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Minerals. Are they needed?
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<blockquote data-quote="cjmc" data-source="post: 1410455" data-attributes="member: 27842"><p>The recommend consumption rate of that specific Purina mineral is 2 oz, it may not be sold in your area. The 4 oz mineral (which is the same thing except 1/2 the level of all vitamins & minerals) is in the low 20's/bag at my local feed store. So the savings is significant. My mineral supplier (not Purina) is charging 2 cents/h/d for the Rumensin at 200mg/h/d (level approved for mature cows). Which would be $0.01/h/d cheaper than the AO cost you stated. The special 2oz mineral Purina sells in this area is 100% organic. So you are right that would be an advantage, and depending on your area it would be a huge deal (or if you live in mine, it's nice, but not a huge deal). The 4oz mineral they sell here is not 100% organic. I don't know why that is, but the 2 oz mineral has no Cu, Zn, or Mn sulfates. The 4oz tag does have them listed as ingredients. Vit A & D are cheap Vit E is expensive, I totally agree with you that they are way too high in VitaFerm. However, the old ranchers around here think that while grazing corn stalks it helps. That thought has some basis in science. Lots of fertilizer has resulted in high nitrates in the water. High nitrates tie up Vit A & can cause some problems come calving time. My general philosophy is if old ranchers say something & it can be backed by science I probably should at least consider it. Outside of that one instance/time of year, I see no need for that level of Vitamins. </p><p>My corn logic goes like this. In my area calories are cheap (they aren't everywhere). When I was a nutritionist for ranchers in the area during bad winters with lots of snow & really cold weather I would get asked what I thought about using Vitaferm. Most guys were using the 2oz Purina mineral. My response was always be along the lines of this. You are currently feeding: Corn silage, rolled corn, WDG, and prairie hay. Let's say they are 2 months from calving Diet NEm is probably around 0.50 and costs roughly $1.25/h/d. If they switched to Vitaferm their cost/h/d would go to $1.35. Sure they would do better than without it. But I would always tell the producer, if you allow me to increase ration costs $0.10/h/d I'm going to include Ru for $.0.02 then I'm going to pull 4 lbs. of prairie hay out of your ration & add 4 lbs. of corn which will increase ration costs about another $0.08/h/d for a grand total of $0.10/h/d. Cows on my suggestion of extra corn and Ru would certainly do better than just adding AO to their diet. </p><p>The final point I always made when talking about AO's if you go look at the research they did in 1991 (J Anim Sci 1991. 69:1733-1740) & reference in their advertisements it was at 3g of AO/h/d... So is it even effective at 2g/h/d? On top of that they did two digestion trails in that study & in one trial there was no difference between cows fed AO and the control cows! So when advising producers I always said go with what we know works to add energy when we need it, rumensin & corn. </p><p>Now if were talking about out on summer grass the topic changes some because we can't supplement energy as easy. Still don't know if I think it's worth it. But hey that's just my two cents, and at the end of the day it's still only worth two cents. Phew, that was a lot of typing, Beer 30 now :drink:</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="cjmc, post: 1410455, member: 27842"] The recommend consumption rate of that specific Purina mineral is 2 oz, it may not be sold in your area. The 4 oz mineral (which is the same thing except 1/2 the level of all vitamins & minerals) is in the low 20’s/bag at my local feed store. So the savings is significant. My mineral supplier (not Purina) is charging 2 cents/h/d for the Rumensin at 200mg/h/d (level approved for mature cows). Which would be $0.01/h/d cheaper than the AO cost you stated. The special 2oz mineral Purina sells in this area is 100% organic. So you are right that would be an advantage, and depending on your area it would be a huge deal (or if you live in mine, it’s nice, but not a huge deal). The 4oz mineral they sell here is not 100% organic. I don’t know why that is, but the 2 oz mineral has no Cu, Zn, or Mn sulfates. The 4oz tag does have them listed as ingredients. Vit A & D are cheap Vit E is expensive, I totally agree with you that they are way too high in VitaFerm. However, the old ranchers around here think that while grazing corn stalks it helps. That thought has some basis in science. Lots of fertilizer has resulted in high nitrates in the water. High nitrates tie up Vit A & can cause some problems come calving time. My general philosophy is if old ranchers say something & it can be backed by science I probably should at least consider it. Outside of that one instance/time of year, I see no need for that level of Vitamins. My corn logic goes like this. In my area calories are cheap (they aren’t everywhere). When I was a nutritionist for ranchers in the area during bad winters with lots of snow & really cold weather I would get asked what I thought about using Vitaferm. Most guys were using the 2oz Purina mineral. My response was always be along the lines of this. You are currently feeding: Corn silage, rolled corn, WDG, and prairie hay. Let’s say they are 2 months from calving Diet NEm is probably around 0.50 and costs roughly $1.25/h/d. If they switched to Vitaferm their cost/h/d would go to $1.35. Sure they would do better than without it. But I would always tell the producer, if you allow me to increase ration costs $0.10/h/d I’m going to include Ru for $.0.02 then I’m going to pull 4 lbs. of prairie hay out of your ration & add 4 lbs. of corn which will increase ration costs about another $0.08/h/d for a grand total of $0.10/h/d. Cows on my suggestion of extra corn and Ru would certainly do better than just adding AO to their diet. The final point I always made when talking about AO’s if you go look at the research they did in 1991 (J Anim Sci 1991. 69:1733-1740) & reference in their advertisements it was at 3g of AO/h/d... So is it even effective at 2g/h/d? On top of that they did two digestion trails in that study & in one trial there was no difference between cows fed AO and the control cows! So when advising producers I always said go with what we know works to add energy when we need it, rumensin & corn. Now if were talking about out on summer grass the topic changes some because we can’t supplement energy as easy. Still don’t know if I think it’s worth it. But hey that’s just my two cents, and at the end of the day it’s still only worth two cents. Phew, that was a lot of typing, Beer 30 now :drink: [/QUOTE]
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