The cost of harvesting, cutting and wrapping a lamb went up 30% in 2009. It's hardly a wonder. Business has been so bad in this downturn that the butcher closed up shop for the summer and took a seasonal job until hunting season gave him some work to come home to. Not a good sign, losing our infrastructure and seeing our fixed costs soar. With grain "value priced" at $12.99 per 50-pound sack, getting away from grain feeding, and getting bigger lambs to market is more important than ever. For harvest and processing, the cost is the same, whether it's a 70-pound lamb or a 120-pound lamb. It's nice to see those half-Katahdin lambs nearly as big as their mothers at five weeks of age!
The good news is, we have finally tasted our first grilled 100% grassfed rib chops - "lammie on a stick" - and they were so much tastier than any grainfed lambs we have produced. There's a little inconsistency in tenderness, two were chewy, two were tender. That was easily predicted by a liver mineral analysis we had done on two of the harvested lambs. Consistent with previous analyses, the livers contained excessive amounts of potassium and very little calcium. What has that to do with tenderness? Calcium is a factor in meat tenderness, but even more importantly, in animal health. Moving up the food chain, it affects human health. A seemingly subjective preference for tender meat gives us a glimmer of what it means when we talk about diminishing mineral fertility in the soil.
"Diminishing mineral fertility" in the soil takes into account excesses as well as deficiencies. Some minerals are naturally abundant in certain soils. Some are naturally deficient. Some are easily washed away by rain or irrigation. Some were never present to begin with. Some are "mined out" or over-applied by inappropriate agricultural practices. In plant and animal life, excesses of certain minerals can create deficiencies of others through mutually antagonistic mechanisms. Either way, we end up with nutritional disasters.
Here at Dogpatch, we have a history of high potassium in our soil and forage - AND lamb livers! Even though we have "topped up" the soil with calcium and magnesium, the excessive potassium is a culprit in bringing down the quality of our lamb by interfering with calcium and magnesium metabolism; from nutrient exchange between soil and roots to metabolism in the animal body.
Because the lambs are short lived, perhaps six months to one year, it is hard to detect sub-optimal health related to soil deficiencies. Is it not so with short-lived annual vegetable crops? Beautiful broccoli, 60% lower in minerals than the broccoli of our parents' childhood! The annual lamb crop is not exempt from mineral decline. Unless the lambs are born with deficiency related disease, or their mothers die from it before they are born, they leave this fair earth before they have a chance to tell us something's wrong. Unfortunately, these deficiencies accumulate over a long human lifetime and manifest themselves as poor health at the top of the food chain. It's not just about tender meat or healthy animals. It's about nutrient dense human food.
The ewes lambed at pasture in the spring of 2009, entirely without supplemental feed, with the exception of minerals that we know are still deficient in our soil and forage. In our short growing season, the pasture did not remain nutritious enough to carry them through lactation in satisfactory flesh, so next year we will provide additional non-starch calories.
*******************************************
When we graziers are sitting at the kitchen table, making decisions about next year's pasture fertility amendments, we tend to think of calcium only as a pH adjustor. If the need for it arises, generally amounts are called for that will enhance yield or correct acidity. Little thought is given to animal metabolic health, because we can add dietary calcium through supplementation or hypodermic syringes. We've been conditioned to believe that these methods are the nutritional equivalent of getting it from the plants. So what's wrong with this approach?
To initiate growth, plants take carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, mostly from the air, to biosynthesize the "starter compounds" of sugars and starches. Some of these "starter compounds" are further biosynthesized into all the amino acids, enzymes, vitamins and immune substances that the plant needs to thrive and reproduce. But this biosynthesis only takes place when some 18 soil minerals are available. Calcium and magnesium are among the most important. If they are not available, the plants cannot perform all their own metabolic processes, much less deliver optimal nutrition to the animal. Now we begin to see the real source of equine metabolic disease, EMS, as being caused by poor protein, high carbohydrate/potassium hay grown on mineral deficient soil. While we are busy meeting the "diabetic" horse's NRC requirements for raw minerals as suggested by a feed company nutritionist, we are completely ignoring the role of soil minerals in catalyzing thousands of phytonutrients into existence within the plant. Supplementing raw minerals to the animal will meet some of its needs for the minerals themselves, but how much better to deliver those minerals in the forage, AFTER they have transformed the raw products of photosynthesis into life sustaining proteins, enzymes, vitamins, pigments, ad infinitum.
Potassium is the "K" in the N-P-K fertilizer analysis that serves as the foundation for yield-based agriculture.
Potassium has a tremendous effect on soil pH. So if you have been putting potassium on year after year to enhance forage yield, and using only pH readings to predict calcium requirements, you may think that your soil calcium is plentiful if it reads 6.5 or higher. In reality, constant applications of K may be disguising a hidden hunger for calcium by driving the pH up.
In a pasture, grasses are regular potassium hogs. They will take up vastly more potassium than they require for their own metabolic processes. Then they deliver the excess K to the herbivore. Why is that? One possible suggestion is that plants need to balance their sap pH, just like people need to balance their blood pH. There is evidence to suggest that the plant will readily substitute one "cation" (positively charged ion) from the soil if the others are not available. Once the plant's metabolic need for K is met, it will continue to take it in. If the calcium is not there, and the magnesium is not there, or the soil is too cold for the microbes to push these cations into the plant, the roots will inhale potassium instead.
Bottom line: Even in the face of plenty (of soil calcium and magnesium) excessive potassium can accumulate in the plant, thence in the herbivore's body at the expense of calcium and magnesium. An excess of one produces a "hidden hunger" for the other two. The result is a disposition toward metabolic disease such as grass tetany and milk fever...and ultimately, reduced quality and nutrition at the top of the food chain.
Forage levels of 2.5 - 3% K appear to be common for pasture grasses, especially during cold early spring, when soil life is not active, and just about the time the cattle and sheep are falling over dead from grass tetany. Such problems are of course, usually dealt with by supplementing calcium and magnesium from the mineral box or the hypodermic needle. Excessive K is not generally considered a player in these mineral deficiency diseases. But what constitutes "excessive?" This has been very difficult for me to find, primarily because prevailing thought suggests that "excess potassium is harmlessly excreted by the body." As near as I can tell, horses need about 0.8% of dry matter. A toxic level of K for the HYPP (hyperkalemic periodic paralysis) quarter horse is about 1%. The excessive K may be excreted, but not before it's done considerable mischief, both to the plant and animal.
Sodium - Salt! - Imagined by some to be "toxic" at any level to soil and plant life, it occupies a place on the "base exchange" of a soil analysis. Usually its significance is ignored unless there is too much. Plants don't need salt, so in yield-based agriculture, it is not called for as a soil amendment. But animals need salt! Our hay reports always show sodium at grossly deficient levels for animal health. So we supplement from the mineral box. Unfortunately, supplementing salt and calcium and magnesium from the mineral box do little to counteract the excessive potassium that the animals are ingesting. Remember the lamb livers? High potassium, low calcium. The grassfed "product" suffered a slight quality problem as a result of the imbalance. But more importantly the animals were flirting with a number of "hidden hungers." They just didn't live long enough to express them. Our longer-lived horses assume that burden when they start developing unexplained insulin resistance, laminitis and "Equine Metabolic Syndrome," and the almost automatic prescription for drugs for Cushing's disease. Just like diabetic kids, these degenerative diseases seem to be striking horses at a younger and younger age. Wouldn't it just be easier to grow healthy food for them?
Since plants don't need salt, and salt doesn't enhance yield, why would anyone consider using it as a "fertilizer?" Plants will use it to balance their sap pH in place of some of that excessive spring potassium. Excessive potassium makes forage bitter. It encourages the overgrowth of "opportunistic pathogens" in the gut. It may even enhance the activity of endophyte in fescue. Salt makes forage taste good, so animals eat more forage, which generally results in better performance of food animals. Excessive potassium actually depresses the craving for sodium, driving down healthy intake at the mineral box. Sodium can stand in as a cheap and effective substitute for part of the more expensive potassium fertilizer. Next spring, I'll be able to tell you what happens when we put 100 pounds per acre of "sea solids," - mined sea salt - on our pasture late this coming winter. If I've been misled, you will all know.
As Albrecht put it: "Adding...mineral supplements the ration...also [has] become a habit. This habit has led some persons to believe that calcium and phosphorus fed directly as limestone and bone meal...are as effective as when the ration contains forages and grain from soils well-stocked in lime and phosphate ...All are aware that oat straw is low in lime and phosphate. It is also low in protein or nitrogen.
"Would you reason that oat straw supplemented with bone meal and saltpeter should be a good ration? [We have concluded that] we can raise the animals by giving them the equivalent of excelsior [wood shavings] if only we use plenty of limestone and bone meal supplements...
"...Such reasoning gives calcium and phosphorus put into the soil no other function than to be dragged into the plant, to occupy space there, and to be thus transported into the animal's digestive tract as they would be if shoveled from the rock pile into the ration."
______________________________
Recommended Reading:
On Livestock Health Issues:
Too Little, Too Much, Early Spring by Woody Lane, Ph.D
www.tein.net/~msufergus/Ag/livestock/Grass%20Tetany%20Article.pdf
Don't Short Salt by T.W. Swerczek, DVM, PhD, Univ. of Kentucky Dept. of Veterinary Science
http://beefmagazine.com/mag/beef_dont_short_salt/
Principles of Cattle Production, by C.J.C. Phillips, CABI Publishing
Chapter Three, "Nutrient Requirements and Metabolic Diseases", subheading "Major Minerals"
Nitrate Toxicity, Sodium Deficiency and the Grass Tetany Syndrome by T.W. Swerczek, DVM, PhD, Univ. of Kentucky Dept. of Veterinary Science
http://www.growersmineral.com/livestock/indepth-articles/nitrate-toxicity-sodium-deficiency-and-the-grass
On Soil Fertility Issues:
Hands on Agronomy by Neal Kinsey, Kinsey Agricultural Services, www.kinseyag.com
Explanations of "Base Saturation," "Cation Exchange Capacity," "Cations," and Potassium's role in soil fertility. Also explains differences between types of potassium used as fertilizer (potassium chloride, or muriate of potash, and potassium sulphate.) Excellent overview of Albrecht principles.
The Ideal Soil by Michael Astera, www.soilminerals.com
Explanations as above, plus information on how to determine your own mineral fertility requirements without the help of a consultant.
Use of Salt in New Zealand Pastoral Farming, Dominion Salt, LTD
www.dominionsalt.co.nz/acatalog/SaltinNZpastoral.pdf
Topdressing Pasture with Salt (NaCl), Dominion Salt, LTD
www.dominionsalt.co.nz/acatalog/topdressing.pdf.
Principles of Cattle Production, by C.J.C. Phillips, CABI Publishing
Chapter Three, "Nutrient Requirements and Metabolic Diseases", subheading "Major Minerals"
Includes information on Potassium and sodium nutrition, as well as fertilizing with sodium.
Cation and Anion Relationships in Plants with Special Reference to seasonal Variation in the Mineral Content of Alfalfa, 1948, Arthur Wallace, Stephen J. Toth, and Firman E. Bear
Cation-Equivalent Constancy in Alfalfa, 1944, Firman E. Bear and Arthur L. Prince
somehow came across your blog while browsing for a article for a class, but I have to say I'm glad I found it ...will definately read some more post sometime.
Posted by: Cheap Escorts | February 13, 2011 at 02:20 AM