Copper questions

southerngurl · #41 10/28/07, 02:44 PM

So basically your milkers are big pigs and you can get all the minerals down them they need.

You know, my two nubians are the piggiest of my goats and they look the best to me. Have fine shiney coats. They take eating very serious. Do you feed a mineral without iron?

How do they go about doing the liver analysis. Any idea on cost/headache ?

Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians · #42 10/28/07, 03:35 PM

My minerals are grey so they carry no red iron oxide, which is in abundance on my property.

I have read information only on the liver testing on live goats. Nothing I know yet to pass on, when I get the tests ran in the spring I will write about it. Vicki

Keeperofmanya · #43 10/28/07, 05:25 PM

Vickie, how much minerals would you put into your milkers feed when you milk. I can't get my goats to even have a lick.

Jcran · #44 10/28/07, 08:53 PM

Just my two cents: I had hair and parasite and foot issues last year. One judge praised my red boer but suggested she might have parasite load due to her rough hair coat. A friend mentioned possible copper deficiency. I read and read and decided to bolus with copper. I made up a bunch of capsules and weighed them and gave them at the rate of one capsule per 50#(boy those bigger pills would have been handy!) Anyhow, overall appearance improved rapidly. This last winter the foot rot issues all but disappeared. My fecals are coming back far lower. I am a firm believer in bolusing. I haven't redone it yet, but plan to at the New Year, after does kid.

Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians · #45 10/28/07, 10:43 PM

Joan that's a pretty typical response.

Keeper of many, I didn't mean I put minerals in my grain on the milkstand, my girls love their minerals. I meant things like Vitamin C with congested udders....or I give my older girls joint health vitamins once in awhile...or E after they kid. Have you tried mixing some kelp or yeast into their minerals? Vicki

Keeperofmanya · #46 10/29/07, 04:49 PM

Vickie. I put the kelp in their feed and the minerals are free choice. I have tried about 3 time to add even just a tiny pinch to their feed and they know it's there. They nuzzel all around their feed in the dish trying not to eat any of it. I will try adding the minerals with kelp and see what happens.

Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians · #47 10/29/07, 11:53 PM

Take the kelp out of their feed and use it in their minerals. Before I got my Tech Master, I used Purinas Beef cattle minerals I used 3 parts of it with 1 part of kelp...pre kidding and early lactation I also mixed in 1 part of Diamond V Yeast. The kelp really gets them eating their minerals. Vicki

valsey · #48 06/04/08, 04:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians

Yes copper sulfate doesn't work and it's in every loose mineral out there, so get a better mineral, one with copper oxide one with chelated minerals.

Hi Vicki
Do you know of a mineral that contains copper oxide? Or chelated copper? Can you explain the difference between all of them?

I've been using Sweetlix and just noticed it has copper sulfate - and I think we might have a deficiency here. I'd like to try whatever I can before going to bolusing.

Thanks

manygoatsnmore · #49 06/04/08, 06:33 PM

Vickie, I have a question about the boluses. Do you know of any reason that opening the capsules and mixing the rods into peanut butter, then feeding the peanut butter on crackers to the goats WOULDN'T work? Seems to me that the whole reason to bolus them with the capsules is to make sure they don't chew up the rods and that the capsules then dissolve in the digestive tract. My goats will swallow PB crackers without hardly chewing them, so I doubt any of the rods are crunched too badly, and the peanut butter will also be dissolved in the digestive tract. They were definitely showing signs of copper deficiency prior to the copper, and they look SO much better now. That tells me that what I did was probably sensible and worked, but I am always open to more info.

FD2N4P · #50 06/04/08, 07:18 PM

manygoatsnmore..i took the advice of ms viki and went to boluses for my goats. i used a hotdog roll with peanut butter. i give then a treat each day of a small amount of peanut butter and bread. they go crazy for it so i figured they take the capsule down on bread with no trouble.........down the hatch it went...............sue

Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians · #51 06/05/08, 03:36 PM

The rods are in varying lengths, you want them to lodge in the rumen and then into the other 'chambers' of the stomach in those varying lengths. If chewed by the molars they will pulverize them all, the tiny sizes of all the copper rods, will be absorbed too quickly. Bolusing is not hard. If you saw someone bolus one time you would think how crazy it is that you didn't do it earlier!

Chealted minerals make the mineral more avaliable to the goats. The tests done on saanendoah.com showed that copper sulfate was hramful to the rumen, so upping it only, to get to the 2000 ppm of copper we want in the daily diet was harmful to the rumen. In pet goats or meat goats having one set of kids a year, that isn't that much of a big deal...in dairy goats who milk for 10 months, kid out 3 or 4 kids a year, and milk for 3 months of the pregnancy it is a big deal and why I do so much work on my minerals. I also like my minerals because they are not red and full of iron, this binds with the copper and calcium two things dairy goats need in abudance. Along with the high iron in our water and pastures/woods, I don't need or use a red mineral. Also watch where on the list molassas is in your minerals, goats go to their minerals for salt, livestock crave salt, which is nice because this makes more milk...if they are craving the molassas instead in the mineral your scewing the amount the goats eat. Goats do not know they are low in copper or selenium or ???? and go to a mineral for this, it's salt and taste. Why it's also important not to put out stock salt when we rely on the minerals so heavily.

Bolusing gives you the copper oxide that is slow released into your goats system.

I use the mineral I do Bluebonnetmills.com Tech Master complete because on liver biopsy my copper levels are still the same, as when I mixed my own and bolused. Since the writing of the post above, I was able to put down and older doe this early spring after kidding, and her liver biospy came back in the normal range...before minerals and bolusing ours came back low and even some were not on the scale. Even though our bloodtests were normal. So for my farm, this works....but I wouldn't use a high ppm of copper on my goats and bolus at the same time without tests to know if it is needed for you. I know right after bolusing and on high copper minerals you can get very scarry high readings, we have seen those in our area. Vicki