Bringing Our Animals Back in Balance
Over much of North America (and the world), soils are becoming depleted due to poor agricultural practices, use of artificial fertilizers and chemicals and overstocking of animals. Herbivores (those animals that eat plants for nutrition) rely on grasses, forbs, brush and trees for their nutritional needs. The plants in turn rely on soils for their mineral needs. By grazing on plants high in particular minerals, herbivores can meet some of their mineral needs but the depleted soils hinder what minerals are available to the plants and thus, the animals. Most farmers now provide some type of mineral supplement to their livestock, hoping that this will compensate for the loss of minerals.
Unfortunately, many mineral supplements on the market today are not balanced correctly for optimal health in herbivores. They may contain artificial flavor enhancers and preservatives and may not even include some important trace minerals.
After many years of searching for a well-balanced, organic mineral supplement, I finally started mixing my own mineral for my sheep, goats, llamas and horses. This did not provide an easy way for other people wanting a similar mineral to have access to a balanced mix so I decided to work with a local custom mineral company to produce a line of bioavailable, natural minerals.
Back in Balance Minerals® are available for sheep, goats and horses. The goat mineral would be appropriate for llamas and alpacas.
Chelated Minerals and the Importance of Bioavailability:
The form minerals are in is important. Elemental forms of minerals are not as easy for mammals to digest in many cases. Soil bacteria and fungi assist plants in taking the elemental minerals and changing the form to something useful for growth and much more digestible for sheep. Mineral supplement manufacturers make use of this knowledge to create minerals that are bound to amino acids and therefore more available for digestion and absorption. These minerals are called chelated. Chelated minerals have several advantages such as better availability for digestion and palatability. Because chelated minerals are so easily digested (sometimes close to 100% useable by the body), they can help offset situations where other minerals cause elimination or poor digestion of a particular mineral. This interplay occurs for all minerals and is a problem when one mineral becomes completely unavailable due to the extreme excess of another antagonistic mineral. Examples are molybdenum causing complete unavailability of copper or iron causing poor absorption of selenium. Other mineral interactions become a problem if minerals are out of balance with one another. Excess salt will deplete potassium (or the reverse) and excess calcium not only causes elimination of trace minerals, it throws off the balance with magnesium and phosphorus. Several of the more common trace minerals (and some macro minerals) are now available in a chelated form for supplementation, making it easier to get a proper amount of those minerals into an animal.
By Alethea Kenney, copyright 2015-2016. Do not copy or reprint without permission
Over much of North America (and the world), soils are becoming depleted due to poor agricultural practices, use of artificial fertilizers and chemicals and overstocking of animals. Herbivores (those animals that eat plants for nutrition) rely on grasses, forbs, brush and trees for their nutritional needs. The plants in turn rely on soils for their mineral needs. By grazing on plants high in particular minerals, herbivores can meet some of their mineral needs but the depleted soils hinder what minerals are available to the plants and thus, the animals. Most farmers now provide some type of mineral supplement to their livestock, hoping that this will compensate for the loss of minerals.
Unfortunately, many mineral supplements on the market today are not balanced correctly for optimal health in herbivores. They may contain artificial flavor enhancers and preservatives and may not even include some important trace minerals.
After many years of searching for a well-balanced, organic mineral supplement, I finally started mixing my own mineral for my sheep, goats, llamas and horses. This did not provide an easy way for other people wanting a similar mineral to have access to a balanced mix so I decided to work with a local custom mineral company to produce a line of bioavailable, natural minerals.
Back in Balance Minerals® are available for sheep, goats and horses. The goat mineral would be appropriate for llamas and alpacas.
Chelated Minerals and the Importance of Bioavailability:
The form minerals are in is important. Elemental forms of minerals are not as easy for mammals to digest in many cases. Soil bacteria and fungi assist plants in taking the elemental minerals and changing the form to something useful for growth and much more digestible for sheep. Mineral supplement manufacturers make use of this knowledge to create minerals that are bound to amino acids and therefore more available for digestion and absorption. These minerals are called chelated. Chelated minerals have several advantages such as better availability for digestion and palatability. Because chelated minerals are so easily digested (sometimes close to 100% useable by the body), they can help offset situations where other minerals cause elimination or poor digestion of a particular mineral. This interplay occurs for all minerals and is a problem when one mineral becomes completely unavailable due to the extreme excess of another antagonistic mineral. Examples are molybdenum causing complete unavailability of copper or iron causing poor absorption of selenium. Other mineral interactions become a problem if minerals are out of balance with one another. Excess salt will deplete potassium (or the reverse) and excess calcium not only causes elimination of trace minerals, it throws off the balance with magnesium and phosphorus. Several of the more common trace minerals (and some macro minerals) are now available in a chelated form for supplementation, making it easier to get a proper amount of those minerals into an animal.
By Alethea Kenney, copyright 2015-2016. Do not copy or reprint without permission