Oogie, What's your soil ph? To me, adequate ph is 'step one'. Dick Conklin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Oogie McGuire" <oogiem@desertweyr.com>
To: <graze-l@witt.ac.nz>
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2003 3:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Graze-l] a new dairy
> Another interesting thing, our soils test out high in zinc,
> manganese, copper and iron. But my forage tests were barely adequate
> for zinc, copper and selenium and the sheep liver tests (from butcher
> sheep) showed deficiencies in those minerals. Not enough to start
> giving bo-se shots and copper boluses but enough to change the
> mineral package to include more copper and more zinc and a fairly
> high selenium level as well.
>
> We never did soil testing for molybdenum, the soils guy said it
> doesn't matter to the plants.
>
> My vet started to think it was causing problems for the sheep so we
> did test the forage for molybdenum and it was very high, hence the
> reason the sheep need more copper, zinc and selenium to balance it.
> I've also found that according to research done in Scotland, my breed
> of sheep is known to need/tolerate more copper than many other
> breeds. Most folks are told never supplement copper to sheep, we're
> actually going to be adding a portion of a cattle mineral to the mix
> to get enough copper into the sheep. We're already adding lots of
> extra zinc. We have also had to really modify the mineral mix because
> the sheep were not eating enough. We had a nicely balanced diet but
> if the sheep won't eat it then it doesn't work. So we had to adjust
> salt in the mineral to get it low enough to get the sheep to eat it
> in the quantity we needed to get the other minerals into them.
>
> Next year I am hoping to test the soils for all the same things I am
> testing the forages for and also the same things I am testing the
> sheep livers for.
>
> In the long run it doesn't matter what our soils are, it's what the
> animals are actually getting and I've discovered the molybdenum can
> really mess with your results if you are not looking at it.
>
> Testing is expensive, but I think it's the best way to know what is
> really going on. You need the feedback of postmortem liver samples to
> see what is really getting into your animals.
> --
> Oogie McGuire - oogiem@desertweyr.com
> Weyr Associates - Multimedia and Web Authoring Services & Consulting
> Desert Weyr - CMK Arabian horses and Black Welsh Mountain Sheep
> http://www.desertweyr.com/
> Paonia, CO USA
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