Who wrote that article, Justin?
They were way off base. Maybe it was an old article...
because mineral took a huge hike when the ingredients
went up. Rule of thumb in our area is mineral cost for the
year equals one bag of mineral, or thereabouts.I think
loomixguy figured it well. And remember, this is
for a COW and her CALF.
Some places cattle eat mineral harder than other places; that's
just a fact of life. And our customers use CTC in the
mineral before and after calving; that adds to the cost,
but it sure helps the labor part because the calves
don't get sick. Mineral really helps the colostrum
quality and that's why the calves start out so vigorous--
and are so healthy. And I really enjoy watching the baby
calves eat the mineral. If they didn't have it, they would
probably eat dirt which leads to ulcers....
We have most of our customers on a lesser phos mineral
in the spring because there is so much phos in the grass
at that time. They usually can stay on it til August when
the grass starts to dry out and lose quality. This has
helped cut the mineral cost per head/per year and it's working
with no noticable negative side effects.
When people first put their herds on our year-round mineral program
they put 30 pounds on their calves. Plus the herd health is
better and so is conception rate. I really enjoy listening to our
customers who get 80-90% bred up in the first heat cycle.
Mineral isn't a cost, it's an investment
that pays back dividends.
If if didn't work, people wouldn't use it. Bottom line. I'd hate
to go back to the problems we had before we were on a mineral
program. We would quit the business first, because we had so
many problems for 8 years. No one knew what was wrong, until
the Vigortone area manager came out. He knew immediately.
We had classic copper deficiency. We had even moved from
W. Montana to SE Montana to try to end the problem. Of course
it didn't and we had the same trouble the first calving season
in SE Montana. After being on the mineral program, we have
ceased giving many shots,and no scour shots at all. Life
was much, much better, as we were ready to throw in the towel.
It got so if we bought a small bottle of antibiotic, we usually
threw it away because of being outdated.