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Minerals... Loose vs. Block

For what it's worth, I agree with RobertMac about making the stock adapt to the environment, although after doing extensive soil sampling of our ranch, I know that there are few places where our stock can get what they need to perform well. I want to improve the soil across the ranch to better provide our animals with an environment where they can get everything themselves. However, we are a long way from that point, so I don't mind at all providing some mineral in the meantime.

We've had cattle from many breeds, and only a few have truly taken off and thrived in our system. Most have a hard time adapting, mainly due to the fact that they came from ranches with clay-based soils and high organic matter - good land, good forage. They get here and it's a shock to the system - different soil profile means different CEC, pH, forage species, micronutrients, blah, blah, blah. Alot of the Galloway cattle we've bought in the last 5 years have slicked their guard hairs off and look more like Angus, except for the curly hair around the head and points. The ones that have never failed to impress by weaning 50% of their bodyweight or more, year-in, year-out have been the Tarentaise influence cows. The best of the Galloways are just as good, but my Tarentaise cows are the benchmark around here that I measure everything else against. An interesting note about both contemporary groups, is that the ones who meet my expectations, came from programs that ranch cows in rough conditions, in the same sandy soils we have here.

So, my moral for anyone who cares, would be to organize your thoughts and set a goal. If you expect more performance out of your stock than what your ranch can naturally sustain in its present state, YES you will have to supplement. If you expect them to perform the best they can with what your ranch can provide, don't supplement. Everyone has a different idea of what or how stock should or could do in any said scenario. If you feel that there's something lacking, fix the soil, it is the true source of health and nutrition. If you can't afford to fix the soil, supplement the stock. Keep in mind that a dollar spent on soil improvement pays back thousands in herd health.
 
Faster horses said:
Silver said:

"black cows tend to require a bit more input and more work, "

:shock:
Click to expand...

I was wondering when someone was going to pick up on that. :D
But we'll save that argument for another thread :wink:
 
PureCountry said:
For what it's worth, I agree with RobertMac about making the stock adapt to the environment, although after doing extensive soil sampling of our ranch, I know that there are few places where our stock can get what they need to perform well. I want to improve the soil across the ranch to better provide our animals with an environment where they can get everything themselves. However, we are a long way from that point, so I don't mind at all providing some mineral in the meantime.

We've had cattle from many breeds, and only a few have truly taken off and thrived in our system. Most have a hard time adapting, mainly due to the fact that they came from ranches with clay-based soils and high organic matter - good land, good forage. They get here and it's a shock to the system - different soil profile means different CEC, pH, forage species, micronutrients, blah, blah, blah. Alot of the Galloway cattle we've bought in the last 5 years have slicked their guard hairs off and look more like Angus, except for the curly hair around the head and points. The ones that have never failed to impress by weaning 50% of their bodyweight or more, year-in, year-out have been the Tarentaise influence cows. The best of the Galloways are just as good, but my Tarentaise cows are the benchmark around here that I measure everything else against. An interesting note about both contemporary groups, is that the ones who meet my expectations, came from programs that ranch cows in rough conditions, in the same sandy soils we have here.

So, my moral for anyone who cares, would be to organize your thoughts and set a goal. If you expect more performance out of your stock than what your ranch can naturally sustain in its present state, YES you will have to supplement. If you expect them to perform the best they can with what your ranch can provide, don't supplement. Everyone has a different idea of what or how stock should or could do in any said scenario. If you feel that there's something lacking, fix the soil, it is the true source of health and nutrition. If you can't afford to fix the soil, supplement the stock. Keep in mind that a dollar spent on soil improvement pays back thousands in herd health.
Click to expand...

Tarentaise are good doing ranch cattle, but the Tarentaise feeder cattle don't seem to sell very well in this area.
 
PureCountry said:
.... although after doing extensive soil sampling of our ranch, I know that there are few places where our stock can get what they need to perform well.
Click to expand...
Interesting idea but can soil testing tell you accurately what will be in the cows body? Perhaps blood testing or tissue testing would be a more accurate gauge? We tested blood in the old country once in a while because we had serious issues with mineral deficiencies there. Like Silver I don't find that necessary where I am now because we just do not have significant mineral issues.

A question for FH re your copper deficiency problem - how did sheep perform in those areas? did they still recommend that feeding mineral with copper in it was toxic to sheep?
 
PC said:
So, my moral for anyone who cares, would be to organize your thoughts and set a goal. If you expect more performance out of your stock than what your ranch can naturally sustain in its present state, YES you will have to supplement. If you expect them to perform the best they can with what your ranch can provide, don't supplement.
Click to expand...
The question presents itself...do you fix the ranch and/or the herd for a few animals when the majority perform acceptably...on "what your ranch can naturally sustain"?

Fixing the land is not an option when it take 10, 20, or more acres per head.
 
There were no sheep in that immediate area to speak of.
Since we didn't know enough about mineral supplementation
I can't answer your question. Not only did we not know, no one else
knew. As I mentioned, we called in veterinarians, feed dealers,
universities, no one knew what was wrong. Remember this was
from 1985 to 1993, just when the importance of mineral supplementation
was brought to the forefront. We were never on a mineral PROGRAM. We put out a few bags of mineral now and then. One thing we did notice,
our neighbor continued to lose calves with ulcers from them eating dirt, and we didn't have that problem any longer because we did feed some mineral at that time.

I will say that folks here that run cows and sheep, feed their sheep
the cow mineral with no problems. It says right on the bag,
DO NOT FEED TO SHEEP, but they do it anyway. We have regular sheep mineral, but
it's just easier to feed everything one kind of mineral. Works for them,
so it works for me. But they are going against label and I always
caution them.

Realizing I am not answering your question, I would like to add this.
After we were in SE Montana several years, old former neighbor
called and said he was having so much hoofrot, he was ashamed of
himself. He had doctored everything. It was epidemic. I ashed him
what mineral he was feeding and he told me and I asked him to send
me the label. When I received it I called John Patterson at MSU and
discussed this with him. I found out then that the university had been
doing field work in SW Montana and they found the water full of sulphates.
He said that sulphates were "picking those producers pockets over there."
We looked at the label of the mineral that was sent me and it did not contain enough copper because of the sulphate situation (sulphates tie up copper and zinc which compromises the immune system) there. So
he told me what to recommend, which was TWICE the amount of
copper that was in what our neighbor was using. He changed and when
he got through that episode, he didn't have any more problems.

I'm telling the readers here two things: Keep it simple;
and if you have health problems or conception problems in your
cattle your mineral isn't working or if you don't supplement mineral
I highly recommend you should. We were on the edge of a problem and as soon as we
brought new cattle in; there it was. We had NO IMMUNE system and immune system is everything!!! You can't believe the little 'normal' agrravating problems that disappear when you are on
a mineral PROGRAM; not just putting mineral out now and again.

Hope this helps!!
 
RobertMac said:
PC said:
So, my moral for anyone who cares, would be to organize your thoughts and set a goal. If you expect more performance out of your stock than what your ranch can naturally sustain in its present state, YES you will have to supplement. If you expect them to perform the best they can with what your ranch can provide, don't supplement.
Click to expand...
The question presents itself...do you fix the ranch and/or the herd for a few animals when the majority perform acceptably...on "what your ranch can naturally sustain"?

Fixing the land is not an option when it take 10, 20, or more acres per head.
Click to expand...

I agree RobertMac, guess I just didn't get around to it in my post. I didn't mean to say that I am going to try and get every acre to a Dr. Albrecht model of 68% Ca, 12% Mag, and so on and so forth. I am going to try and greatly improve our organic matter content, and I feel that will put us in a position where we can make the cattle adapt, and we won't be asking too much of them. We just have alot of acres right now that even the deer don't live on, because there's nothing there.

You are right though, it's not feasible to fix every acre. Calcium sources here range from $200-300/ton. Our poor land would need about 2 tons PER ACRE to be properly ammended, not to mention other minerals required to balance it. To spend $400-600 PER ACRE bringing soil back to health seems an unlikely option, when those same dollars would buy us more land.
 
PureCountry said:
I agree RobertMac, guess I just didn't get around to it in my post. I didn't mean to say that I am going to try and get every acre to a Dr. Albrecht model of 68% Ca, 12% Mag, and so on and so forth. I am going to try and greatly improve our organic matter content, and I feel that will put us in a position where we can make the cattle adapt, and we won't be asking too much of them. We just have alot of acres right now that even the deer don't live on, because there's nothing there.

You are right though, it's not feasible to fix every acre. Calcium sources here range from $200-300/ton. Our poor land would need about 2 tons PER ACRE to be properly ammended, not to mention other minerals required to balance it. To spend $400-600 PER ACRE bringing soil back to health seems an unlikely option, when those same dollars would buy us more land.
Click to expand...

I have mixed thoughts on that one PC - at what price does it pay to fix what you have got rather than buy more? I know a German guy who is hauling limestone out of Rocky Mountain House to north of La Glace to redress his calcium problem. In Scotland we had to apply 2 ton per acre of mg limestone in a less than 10 year rotation just to counteract acidity.
Now I see so much land in my area that is of excellent quality compared to much of the world yet it is almost useless through ignorant abuse. A neighbor was baling the other day in a good flat hay quarter - he has hayed it for 20 years plus, removed the hay to feed elsewhere on the property and never replaced the nutrients. He cut three weeks ago and the tiny crop almost disappeared into the ground. He raked it up and baled it - and got 25 @ 1100lb bales off the first 80 acres :shock: :shock: Sure it's a dry year but this land can grow 80-100bu barley crops for my hutterite neighbors given their higher inputs. This is deep, rich mineral soil with no stones but it certainly has climatic challenges with potential for drought, frost and hail which many other regions of the world don't suffer.
At some point it makes sense to treat your best 10 acres properly and get more hay off that than 8 times the acreage. It doesn't seem to be in the western mindset though - shame folks didn't listen to the Eagles back in the 70s - "there are no more new frontiers - we have got to make it here"
 
I have some of those same notions GF. I've often thought of focusing on our best acres that wouldn't require a great deal of money and effort to improve. Use them to grow the winter's feed, be it bales, swaths or whatever. Then use the other larger number of acres to graze through the growing season. I've also thought of interseeding certain species into certain paddocks to create very high energy pasture for grass finishing. Use really diverse mixes and include herbs and various things in it, a la Frank Newman Turner and his "herbal leys".
 
Isn't it a bit hypocritical to criticize someone for using mineral on their cows that turn around and tell us how much mineral you spread on your land? :???:

I can darn sure feed some calcium to 400 cows alot chaeper then spread some calcium on thousands of acres of range. :?


Yes we rotate and try to improve our grass and soil condition but this land took along time to create so change isn't going to happen very quick.
 
If only it were so simple BMR. If boosting the calcium intake of your cows was the objective sure it is easier to just feed them the calcium. When you are talking about feeding the soil it becomes a rather different proposition - you could look on it like the Chinese proverb says "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
Isn't it a bit hypocritical to criticize someone for using mineral on their cows that turn around and tell us how much mineral you spread on your land? :???:

I can darn sure feed some calcium to 400 cows alot chaeper then spread some calcium on thousands of acres of range. :?


Yes we rotate and try to improve our grass and soil condition but this land took along time to create so change isn't going to happen very quick.
Click to expand...
I don't think anyone was criticizing.
 
Who were you meaning to direct that to BMR? Not sure, but I think I missed something. I don't think I criticized anyone, just trying to illustrate that there are 2 ways to feed livestock. You can buy everything they need and provide it to them, or you can make them get it themselves from the soil through forages. I was also trying to illustrate that I do realize it's completely impractical to do one or the other in certain situations.

Have a good one.
 
The soil has been tested, and the grass, throughout Montana by
MSU Ag folks and most of Montana is known to be lacking in copper and zinc. I don't know anything about your soil. Be interesting to find out.

We've sampled grass in this area too; it is pretty much the same
all around here. We have one customer that has to have a
custom mix; other than that they all feed pretty much the same
mineral. At least they are supplementing what they know to be missing;
and not protein which most feed stores try to sell...

I think BMR was just pointing out what was easier and
brought in a net return...but he will answer for himself, I'm sure.

The folks that feed mineral here have found they were leaving money
on the table by not feeding it. As I said before, it makes them money
and it makes their life easier. I've enjoyed helping tham, since we went
through such a tough time.

This has been a good conversation...I've enjoyed it.

You have a great day, too.
 
Maybe I didn't use the right words and no PC It wasn't directed at you as you said you can try to correct your land but on large acres it was expensive.

I feel that feeding minerals balances out whats missing in your grass and water. Would you spread selenium over a large area or treat the calves?

Yes try to improve your soil but if you can improve your cows performance and make a profit why wouldn't you?
 
Some deficiencies probaly need to be addressed in a more prompt manner-ex. with mineral than by osmosis through the soil. You have to balance good stockmanship with care of the land and sound business practices. The few posters on this thread I've personally visited all do that. Utopia would be a healthy soil grass interaction that meets all your livestocks needs and is a goal to reach for. Reality is you need to keep your animals productive and yourself in business as you reach towards your goal.
 
Northern Rancher said:
Some deficiencies probaly need to be addressed in a more prompt manner-ex. with mineral than by osmosis through the soil. You have to balance good stockmanship with care of the land and sound business practices. The few posters on this thread I've personally visited all do that. Utopia would be a healthy soil grass interaction that meets all your livestocks needs and is a goal to reach for. Reality is you need to keep your animals productive and yourself in business as you reach towards your goal.
Click to expand...


Ya what he said. :lol: :lol:
 
Well- if its really true that lightning and thunder put nitrogen in the soil, like the old farmers used to tell me - after all this years daily thunderstorms, they should be nitrogen rich...
 

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