You may want to look at addition of salt to the diet as PO mineral

Unfortunately, i can not handle it!

May I suggest Luís Ferreira? His e-mail adress is [email protected]

its not easy to dispense minerals by IM on large scale. i personally, think PO is easy and convenient. We try to minimize the losses. in case of some deficiency of minerals. we can inject by IM OR IV. route is also depend on mineral.

Whatever portion of any nutritional or mineral supplement that your animal is able to take depends on the method of administration/addition of such supplement. Once you realise the importance of a particular supplement to your stock, its left for you to look for a suitable method that will allow all the animals to take meaningful portion. When you give supplement, its to the advantage of your animals and their overall productivity. so its a gain to the farmer.

it is always better to dispense the mineral by IV, but this depend on type of preparation (injectable, shyrub, tablet etc.). maximum absorption take place through IV route..

Administration of mineral salt or any other material to farm animal is a function of herd size. Even if you are using automatic drenching gun or syringe. Try other route of administration that is convenient to you and the animals. Try mixing with concentrate diet.

The situation in practice is that due to hierarchy some animals will fulfill their mineral requirements, but subordinary animals won´t. You must take into account also the salt that you loose because of rain and management. In the other hand if you use IM mineral, it will have a additional cost (personal, syringe, management, etc...) but you will assure that each animal will get what they need. I believe that these practice will be great when you have cows in its first 1/3 of gestation.

The whole case depends on the severity of the particular mineral deficiency in the animal, that the animal shows real symptom of the deficiency. In this case there will be a need of urgent treatment. The method should be left to a vet to decide. Thereafter, there will be a need of identification of the source and the severity of the deficiency in the diet. That is to say if that cause is primary or secondary. Afterwards the appropriate method of treatment depends on the outcomes of the identification, and long lasting boluses may be good choice for certain cases and just salt licks may be enough in others

In my opinion the best way to provide minerals to cattle in a commercial farm is by providing mineral blocks for licking. These blocks can be put in a separate trough at each barn in a shade area as per dose rate. Especially in summer season we have to provide the mineral blocks such as copper, selenium plus an electrolyte. By adopting this method no additional labour is required. In addition to this we can give this copper, selenium and vit AD3E as i/m injections as a regim during different check levels of animals in a farm. Hence also no additional work load.

Dr. Sajeev kumar. A.

According to my experience with ruminants is always better to handle PO mineral intake. Cattles are marathon running ( dairy cattle ) 305 days per year. Top sportmen can run 3 or max. 4 marathon races per year. So making ballance IV is wasting of money. So many things you can handlle PO way. With IV mineral intake you reach point fast but also loose efect in short time

Milos Pavlovic PhD Ms DVM

Belgrade University of veterinary medicine, Serbia

I totally agree with the last contributor. Better to add supplement to the diet

Mixed in licking block will solve the problem,to some extent.

I positively recommended Formula for Chapin Dairy Premix

Feed at 0.1% of Total Ration Dry Matter or 0.003% of body weight. (0.001 x TRDM or 0.00003 x body weight)

Nutrient

Vit. & Trace Min. Potency/kg

of Premix Formula for

100 kg Mix Ingredient that

Supplies Nutrient Assumes

Potency/gm

IU or Mg/kg Kilograms

Vitamin A 6,500,000 IU 1.300 kg Vitamin A Premix 500,000 IU

Vitamin D 2,000,000 IU 0.400 kg Vitamin D Premix 500,000 IU

Vitamin E 65,000 IU-mg 13.000 kg Vitamin E Premix 500 = 50%

Copper 25,000 mg 10.00 kg Copper Sulfate 25% Cu

Cobalt 1000 mg 0.500 kg Cobalt Sulfate 20% Co

Zinc 125,000 mg 35.714 kg Zinc Sulfate 35% Zn

Selenium 400 mg 0.089 kg Sodium Selenite 45% Se

Manganese 50,000 mg 16.667 kg Manganese Sulfate 30% Mn

Iodine 2,000 mg 0.267 kg Potassium Iodide 75% I

MagOx = to l kg Carrier 22.063 Magnesium Oxide

100.000 kg Antioxidant?

Use sulfur forms as shown for good absorption of the trace mineral and for the sulfur.

WARNING: Do not feed to sheep as high copper level may kill them. OK to feed to goats.

NOTE: Sodium Selenite should be premixed with another trace mineral before adding. When Chapin Dairy Premix is fed at 20 grams/day/600 to 650 kg large breed cows, there are enough vitamins and trace minerals supplied to support high milk production. Calculations for Chapin Dairy Premix are based on cows producing >35 liters of milk and consuming >25 kg of dry matter/cow/day. Major minerals need to be balanced. Shown below are the amounts of vitamins and trace minerals 20 grams of Chapin Dairy Premix will supply per cow per day.

Nutrient

Vit. & Trace Min. Potency/kg

of Premix 20 grams

supplies Concentration Added/ kg if 25 kg DM Fed

Vitamin A, IU 6,500,000 130,000 5,200 IU/kg

Vitamin D, IU 2,000,000 40,000 1,600 IU/kg

Vitamin E, IU = mg 65,000 1,300 52 IU or mg/kg

Copper, mg 25,000 500 20 = ppm*

Cobalt, mg 1000 20 0.80 = ppm

Zinc, mg 125,000 2,500 100 = ppm

Selenium, mg 400 8 0.32 = ppm

Manganese, mg 50,000 1000 40 = ppm

Iodine, mg 2,000 40 1.6 = ppm

Possible to add other micro ingredients such as niacin, biotin, etc.

use All-Trace Trace Element Boluses . it is effective and need to feed every 6 month.

Minerals are important for many functions in the animal body. Copper, for instance, is important for growth and prevention of many problems, e.g. anaemia. However, giving the animal above its needs may cause the opposite, i.e. toxicity. Animals are different in their tolerance to excess of minerals, as species and as breeds. Therefore, care should be taken in giving doses of a particular mineral, and the cause of a problem should be identified. For example, anaemia is usually looked at as iron deficiency, although, it could be due to copper deficiency, which could be due to high iron, or high molybdenum and sulpher in the diet. Therefore, a general identification will keep on the safe side. Identification could be done in a simple way by analyzing random samples of diet and blood samples for minerals. That needs to be done once in a while, and not an everyday routine. Thereafter, using long term boluses is a good choice for the severe conditions, i.e. the deficiency. Addition to diets is appropriate when possible, and there are ready made mixes for that. For, may be, less severe conditions then salt blocks that contain necessary, and avoid unnecessary, minerals could be used, and here to be spread appropriately to be sure that all animals can have chances to lick them.

Intake has the additional advantage that rumen function can be enhanced, depending on feed composition. Particularly, when low quality fodder is consumed, a suitable mineral mix will stimulate rumen microorganisms to ferment fiber, with a resulting increase in energy and bacterial protein supply to the host. Besides, in the case of cobalt, oral intake is a convenient way to solve a vitamin B12 deficiency, as rumen microorganisms can synthetize the vitamin.

I recommend a PO mineral administration .It is not feasible to administer minerals parenterally to the entire stock .The individual animal showing symptoms of deficiency can be administered parenterally.

IM minerals to cattle would have been very efficient but I wonder the time involved for those to administer the injection and how often these injections will have to be given. Salt licks have continued to be the usual way of administering minerals to cattle. You may have to increase number of blocks to improve access. Yes, there may be losses due to weather, etc but the long term benefits of ensuring that any deficiency in minerals in the herbage and other fodder that cattle eat are corrected far outweighs the losses.

The injectable mineral prescriptions have a very high concentrations of the macro/micro minerals and they are used mostly for the treatment of a mineral difficiency disease. Moreover , the injectable macro/micro minerals are absorbed very quickly and if in access may be metabolized and secreted in either feces or urine. So it is always better to go for dietary supplementation of the macro/micro minerals to dairy cattle.

Definitely PO is the way to go as preventive strategy.

The choice of minerals should be tailored to the specific farm. I disagree with the policy that this or that mineral supplementation is better. It is dependant on the region, farm, unit and individual beast. Generalisation is an old idea.

Customised mineral mixes are now available in most developed dairy countries. There is no reason to be difficult to make them in developing countries also.

 hi,

what is the role of microorganism in the rumen (or stomach or cecum)of chelating minerals?