People will tell you that remineralizing soil is an expensive proposition. It is. Especially when you are starting out with a nutritional graveyard like we did. One hopes, however, that when the initial burden of banking the proper nutrients is complete, maintenance will be less of a financial burden.
With this thought in mind, as I am preparing to go pick up our 2009 round of amendments of the pasture, and it occurred to me to share come comparisons. The following figures are theoretical, but are absolutely in keeping with my current experience with Equine Metabolic Syndrome:
One year feeding/managing costs based on forage grown in depleted soil:
Purchased Hay, 3 tons at $250/ton $750.00
Beet Pulp, 365 lb. @ $.20/lb 73.00
Popular “Vet Formulated” V/M Supp 280.00
Popular “Vet Formulated” Metabolic
Support Supp 280.00
Pergolide @ $90.00 month 1080.00
Blood Tests/year 500.00
Total 2963.00
Not included:
Factory-compounded low carb “grains”
Supplemental flax seed
Corrective shoeing for laminitis
Big clippers for shearing Cushing’s coat
Supportive herbs
Labor/water cost and nutrient loss for soaking hay.
Vet bills for treating incidental disease, such as laminitis
Pain and Suffering
First year expense remineralizing one acre of extremely depleted pasture and converting to hay:
Lime, dolomite, soft rock phosphatees
(these products will persist in the
soil and not require the same
expense from year to year $450.00
Other amendments 400.00
Custom baling, roughly 2.5 ton yield
@ $2.00/bale 178.00
Total for 2.5 ton: $1028.00
Add’l .5 ton 205.60
Total for year $1233.60
Anything else by way of supplements that you want to toss in on top of a nutritionally complete hay is entirely up to you.
You can see that in the first year of remineralization, your hay will cost you dearly, but keep in mind that only the bare bones cost of maintaining a metabolic horse is represented above. Even without paying the vet, the shoer, the supplement and feed companies, it would have been costing us $1730 less per year per horse if they had not become metabolic in the first place.
For those who cannot control their own hay sources, please understand why you may be frustrated in finding good horse hay. Most growers can’t support the kind of cost it takes to provide actual “nutritious” hay versus tonnage if the ground is really imbalanced. If you are in control of the situation yourself, consider the benefits of remineralization and realize that you can at least cut down on a lot of the commercial supplements once you get the soil minerals working for you.
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