bottle baby

[coppertop]

Thanks Randy, came home yesterday to find a dozen long stemmed roses from #1 son and his 'crew',and by the sound of it am getting treated to a BBQ later today . That combined with sunshine and grass growing is a wonderful Mother's Day.#2 son is coming for a visit next weekend, so am starting a long 'list' of things I can use his help getting done !
I agree with you on the DE, started putting it out a few years ago, in a small tub right out with the cows and calves, and the little monkeys are over licking it often.

Have a great day, all !

[grassfarmer]

Thanks for the flattery Randy but it's not quite true. I'm still only grazing land that is depleted by years of dumb farming practices. I reckon it will take 15 years to really turn the soil from a dead state to a true living,healthy one. We feed mineral too but I'm still not convinced of the best type or even if one is needed. In comparison to the land I grew up on the prairies are highly mineralised soils and don't seem to need a lot of supplementing. The proof of that seems to be the ability to get good results with cattle whatever the mineral program is. Mineral programs are fine tuning after you have your grazing and feeding programs in place - many outfits in Canada problem's lie in having insufficient grass due to poor grazing practices - as such they are not in a position to be able to assess the value of a mineral program until they have addressed this bigger problem first.
On truly mineral poor, leached land like we had in Scotland if you didn't have the mineral supplementation right you suffered - we could have lush, abundant grass and really fat cows but only 60% conception rates. That does not seem to be the case in Western Canada. I wonder in fact if we should cut out mineral and salt altogether here - cull the 10-15% of cattle that can't live with the new system and be further ahead?

[cswilson]

I have a neighbor just swears by Diatoemaceous earth-were just getting going calving only 50 on the ground but so far so good. I don't know if the mineral conundrum will ever get solved-I know some pretty well off ranches that have never fed a bag of it.Probably the harder you push cows the more it is needed-pretty easy life for a critter calving on green grass and breeding back on the same.

[coppertop]

I have always felt that your water analysis is the best basis for your mineral requirements. Now, if cattle are drinking from creeks or dugouts that may not equate, but well water is a different matter.

My well is high sodium, which ties up essential minerals, over the years we have done routine blood analysis and made the decision to feed a chelated mineral.

[grassfarmer]

Do you feed additional salt to your cattle or do they get enough from the water?

[coppertop]

I mix 1/3 salt 2/3 mineral, this was the mixture advised years ago when we were looking into changing our mineral program.

[kato]

That's about what we do too. We're firm believers in minerals. Maybe that explains the twelve sets of twins.

We turn our bulls out early, before the grass is green, so we put some powdered ADE in it too. By now the injections we gave the cows in the winter are worn off, and we figure it's not going to hurt them to get a little extra. Whatever we can do to keep the fertility up is an investment. Once they hit green grass, they don't need any more supplemental vitamins though.

My pailfeds have a little tub of DE too. I forgot about that. I don't know if they really need it, because they're locked in the cattle shed, and can't get at any dirt or puddles, but they still really like the stuff.

Mother's Day. Ah yes. This is a bit off topic, but we spent it shopping for emergency bull number two. Our guys have had the worst luck with injuries that we've ever seen. One twisted his hock (BAD BAD BAD) One stepped on a nail and got an abscess. One developed a corn between his toes, and one has what looks like footrot, even after being vaccinated. Two of these will recover, but the other two don't look so good.

Oh well, I got a nice drive in the country on Mother's Day.