Mineral supplementation is an essential component for any successful cattle operation. They are the building blocks for things like growth, reproduction, and basic maintenance. It is important that your cattle get all of the minerals that their body needs.
The problem with this is that your forages will not provide all of the nutrients that they will need by themselves. No matter where you are located there will always be something that is lacking. This is where providing a year-round mineral supplement is mandatory.
However, deciding what type of mineral you need to provide can be a bit confusing if you do not know what to look for at the feed store. There are many different choices you can go with. There are some that may work but some are just a rip-off. It is essential for a producer to know what to look for before they make any purchases. Here are some things to consider when making that decision:
Providing a feed supplement to cattle that are grazing in certain areas is pretty common and for good reason. Cattle are often not able to get enough from just rangelands to meet their nutritional requirements. Producers have many choices when it comes to feeding supplements. But it is best to be careful when deciding what supplements to use.
Salt, along with other minerals, is necessary to sustain life in cattle. Much like humans they are essential building blocks for living beings to perform at their best. It is needed for the body to perform even the most basic of functions.
Roughages are an important but often overlooked part of a cow’s diet. Most of the time people only focus on things like crude protein, energy, and possibly even mineral content. While those are vital for the overall production of cattle roughages play just as important a role. Consuming a certain amount of roughage is important to keep the rumen functioning in allowing the digestion of things like protein, energy, and minerals.
Creep feeding can be an excellent tool for improving the overall weaning weight of your calves. Thus it can be a good management and economic option for improving your bottom line.
Salt blocks are available to producers in a variety of different colors. This is something any trip to your local feed store can tell you. Each color represents different things about it.
A feed tag is a very informative but often overlooked item on a commercially produced feed. Other than looking at the Crude protein or maybe the energy content not many people really look at them. With some of the confusing numbers and such listed on them, it is understandable how that can happen.
Colostrum is one of, if not the, most important thing for newborn calves. It lays the very foundation for their health and well-being throughout the remainder of their life. Through the dam, the calf takes in all of the antibodies it will need to fight off disease. But what if they are not able to get it from their mother?
Producers tend to have a love/hate relationship when it comes to supplements. On the one hand, they love how it improves the performance of their cattle but on the other, they hate that it adds to their expenses. It is for this reason that producers tend to not feed supplements unless they absolutely have to.
Cattle producers, like any other business, are always looking for ways to reduce costs. As any producer will tell you there is no greater expense than that feed costs. A management tool used quite often to regulate feed intake is using salt. Though it can have some impact regulating feed intake with salt is not precise and will require some tinkering in order to get it right.
