Hello, List, I'm a great fan of Joel Salatin, a grazier who has a couple of terrific books out on raising stock without the addition of unnecessary chemicals and soil amendments, etc., and improving the soil in the process.
In his book "Salad Bar Beef" he discusses the use of kelp meal and plain salt as the sole alternative to using "acidulated" commerical mineral mixes for his cattle. I am just new to sheep, but have offered both a commercial loose sheep mineral, and a pan of 50/50 salt and kelp meal. The sheep consume the kelp/salt mix daily, but have never touched the commercial minerals. Our cattle also relish it. The horses receive kelp meal in their daily ration and rarely touch their commercial horse minerals. I am preparing to remove the commercial mix from the sheep. We are in a selenium deficient area, and I've been studying the content of selenium in kelp meal. It appears to run about .00004%. I'm trying to figure out how that would average for a sheep which consumed, say 1/2 ounce of kelpmeal per day (cattle consume roughly 2 ounces per day). The daily requirement for selenium that I have found is about 0.3 ppm, with a max of 0.7 ppm (wish I could find that in grams). Since I am mathematically challenged, I'll probably never figure it out, but I am wondering if this daily rate of consumption would bring the selenium content of the diet up to par, without resorting to injections. Is anybody out there handy with a calculator? :o) Thanks, Barb Lee =============================================== This message is from the Barbados Blackbelly Sheep mailing list (http://www.awrittenword.com/listserv/index.html). To respond to this message, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe or change your membership options, go to http://lists.coyotenet.net/mailman/listinfo/blackbelly To search the archives, go to http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
