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Weatherized Mineral

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loomixguy

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With all the rain a big area of the country has been receiving lately, has it prompted any of you to put out weatherized mineral? Does anybody feed it year 'round here?

I just sold several tons of MasterGain with WeatherMaster 12-12 with CTC and IGR to some folks over the weekend. We had a big storm roll through here last night, and it is still raining. I hope they got it put out, as I am curious to see how it fared for them. The demo I use shows absolutely no leaching of color with the WeatherMaster product vs. the popular weatherized minerals in this area, PLUS when the water has all ran out of the tubes, the MasterGain does not set up and get hard like the competition. The unique coating process has everything beat I've tested it against.

www.weathermasterminerals.com
 
Vigortone has had weatherized mineral since we have been involved
with it in 1994. Good mineral should NOT set up when wet. Particle size
and ingredients have a lot to do with mineral staying palatable
and loose. With Vigortone, when it gets wet, it might form a crust on
the top, but you just break that up and the cows will go right back
and eat it.

Mineral that has processed grain as part of the ingredients WILL
set up when wet, and get sour. Be sure to read your ingredient
tag when buying mineral. It is important.

Hope this helps!!!
 
I use Weatherguard year round. Good mineral and its certainly saved me some bucks. Also didn't need to spend a bunch on fancy mineral feeders to stop the mineral from disappearing everytime it rained.

Rod
 
I guess different areas have different requirements. After about the middle of June, the critters can get all the calcium they really need from the grass itself, or from baled forages.

Remember the Milk program a few years back? I know of some cubes that were made that should have been sent to Iraq to use as bullets, they were so hard. Plenty of tubs were made the same, so hard the cows couldn't eat them in any form or fashion. I picked up a LOT of LOOMIX business after the guys signed with the competition and got 20+ tons of tubs/cubes their cows couldn't eat. IMO...calcium is nothing more than a hardening agent, at least in my area.

In this area, phos is horribly deficient, so our requirements are sure to be different than yours.

You think you are confused now, try talking mineral to someone from the southeast part of the US. Most have no clue what a high copper chelated mineral is.
 
Calcium is not as readily available as one would think, that is why
it is so important. In feedlots, trials have been run showing adding
calcium increases rate of gain. We are finding calcium is as
important to cattle as it is to humans.

NRC keeps lowering the phosphorus requirements of cattle.
Phos is very bitter, so higher amounts of it makes the
mineral unpalatable. We say "cattle eat grams, not percents."
So if your mineral is 12% phos and they don't consume the
recommended amount, the mineral is not doing it's job.
Here 12-12 mineral is very outdated. It is an old formula.

We sell a 10-1 cal to phos mineral in the springtime, as
our grass is high in phos at that time. In fact, gumbo grass
has a lot of phos in it, that is one reason cattle don't eat much
mineral on that type of ground. Phos is a limiter, like salt, and
cattle won't overeat phos. Therefore, we have found a mineral
with less phos works well in the spring time.
 
With all due respect, cattle will and can overeat phos, like anything else, if they are depleted of it. Taste has no bearing on that, I can assure you. I once started 27 pairs on LOOMIX for a new customer. Pasture was more than adequate, and the pairs appeared to be in good shape. When the smoke cleared, in a 24 hour period, the 27 pairs had consumed one 50# bag of mineral, and 10#'s of LOOMIX/pair/day. I bittered the blend up all I could, and the next 24 hours saw 6#'s of Loomix consumed/pair and another 50# bag of mineral. Day 3 saw 2#'s of LOOMIX consumed, and another bag of mineral. Day 4 arrived, and they levelled out on consumption. In fact, I had to sweeten the LOOMIX up to get them to eat 1.5#'s/pair/day. Turns out they had had ZERO mineral for over 6 months. :shock: Critters don't consume 6 pounds a day of the old LOOMIX MCS II (the most bitter there is) because it tastes good.

Consumption of the new MasterGain and MoorMan's Range minerals has been right on the money, if the cattle have been on any kind of a mineral program before introducing it.

Looks like things are entirely different in my part of the world than yours.

Here, you would starve to death before you ever sold a bag of 10-1 mineral.
 
Calcium is one of those misunderstood minerals.

I have seen the demonstrations where a fertilizer guy will pour calcium into some phos and it binds and gels. Therefore he claims calcium will tie up all your phos.

Not ten minutes later he adds citric acid to the mix and it ungels and returns to liquid.

He doesn't realize he just confirmed a thinking person's understanding that calcium is acted on by other minerals/compounds.

Most every living thing needs a 3:1 calcium:phos ratio. Soil, animals, humans.

How to get the right amount of calcium is debated. All minerals have either a positive or a negative charge. They need to be able to have free charge to bind to what they need, and the animal, plant whatever has to be able to break that charge to get the calcium.

A healthy feed with calcium will be 10 times more effective than a mineral based calcium. Same goes for phos. or any other element.

If calcium mineral seems to get hard, it is reacting with negative charged ions of another element. The formulation is wrong. Calcium should disolve in water, but if you want it to withstand rain something needs to done to make it weatherfast. Does that make it unavailable to the animal though? I don't know.
 
The 1.5# loomix guy was talking about, was molasses liquid supplement
Lilly. Of which at least 50% is water.

Didn't consuming all those molasses result in upseting the PH
in the rumen? Too much molasses can be detrimental.

And we don't sell 10-1 mineral year round. Only for a window
of time and only to those who are on a year-round mineral
program.

The first rule of mineral is that quality and quantity of forage
dictate mineral consumption.

loomixguy, can I ask why your customer was supplementing protein
if the forage was good? That can get darned expensive. Especially
at 6 lbs. per head per day. WOW!!

I've maintained it before and I'll mention it again. Ranchers get
OVERSOLD on protein. It's a common thing and hurts them in
the pocketbook. But again, your area is different than ours and
probably doesn't have the protein in the grass that ours does.
That short grass is really powerful. Good thing, because never
do we see "grass up to their bellies" as folks mention from time to time.
 
I know nothing of loomix as we don't have it around here but the supplements like crystallyx are around that 1.5# of consumption a day and I don't think are that high in water but they are basically eating molases in those with al the minerals and vitamins and such mixed into it. We used to use them in the fall on stalks but distillers or gluten mixed with a minreal ended up being cheaper and more affective at getting the mineral into the critters... Have to admit the tubs were convienant though..
 
loomixguy said:
With all due respect, cattle will and can overeat phos, like anything else, if they are depleted of it. Taste has no bearing on that, I can assure you. I once started 27 pairs on LOOMIX for a new customer. Pasture was more than adequate, and the pairs appeared to be in good shape. When the smoke cleared, in a 24 hour period, the 27 pairs had consumed one 50# bag of mineral, and 10#'s of LOOMIX/pair/day. I bittered the blend up all I could, and the next 24 hours saw 6#'s of Loomix consumed/pair and another 50# bag of mineral. Day 3 saw 2#'s of LOOMIX consumed, and another bag of mineral. Day 4 arrived, and they levelled out on consumption. In fact, I had to sweeten the LOOMIX up to get them to eat 1.5#'s/pair/day. Turns out they had had ZERO mineral for over 6 months. :shock: Critters don't consume 6 pounds a day of the old LOOMIX MCS II (the most bitter there is) because it tastes good.

onsumption of the new MasterGain and MoorMan's Range minerals has been right on the money, if the cattle have been on any kind of a mineral program before introducing it.

Looks like things are entirely different in my part of the world than yours.

Here, you would starve to death before you ever sold a bag of 10-1 mineral.
Click to expand...
And what makes it Bitter?
 
Of course the mineral required is dependant upon your forage, which ultimately is dependant upon the soils' nutrients. In our area, we're always deficient in copper, and it's not uncommon to see Ca deficiencies as well. I'm looking forward to trying some kind of loose mineral program, and compare the results to what we've seen with trace mineral blocks.
 
The mineral nutrition in grass changes as it matures, just like the protein and energy does. Young, growing grass will have higher level of most minerals. Then, as that grass matures, the mineral content declines. It also becomes less digestible, so they eat less of it. Feeding the same mineral year around is just not very effective, as it ignores the changes in the grass. The Right Now mineral program takes this into account with different formulations.....Emerald for grass that is green and growing, and Bronze when grass is mature or dormant and has less mineral content.
 
I charge .22 cents per pound of LOOMIX. The recommended feeding rate is 1-1.5 pounds per head per day. Loomix is much more than a protein supplement...ORE-BAC has a complete vitamin and mineral package in it as well. If you were to purchase the dry mneral in the Loomix, it would cost around $1,000/ton. There is a sweet formulation, and a bitter formulation. These are blended at the trough to get the desired consumption. If they are not eating enough, you add some sweet, etc. Bitter runs 25% protein, sweet runs 12%, with the vitamin and mineral package being the same in both products. It will flow and pump at -40 F. This isn't ANYTHING like Mix 30! With the patented ORE-BAC formulation, there is precious little, if any molasses in Loomix anymore, yet we received our patent for digesting up to 37% more fiber than any other product on the market, bar none.

The point of my story was to point out that if depleted of Phos, etc., the cattle will replete themselves if they can, no matter how bad the product tastes, until they are once again satisfied. The customer was worried about breed back, and since they had no access to mineral, his worries were well founded. The only negative of the story was the pairs were loosened up for a few days. And, they all bred back for the man! :D

I could tell you what makes the bitter, bitter, but let's just say you wouldn't believe it.
 
Phosphorus Supplementation in Beef Cattle
Greg Lardy, North Dakota State University Animal and Range Sciences Department
Marcy Ward, Colby Community College
Phosphorus (P) is a macromineral required by all animals for a number of metabolic, neurologic and cellular functions. Specifically phosphorus plays a key role as an energy source (ATP) for cells, it is involved in blood-buffering systems and activation of several B vitamins, and it is a component of genetic materials (DNA and RNA). In addition phosphorus works in conjunction with calcium (Ca) to develop and maintain healthy bones and teeth.

In beef cows, symptoms of phosphorus deficiency include reduced feed intake, reduced weight gain in calves, reduced conception and milk production, as well as anestrus. Phosphorus-deficient cattle appear gaunt, lethargic and have a rough hair coat. Reduced reproductive performance, however, may be a secondary effect due to reduced energy and protein intake caused by the phosphorus deficiency.

Phosphorus deficiencies, unfortunately, are common on native pastures and harvested forages. The phosphorus content of most plants in semiarid regions averages 0.30% during the vegetative state and drops to 0.15% as grass matures. A similar pattern in phosphorus content occurs in cured hays. The later hay is cut in the season (past boot stage) the more the phosphorus concentration is reduced. In addition, during winter months and times of drought, when harvested forages are the primary source of feed, phosphorus may become deficient.

When providing supplemental phosphorus, consider two major factors. First, whether the source of phosphorus is available biologically (it is readily absorbed). Sources considered highly available include dicalcium phosphate (Dical; CaHPO4•2H2O), ammonium phosphate (NH3PO4), and sodium phosphate (NaPO4). Of theses sources, Dical is the most commonly used and commercially available. Ruminants don't utilize anhydrous sources or phosphorus associated with a metal (iron, aluminum, etc.), very well.

Second, you must consider the dietary ratio of calcium to phosphorus (Ca:P). Calcium works in conjunction with phosphorus to form bone. Because of the relationship between calcium and phosphorus, a proper balance must be maintained. Based on extensive research on these two minerals, optimal performance occurs when the Ca:P ratio in cattle diets is 1.5:1 to 2.0:1. When Ca:P ratios exceed 6:1 or phosphorus remains deficient, reduced growth, feed efficiency and reproduction will result. If the ratio approaches 1:1, or phosphorus intake exceeds calcium, (as seen in high-concentrate diets), urinary calculi (water belly) can develop in steers and bulls.


Seems like sometimes the more you read the less you know
shrug2.gif
 

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