheep:
http://www.thorvin.com/feed_rates.htm

I know that Beekissed does give this to her sheep, so in your opinion, would this be a good supplement for all of my animals? I am kind of leaning towards getting this, but would like to know what your opinion is of his product, as far as the copper is concerned, etc.

 

[elevan]

I understand that you cannot give sheep copper...

 

[patandchickens]

You may need to approach this a different way.

ALL mammals need ALL of those minerals on all your lists. The question is HOW MUCH does a particular species need, and how does that amount compare to what their regular diet supplies.

Thus it is not that "you can't give sheep copper"... sheep require a certain amount of copper intake or they do poorly or die... they just cannot handle as much copper supplementation as (say) horses sometimes require. Etcetera.

So you have to look at NUMBERS. I am in the midst of lotsa-rain-ditch-management and trying-to-get-ready-to-leave-town-for-a-week so I do not think I am likely to have time to sit down with your kelp powder analysis link and see how it compares to typical supplementation requirements for different livestock, but YOU can do it

Also if you are going to get all serious about supplementation, you need to have some idea of what is already in your hay. Have you considered getting an analysis done?

Honestly the simplest thing is to put out a horse mineral (red) block where the horses and calf can get it but the sheep cannot reach, and then offer a limited amount of sheep mineral to the sheep every day whilst keeping the calf and horses away from them at the time. You can figure out how much mineral to put out for the sheep (I put it in a fortiflex pan on the ground each morning) according to how fast they clean up what you offer... if they are leaving a bunch, then give less the next day, if they're vacuuming it up immediately then offer more.

If you do instead decide to go with the kelp thingie, then remember that the horses (at least) will still need a salt block available. I suppose it could be a plain nonmineral block if you convince yourself the horses' mineral intake will be adequately taken care of by however you're feeding the kelp.

JMHO,

Pat

 

[miss_thenorth]

Thanks Pat

I will go back and put the required percentages in with the mineral, and then compare it to the sea kelp. I'm just having a time absorbing all of this. (it's all new to me.) As far as the hay test, currently, we get our hay from four different sources. One is local, and hopefully we will be able to get all of our hay from her next year. If so, I will definitely get her hay tested to see what it has.

In order to keep licks separate from the sheep, that will require more alterations to the barn, and hubby is already stressed with his workload. It'll happen, just not now.

We got a dumping of rain also, but the tiling seens to be working well. Although we did just bring in a load of sand to fill up the low spots in the paddock. Hope you can get on top of your flood problem this winter. I'd help if I were closer have a good week!