[Dougal]

Currently I don't use these drenches but I have (with mixed success) in the past. The area in which I farm live is very poor in trace elements but i tend to just put out Crystalix buckets for three weeks before tupping and leave the ewes on those throughout tupping (november for mid april lambing). This has served me well in the past but I am thinking on using something.
Used liqithrive in the past but it is rather dear but does work over the short period, wondering whether just using straight ad lib minerals in a trough would be just as effective, less labour and cheaper than trying the 'magic bullet' solution of dosing everything?
The ewes will be dosed for fluke as the tups go out but this is just three weeks too late for the mineral drench but the perfect timing for killing the fluke which to my mind will do just as much, if not more, harm to the stock.

[VSS]

Bucket blocks mostly provide energy.

Try contacting this chap - he is very very helpful and extremely knowledgable. His mineral drenches have done wonderful things for our sheep.
http://www.jganimalhealth.co.uk/Contact-Us.html. He will also organise a forage test to identify what minerals your sheep are not getting.

[shep53]

A blood test by the vet on a few sheep will identify any deficiencys iv'e stopped using ad -lib powdered mins and drench's as every blood test say all ok but very low in iodine which i have corrected for the last 4yrs with great results plus saving money on mins and vits not needed

[supplies for smallholders]

Agree with the above,

You meed to know what is missing - then you can treat for it, be it Iodine, selinium, magnesium, copper etc etc.

We sell a lot of drenches, but as you say they are not cheap and come in bottles big enough to dose 5 million or so sheep!

Thanks

[VSS]

A blood test by the vet on a few sheep will identify any deficiencys

Blood tests are not always a reliable indicator of mineral availability. We have had tests done which showed adequate levels of cobalt when our sheep were actually desperately short of it. The mineral was present, but not in a form that the sheep could utilise.

[Dougal]

Knowing the area as I do gives me a little advantage. If it is a trace element then it will be lacking in this area. Around here we feed cattle minerals to white faced sheep and they can still be measured as lacking in copper! Cobalt, selenium, iodine, copper, manganese and phosphorous are all in short supply. The energy buckets are all mineralised and by the time I'm tupping there is no grass growth so the energy is as needed as much as the minerals. They are pretty similar to the tupping buckets you can buy but a third of the price, although they tend not to carry the same phosphate content
Given that the stock is usually always low in minerals I was wondering whether the powder form over the long term would be more use and cheaper than the drenches which can be very expensive per head and only give short duration cover?

[SallyintNorth]

If you are going to use a mineral drench then get one where the key elements are chelated - then you do get a longer-lasting effect not just the 3-day pick-me-up.  Carrs' OviThrive is such a one, our vet also can also supply one.  We get ours from Paul Keable Nutrition in Newcastle.  He makes up specific recipes for the types of ground and season, and also does a good general purpose one.  He delivers to our area but I am not sure how far his reach is.

I absolutely echo find out what minerals and vitamins your sheep are lacking - start by asking a local farmer or the vet, as they will know the ground in your area.  And you may be able to buy a small amount from one of them if you don't need a flock's worth.

I also agree it is not just about what is short in the grass, there's a whole degree's-worth of info about what minerals have to be in what state, what trace elements block uptake of others... that's why I go to Paul, he's got the degree and done all the hard thinking!

Our ground is desperately short of copper, cobalt and selenium in particular.  The girls need zinc in order to utilise the magnesium (I think I've got that the right way round); lack of zinc will show in poor feet.

The crystalix buckets are fine as what they are.  Our vet calls them 'boiled sweets' but I do rate them a little higher than that!  One of the problems with them is that some girls won't take any, some will gorge because they like the treacle.  And some greedy ones may stop less forceful characters getting any.  We do have them out, and have one of the magnesium ones available too, in the run-up to lambing, as the girls need as much readily-available energy as possible at this time and have less room in the belly for cake and forage.  In our area, the magnesium helps reduce the number of ladies coming down with metabolic disorders both before and after lambing.

I have used the free-flow powdered minerals and found them excellent.  You felt that the girls knew what they were and took them if needed, not because they liked sugar.  The only downside, and why I don't still use them, was keeping them available and dry.  If I just had one or two fields, so it was not too much of a chore to clear and refill containers each day, I would certainly keep using them.  The ones I used I got from PK.   Given how poor our ground is, I would still give a drench twice a year even with the powder out for them, and would still use treacle, with or without minerals added, in the 6-8 weeks before lambing. 

I have been told, but have no opinion about it myself, that just putting out lumps of rock salt will make a huge difference.  Rock salt contains a lot of minerals, not just salt, and the sheep will lick away at it ad lib.  It will wash away in the rain over time, sure, but it's not expensive and doesn't dissolve too quickly.  I would definitely use it if I had a small flock and found it difficult to get appropriate quantities of a good drench.

[Dougal]

Hadn't though o the rock salt before. We used to use that a lot on fattening cattle inside. It's a tough one trying to get the most cost effective method in place, with the right timings for the various methods as well. It is always made tougher when there is only a small flock so you have no buying power.

[shep53]

Used to feed powdered mins all year round until i visited a mill to see it made, the powdered mins are dry tasteless so to encourage animals to eat salt and spices are added so are they eating because they need it or because it tastes good

[SallyintNorth]

With the powdered minerals we got from PK, it was very noticeable that some sheep would take some sometimes and not others.  I did get the feeling that, moreso than with any other delivery mechanism, those that needed them would take them.  But whether some who needed them didn't know what they were, I couldn't say!   The sheep were hill sheep; you'd expect primitives and hill sheep to be more clued up about what nutrients they need, perhaps more commercial types wouldn't have the nouse.

[mmu]

A blood test by the vet on a few sheep will identify any deficiencys

Blood tests are not always a reliable indicator of mineral availability. We have had tests done which showed adequate levels of cobalt when our sheep were actually desperately short of it. The mineral was present, but not in a form that the sheep could utilise.

When we first came to Scotland we brought some goats, including British Alpine, who went downhill after about a year and wouldn't eat.  We had all sorts of test, including blood tests and they were all fine, except by this time the goats were not eating and we  were reduced to hand feeding with grated carrots to keep them alive.  Luckliy someone from the local goat keepers' club told me blood tests were very unreliable and gave me a big bottle of copper, cobalt, selenium and B12 drench.  A few doses of that perked them up and saved their lives.  We found black goats were the most vulnerable, followed by any other dark colour and white least vulnerable.  We don't keep goats at the moment, but do find our Shetland sheep suffer with mineral deficiencies more than the others in the flock  My understanding is that mineral requirements not only vary with the type of ground, but also with in different breeds.  It would be nice to have a definitive opinion on this!  If there is anyone out there who farms in the NE of Scotland and has experience of this I would appreciate their input greatly.  We use various kinds of bucket licks and sometimes  Rockies, (mostly inside as they melt) and we found the best one was the Lamb Quick Finisher, but it gets used up in a matter of days and therefore not really viable.












were re

[SallyintNorth]

My understanding is that mineral requirements not only vary with the type of ground, but also with in different breeds.  It would be nice to have a definitive opinion on this! 

It's a fact that Texels seem to need less copper than our more native breeds and indeed the cake merchants hereabouts won't put copper in sheep feed as there have been some deaths in Texels from copper poisoning.  (It bursts their liver, apparently.)

Until recently BH never drenched his Texels for that reason but we talked it through with Paul Keable who felt we should be okay with his chelated and balanced drench, so now all of them get that and so far there have been no ill effects in any of them.