Albrecht's Animals

Cost of Doing Business

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.

 

 

 

An Unexpected Health Benefit in the Stable

 

As I was swamping out the barn this morning (half occupied by horses, half by sheep), I was contemplating, no, dreading, the weekly chore of stripping the straw bedding out of the sheep stall.  I’d tried “deep bedding” with the sheep and was unimpressed.  I could never keep the ammonia smell at bay, and the physical labor of mucking out a deep bedding pack in spring by hand is hard on a whiney back.

 

Joel Salatin, in his famous book “Salad Bar Beef” lays out the carbon to nitrogen ratio required for the carbon (bedding) to “fix” the nitrogen and prevent it from volatilizing into ammonia.  I am not as resourceful at finding free “carbon” as Salatin and bedding is a big part of my annual expenditure on the sheep.  This year I decided I’d just wade in weekly, strip the sheep stall (12x24) to the rubber mats and replace the straw. 

 

The idea of deep bedding – adding to the bedding pack instead of removing and replacing it regularly – would have some folks turning up their noses and thinking it would be an unhealthy environment.  Well of course it is, if it’s done incorrectly.  But done correctly, it begins to compost, providing warmth to the animals and creating natural antibiotics.  In some European countries, deep bedding is the law.  The key is having the right carbon/nitrogen ratio something like 30:1.  Salatin’s figures are based on average content of nitrogen in cow manure.  It should be noted that Salatin is a Farmer Artist and has created a self sustaining grass farm without one seed or purchased input.  He also doesn’t live on a volcano.  In his book, it would seem that everybody could do the same thing.  I lost four years trying.  But then I’m not a Farmer Artist either. 

 

After the horse stalls were cleaned, I prepared to attack the sheep stall.  But then I noticed something.  The sheep stall smelled decidedly sheepy.  It did not smell of manure.  It did not smell of urine.  And it certainly did not smell of ammonia. 

 

I got down to sheep level and did not smell ammonia.  I kicked over some bedding and got right down close.  I did not smell ammonia.  I turned a forkful of bedding upside down and put my nose close.  I did not smell ammonia.

 

Referring back to Jerry Brunetti’s article on True Protein vs. “Funny Protein” he says “A real alarm goes off in my head when I walk into a barn in the winter and the olfactory sensor device known as my nose detects a very distinct presence of ammonia.  I’m instantly suspicious that feeding practice and/or feed quality is problematic.”

 

The paragraphs preceding that statement are related to the reduction of ammonia emissions in some animal production facilities when the part of the Crude Protein was replaced with amino acids.  He says that if ammonia levels are elevated in the atmosphere, oxygen levels are suppressed.  Oxygen outdoors approximates 20-21% of total gases.  At that level viruses can only travel 5-6 inches before they’re oxidized out of existence.  Dropping oxygen levels by 1-2 percentage points allows that same virus to travel 500-600 feet before being neutralized.  In some confinement operations, the oxygen level is 17-18% while the air ammonia level is 25-50 ppm.

 

So…when the animals are whizzing out “excess nitrogen” from ingesting “excess protein” and the stalls are always reeking of ammonia, what is the real story? 

 

Remember my 17:1 nitrogen/sulphur ratio in that dairy alfalfa and the 10:1 nitrogen/sulphur ratio in the Albrecht hay? 

 

I freshened up the water buckets and added a layer of fresh straw to the sheep stall.

 

 

A CSA for Horse Owners?

 

CSA means Community Supported Agriculture.  A CSA is basically a membership in a farm’s production.  The farmer sells shares in the crop to consumers, who then come out and harvest their allotment of fresh produce during the season.  In this manner, the farmer creates working capital for the farm and spreads not only his opportunity for profit, but also his risk of loss.  The consumer reconnects to her food supply and enjoys the experience of becoming an active participant in the cycle of life.  There are many successful CSAs and it occurs to me that the concept ought to be applied to growing hay.

 

I am not even remotely familiar with the workings of a CSA, but I think the consumer can even buy shares in the production of a cow.  There is plenty of information out there about starting a CSA.  The main objective would be to find a farmer who would be willing to work this angle, and a group of like-minded horse owners who would be willing to share the cost/risk in exchange for a share of the crop.

 

Few people are going to accept this challenge, I am sure.  But if readers of this blog will watch as the Albrecht Experiment continues to unfold on these pages, using my derelict soil as the laboratory, it may be that some people will be convinced to try it.  I am writing this in January 2009.  The results of Year Two Albrecht hay will be available in July 2009.  That’s only six months from now.

 

There is a book called No Risk Ranching by prominent grazier Greg Judy that addresses the use of low cost leased or idle pastureland.  I haven’t read it, but if someone were to try to find a land base from which to harvest his or her own hay without having to buy the land, this book may hold some good advice.  The book is available from Stockman Grass Farmer magazine, www.stockmangrasssfarmer.com

Nature's Role in Creating Soil Fertility

Not every biosphere that Man has entered was destined for agriculture.  Agriculture is a fairly recent invention and was never, I don’t think, part of Nature’s design.  Plants and animals evolved symbiotically according to what Nature provided in the way of soil nutrients and climate.  I think there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that when Nature became unbalanced to the point where an organism – I’m guessing, soil biota followed by plants – failed, then the other organisms either died with it, or moved on, if they were ambulatory or airborne. 

 

Humans stepped outside Nature’s game plan when they invented agriculture (primarily to protect themselves from the unpleasant aspects of her iron-fisted game rules).  But it’s still Nature’s playing field. 

 

When we domesticated livestock, we took those animals out of the game, too.  Nomadic people followed their animals to fertility.  Modern humans take their animals wherever they damn well please, then when the livestock fail to thrive (s)he blames the soil and the climate, or in the case of a horse owner, herself, and says that “agricultural” soils are declining.  (That may be true, but…)

 

“Agricultural soils,” by modern civilization’s definition, includes places where such animals or man were never meant to abide.  For instance, horses in a semi-rain forest. 

 

Then, when the animals don’t thrive, the media cries, “The Sky is Falling!  The Sky is Falling!”

 

Fertility – in this case meaning the ability to sustain the plants and animals that Barb Lee wants – is a function of rainfall, erosion, flood, freezing and thawing, microbial activity and a host of other things over which Barb Lee has limited or no control.

 

But being human, Barb Lee gazed out upon Dogpatch and said “Grass is plentiful, let there be horses and sheep.”  Nature was chuckling up her sleeve and saying, “You are nuts and for your nuttiness you shall sacrifice to me, your flocks and your herds.  I grow trees here, Stupid, not horses and sheep.”

 

We live in a high rainfall area, averaging about 36” that weeps along at a dreary rate about 8 months out of the year, with fairly droughty summers.  Albrecht identifies the cutoff for soil “development” at around 25” per year.  Above that, development becomes destruction in the form of leaching.  Below a certain level of rainfall (I don’t know what that is because it doesn’t affect me!), there is not enough rain to develop soils into fertile growing media for human agriculture.

 

Here in the west, of course, we take care of the problem of producing crops on the desert with irrigation and N-P-K.

 

The Midwest soils that grew the vast prairies of nutritious grass for migrating herds were, or are in a moderate rainfall pattern for the most part, with replenishing minerals sweeping in from the arid west on the wind.  The herds of bison were creators of fertility for their own purposes through their “herd effect,” which can be read about in Allan Savory’s “Holistic Management.” 

 

When Europeans arrived and discovered the vastness of the fertility, (as opposed to the highly developed soils where they landed that “only yielded a few turkeys”) they abandoned many of their traditions of soil husbandry and simply pushed on as they used up the fertility and pursued the seemingly endless supply further west.

 

Then of course we started moving into areas that weren’t so fertile.  Livestock industries sprang up according to their ability to sustain certain classes of stock.  Cattle could be reared on the vast arid west, but the job of finishing cattle, and of raising hogs etc., centralized in parts of the country where the land could sustain that sort of activity.

 

As we move farther and farther away from following the animals to fertility instead of taking them with us because we prefer to live in Florida instead of Iowa, we’ve suddenly realized we’ve painted ourselves into a corner.  We have taken our animals into parts of the world that have no more ability to sustain them than trying to grow salmon in the swimming pool.  It just doesn’t make sense.

 

Grass – no matter which variety – is only fit animal food if it’s grown in an environment that is conducive to filling its potential as animal food.  I can grow a citrus tree in a pot indoors, but I cannot grow it in the outdoors of Northwest Oregon.  I have to manipulate its environment artificially.  Fortunately grass does grow here even as it grows in a crack in the asphalt. But only if I provide the missing elements that have washed out, cropped out or were never here in the first place, will I be able grow grass that is actually “animal food.”

 

Here in Dogpatch (that was the name we gave this place when we first bought it as a prospective non-garbage dump) I can manipulate the mineral balance to favor the production of animal food – grass.  But it must be borne in mind that there is little likelihood that Dogpatch ever was a place to raise domestic livestock in the first place.  It’s true that we had a hand in the decline of the pasture fertility according to Barb’s Activities, but the place would have still produced perfectly good timber.  Nature still runs the game.  And if I didn’t “get it” she’d eventually run me off her property by continuing to kill all my livestock and replant the place with Douglas fir, blackberry, Scotch broom and hawthorn again (most by the way, are invasive species).

 

For me to stay here in the forest and continue to maintain my grassland livestock, I have to bend the definition of “fertility” to conform to the needs of the grass plants and livestock with which I have replaced the trees.  In doing so, I also must accept responsibility for having displaced the community that would have lived in and below the trees.  It’s not good enough to say that the forest was cleared 100 years ago so I am not responsible for the disruption in the native ecosystem.  I am just perpetuating the arrogance (or ignorance) of my predecessors, who tried to either grow dairy cows (there was a dairy barn on the edge of the cliff across the street, so there must have been enough nutrition in the grass to support a generation or so of farmers) or whatever, and eventually gave up and left the land to the exurbs who wanted to have a pony for the kids.  All the ponies have EMS now.

 

There’s no doubt that historically fertile agricultural soils are declining, but I refuse to believe that the volcanic sand and ash of Central Oregon which under irrigation, produces much of the hay for western Oregon horses, is sufficiently “developed” to consistently deliver complete nutrition, although it is likely more highly mineralized than western Oregon leached soils.  Western Oregon’s Willamette Valley, its “breadbasket” was subjected to repeated 400 ft. deep floods during the Ice Age, when ice dams on the Columbia River (deep and wide enough for ocean going vessels in the lower stretch) broke free and deposited soils and minerals from all over the west.  But that was 10,000 years ago.  Lots of agriculture and irrigation have taken place since then.  And fire.

 

My understanding is that native Man used fire to maintain the western Oregon grasslands for abundant game.  When Lewis and Clark slogged through this part of Oregon, 200 ft. above the reach of the “Missoula Floods”, the timber was so dense they nearly starved to death for lack of game.

 

So take heart.  Your existence on this earth is not entirely the cause of declining fertility.  What the media is failing to tell you is that much of agriculture is happening in the wrong place to begin with, and no thought is being given to put into the soil what the crop needs to take out in order to become nutritious food, only that which produces tonnage.  If you have control over your food source, Albrecht has a blueprint for banking up the minerals that will assure its nutritional service to you and your animals. 

 

The main thing to keep in mind is that you are not “fixing a problem,” you’re likely only bending the environment to suit your needs.  If you were a Cro Magnon or a bison, you’d have simply moved on.

Protein for Protein

Why am I waffling on and on about protein in the grass plants?  Because the more I find out about protein, the more I want it to replace the carbs and nitrogen in my hay with amino acids.  By now, you know that the conversion of nitrogen and carbs to amino acids cannot take place in the absence of balanced soil minerals.  Take for instance, enzymes. 

 

If you asked me what an enzyme was, I would tell you it’s something the body uses to digest stuff.  I wouldn’t have the first clue that it is protein-derived.  Here’s a bit of information on enzymes from “Conversations on Chelation and Mineral Nutrition,” by H. DeWayne Ashmead, Ph.D, F.A.C.N.

 

Cells use amino acids for energy, for rebuilding themselves, and for regulating body processes. Enzymes play a unique role in chemical reactions since they are not changed by the processes but merely act as catalysts and speed up the reactions.

 

So what are enzymes made of?  They are amino acids that are restructured into proteinase material. 

 

Albrecht adds:  “Enzymes are combinations of protein-like molecules, vitamin-like ones, and inorganic ions (very often the trace elements).  If enzymes by the hundreds are responsible for creating the proteins, composed as they are of their score or more of amino acids, then it would seem well to postulate that the variation in the supplies of trace elements coming from the soil might cause variations in the proteins or in the array and amounts of the amino acids synthesized from the elements only by the plants and microbes.”

 

Going back to Brunetti, enzymes are water-soluble globular proteins.  I don’t know if that means they will wash out if you are forced to soak your hay to remove excess sugar.  I have read that soaking can remove a small amount of the “protein.”  “Small” takes on a much broader meaning though, when you can nail it down to a specific life force like “enzymes.”  What’s in a name?  A lot.

 

This is yet another testimony to not wanting to neglect trace elements in the soil first, the plant next, and then the horse. 

 

It’s also a testimony to why I’m trying to interpret Albrecht for you.  I’ll have to read it a hundred times before I “get it” all. 

Calcium: Nutritional Service to the Horse via the Soil

 

Albrecht defines calcium as the “premier nutrient” in soil, plant and animal health.

 

In conventional agriculture, calcium:

 

• Makes NPK fertilizer more effective
• Conditions the soil (makes it looser, easier to pull the plow through)
• Corrects acidity (raises pH)

 

In balanced soil fertility:

 

• Is involved in the chemistry that moves soil nutrients into the plants
• Has a profound effect on the availability of other nutrients such as phosphorous and trace minerals.
• Helps plants such as legumes “fix” nitrogen.
• An excess of calcium will tie up trace minerals
• Contributes to a host of biological processes in the soil that result in healthier plants (such as maintaining healthy microbe and earthworm populations), which then confer nutrition in the form of vitamins, etc. to the horse.
• THEN the plant delivers calcium to the horse for its own body maintenance.
• Enhances the breakdown of organic matter into humus, thereby building soil fertility as opposed to just “feeding the plants.”
• Lowers toxic levels of aluminum and manganese

 

In grass:

 

• Active in the conversion of carbs into amino acids
• More efficient photosynthesis
• Increases water, CO2, nitrogen and mineral utilization
• All above increasing the nutritive value of the feed in the form of protein, vitamins, enzymes, immune enhancing compounds, as well as delivering trace minerals to the horse in balance for its critical biological processes.

 

Albrecht:

 

“Adding patent feeds and mineral supplements to the ration, rather than inspection of the soil that grew it, also have become a habit.  This habit has led some persons to believe that calcium and phosphorus fed directly as limestone and bone meal, in most any feed combination, are as effective as when the ration contains forages and grain from soils well-stocked in lime and phosphate to contribute these and their plant effects indirectly via the vegetative route.  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? <snip> Because common salt went into the animal rations about 125 years ago to supply to animals the two elements – sodium and chloride – needed by them, but not by plants, we were able to conclude that when deficiencies of calcium and phosphorus – the foremost soil material requisites for plants – are lowering the quality of vegetative growth to the point of substituting the wood-producing plants for the protein producers, we can raise the animals by giving them the equivalent of excelsior if only we use plenty of limestone and bone meal supplements. ..

 

“The fallacy in the mineral supplement practice is the assumption that supplementing the ration with lime, or with phosphate, brings the same improvement as putting these through the plant.  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.”

Lysine

I started this post as a smug little diatribe about supplement companies pitching scare tactics (Deficiency Alert!  Deficiency Alert!) at us to get us to buy yet another faddish product, but then I got my humble recalibrated when I realized that I had made something of an error when examining my hay report from Equi-Analytical.

 

E-A includes an “estimated lysine” value under the crude protein.  Lysine, an essential amino acid, is gaining more attention as a deficient….hulloooo….amino acid in horse feed. 

 

Lysine is critical to proper growth and metabolism.  Notably, it appears to activate metabolism of other proteins.  We have now to worry that if lysine has gone missing in the modern horse diet, we can postulate that it’s abdicated with some or most of the other aminos, so we can put this information in our tool box when we’re dismantling our hay report.

 

Testing hay for amino acids is expensive.  One lab charges $280, so I didn’t figure E-A was putting a whole lot of resources into breaking out the lysine on my hay report.  If Crude protein is Nitrogen x 6.25, how did my $26 buy me a lysine value?

 

Good old internet.  Lysine appears to be on average, about 3.5% of the crude protein.  The E-A value appears to average 3.45% of the CP based on three E-A analyses I have have on hand.

 

If we are now wary of the Crude Protein value in the hay (assuming there is no melamine in it), we can also be wary of the estimated lysine report, which appears to be based on an average mathematical calculation and not a scientific analysis.

 

According to one brief article I have, lysine “is often the key to improving protein availability, especially in grass based hay.”

 

Grass hay isn’t typically a “high protein” feed, although a friend’s recent orchard grass analysis was a whopping 15%.  All the other values on this particular report support that the CP was the “real deal,” and not an excess of nitrogen.

 

One would assume that feeding high protein legumes such as alfalfa would deliver the necessary lysine to growing horses and performance horses.  But for our metabolic horses, there are all sorts of caveats about using legumes. 

 

You now have some tools to decide whether your hay is delivering real protein or “funny” protein.  You also know more or less how to guess at the lysine content if it isn’t figured for you on the lab report.  What we need now is to know how much lysine the horse actually needs.

 

Big, BIG surprise!  We have an RDA of how much “Crude Protein” the horse needs, but there are no recommended daily allowances for the actual amino acids!!!  The very building blocks of life.  That just struck me as amazing.

 

So now what we need to know – if lysine is so important – is an estimate of how much the horse needs before we go dashing out to buy a supplement.  One moment while I go surfing for some information….

 

Okay, the NRC states that a yearling at moderate growth levels would have a daily lysine requirement of 36 grams, but a “typical” diet would only deliver 27.7 grams of lysine.  (We are assuming a mathematical average based on CP, I guess.)

 

Purdue Animal Sciences says “no other amino acid requirements have been determined.” www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/AS/AS-429.html  This is a good article on horse nutrition in general.

 

When you read of “quality” protein, there’s rarely a reference given to what that means.  I think we’re safe to say that amino acids play the leading role in quality, and the excessive nitrogen is the element dragging down the quality.  We’re also building a case for remineralizing the soil to put that “excess” nitrogen to work building quality protein according to the potential of the grass species to produce quality protein.

 

Excess protein (that fed above the requirement) is broken down into energy (calories – glucose to the MHC) and a nitrogen product called urea, which is excreted in the urine causing the horse to urinate and drink more.

 

We also know a little about how excess crude “funny” protein can lead to issues such as Blood Urea Nitrogen. 

 

For a couple of pasture potatoes like my horses, the 9.8% protein Albrecht hay delivers plenty of “quality” protein, more than adequate lysine, more than adequate digestible energy, very low WSC and most of the critical minerals in balance, even when fed on a restricted quantity.  They get a few pounds less dry matter than the RDA for their desirable weight (roughly 880 lb) on account of surplus weight.  If I did all the math and subtracted for moisture content, they’d be about spot on for a maintenance diet. 

 

However, when the mare goes back to work this spring, I may prefer to bump up her protein just a little. I may just do that with an amino acid supplement as opposed to increasing her ration, since she has considerable weight to lose.  There’s a hoof supplement out there that looks very promising.  It’s called Master’s Blend.  I’m not promoting it, but it sure looks like it may be an option to increasing her hay ration.

 

Just musing…Most of the horses I’ve had here in Dogpatch had a history of late shedding in spring.  My gelding, Gizmo, has been very late to shed ever since I’ve had him.  In the rush to diagnose him with “something” last year, the late shedding was entered as evidence of Cushing’s disease, even though the winter coat is not long or curly and has been late to shed for the last 12 of his 17 years.  Eventually, the summer coat comes in short, flat and glossy.

 

Since my history of supplementing the rations has been erratic at best, I have been wondering if the slow shedding is a symptom of simply not having enough quality protein to quickly cast the winter coat.  Is the spring coat growth simply retarded by a lack of quality protein?

 

My guess is that if he sheds quickly this spring (2009) it will be professionally attributed to the Pergolide.  I will then face the struggle of challenging the authority with which I have invested the professional community and taper off the Pergolide, to see if Gizmo can fly alone on the wings of complete nutrition.

 

Albrecht on Lysine

 

“The confusion resulting from our satisfaction with the crude protein content of crops in certain ratios to the carbohydrates…has allowed the declining soil fertility to bring more and more crops into use which may still have considerable nitrogen, but much of that may be in non-protein forms. <snip> Mining our soils for larger yields…has consequently resulted in lower and lower quality of the forage and feed proteins with respect to their shortages in tryptophane, in methionine and in lysine.  These are the three amino acids which we usually hope we get when we purchase protein supplements.

 

“We have not been testing the feed crops on the farm for their contents of tryptophane…”

 

“Lysine is deficient in the cereal grains…

 

“These deficiencies <according to the soil fertility pattern> in potential for growing protein …are not necessarily remedied by putting into the vegetation more fertilizer nitrogen – the symbol of crude protein of which nitrogen makes up 16%.  Instead, this controlling deficiency is rather the shortage within the feed and food supply of some of the protein components, namely some of the amino acids – more commonly the tryptophane, the methionine, and the lysine.”

 

Methionine

 

Methionine is an essential amino acid that shows up in many hoof supplements.  A few of the problems we’ve explored so far reveal the following:

 

• High sugar and starch in the hay can be a symptom of an absence of soil minerals, which help the plant biosynthesize carbs into proteins.
• This biosynthesis requires minerals such as magnesium, sulphur and calcium in the soil so the plants can first fabricate quality protein from the products of photosynthesis before delivering the minerals to the horse.
• If the plant is unable to biosynthesize the essential amino acids, no amount of mineral supplementation to the horse’s ration will relieve “hidden hungers” that manifest in such ways as poor hoof quality.
• No recommended daily allowance has been established for any single amino acid, only Crude Protein.  We now know that the Crude Protein analysis of the hay is only a measure of nitrogen and has nothing to do with “quality” protein – amino acids.

 

So how much methionine is necessary?  By what standard do supplement companies compound supplements?  And are the supplements synthetic?

 

Methionine is also a sulphur bearing amino.  If you feed MSM to your horse as a sulphur supplement, you will not relieve a methionine deficiency.  However, if you provide supplemental methionine and see a response in the horse, you may be thinking, “If some is good, more is better.”  There may not be “some” in the first place.  If you’re also dealing with a high carb situation in your hay, there is a strong possibility that a methionine-bearing supplement is relieving a “hidden hunger” in the horse.  If you don’t do something about that hidden hunger your other EMS treatment protocols may be incomplete. 

 

Wouldn’t it be better to just get this stuff from the forage?

 

Methionine is another amino acid that the horse must get from the plants.  Methionine is a sulphur bearing amino, meaning that the soil growing the grass must contain adequate sulphur.  You can supplement the feed with MSM, the bioavailable form of sulphur, and the horse’s body will not make methionine.

 

Here’s what Jerry Brunetti has to say about Methionine:

 

“…a major limiting amino acid in the ration.”  “(It) is essential to the formation of RNA and DNA, the genetic material of every cell in the body, which determines the blueprint of all the different proteins of the body.

 

“Methionine is the precursor to the amino acids cysteine and cystine, which along with methionine, are involved in synthesizing a number of valuable compounds, such as coenzyme A (needed for fatty-acid synthesis), heparin (an anticoagulant mucopolysaccaride), lipoic acid (necessary for carbohydrate metabolism) and glutahione (a strong free-radical scavenger and immune stimulant).  Methionine, one of the few sulphur-bearing amino acids, is critical for producing lecithin, detoxifying the liver, transporting selenium, and is also an anti-oxidant.”  He goes on to say that, “For both ruminants and monogastrics, the sulphur deficit will have to be made up with methionine.”

 

In “Soil, Grass and Cancer,” Andre Voisin says, “It seems that in grass and various forage plants the sulphur containing amino-acids constitute a limiting factor in the biological value, that is to say, in the “actual nutritional” value of the protein of the plant.”  Also, “Now it is remarkable that the content in nitrogen of the Lucerne (alfalfa) is a minimum, namely 2.88 per cent, when the concentration of sulphate ions allows the maximum content of sulphur containing amino acids.”

 

And finally, “We see appearing a first example of the possible outbreak of a disease, namely a disorder of the metabolism of the animal cells, following from a deficiency of the soil in a mineral element, which in this case is sulphur.”

 

Perhaps it’s time to stop thinking of methionine as a hoof supplement.

 

The Impact of Imbalanced Soil Fertility from an Agronomist's Point of View

 

The following comments are contributed by Michael Astera of www.soilminerals.com in response to the methionine post. 

 

Good points, Barb.  I especially liked the quote from Voisin about
Nitrogen being at a minimum when the Sulfur-containing amino acids are
at their maximum.

There is a famous study of the mineral content of vegetables published
in 1948 by Bear, Toth, and Prince.  It's the only in-depth study of
its kind that I have found, and it shows, essentially, that in the
Eastern half of the USA, as one goes East from Colorado, the mineral
(nutrient) content of the vegetables decreases.  This is largely due to
leaching by rainfall, and the same process has occurred West of the
Cascades.

I had to reformat that study when I included it in the appendix of my
Ideal Soil book (available from Michael’s website above), and while reading it over a few times discovered
something I had not noticed before, and I don't know if anyone else
has either:

The authors claim to have observed a maximum concentration of cations
(Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, Sodium) in each plant species.  In
other words, the total of these alkaline elements will have the same
alkalizing effect in all plants of that species.  So what does that
mean?

Let's say you want to neutralize the acid in a cup of vinegar.  You
can use anything alkaline to do so, but the stronger the alkalinity of
the substance, the less you will have to use.  It might take a
tablespoon of powdered limestone, or a half-teaspoon of lye, simply
because the lye is much more alkaline by weight and volume than the
limestone is.

The total alkalizing ability/power of the two is equal, but you need
six times as much of one than of the other to do the same job.

Here's where this ties into plants:  The plant will only want to take
up enough of these cations/bases to achieve its optimum sap pH,
somewhere around 6.4.  If all it has easily available in the soil
solution is Potassium, or Sodium, due to a soil deficiency of Calcium
and Magnesium, it will take up K and Na and will end up high in
Potassium and Sodium but low in Calcium and Magnesium. It is only
going to want to take up enough to achieve that optimal sap pH.

So if the soil has lots of Potassium but very little Calcium the plant
will end up the same way.  That is not good for animal (or human)
nutrition, as our bodies need a lot more Calcium than they do
Potassium; bones and teeth are made of Calcium.

This is where it gets interesting and ties in with the Sulfur bearing
amino acids like methionine:  Bear, Toth, and Prince's work also
indicated that each plant species tends to absorb an equal
concentration of acid elements, just like it does the alkaline
elements: just enough to achieve that optimal sap pH.  The plant
balances the acids with the alkalis, which makes perfect sense.

So what are these acid elements, also known as anions, in the soil?
Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur. If the soil is high in Nitrogen and
low in P and S, the plants grown on that soil will reflect that
imbalance.  The hay and forage will be high in Nitrogen but low in
Sulfur and Phosphorus.  What makes this situation even worse is that
plants preferentially take up Nitrogen, so even if the Sulfur and
Phosphorus values in the soil are pretty good, they will not be taken
up if the Nitrogen level is too high. (reference high nitrates, low protein quality in forage.)

The same applies to Potassium: plants take it up preferentially over
Calcium and Magnesium, and the result in forage, hay, or any food crop
is too much K, Potassium, and too little Ca and Mg. (reference excessive potassium, unbalanced calcium and magnesium ratios in forage.)

Most commercial chemical and organic fertilizers supply far too much
Nitrogen and Potassium, simply because those are taken up
preferentially by the plants and give a strong growth response, a high
yield that unfortunately is nutritionally imbalanced.  Lots of tonnage
but low in Calcium, Magnesium, Phosphorus, and Sulfur. (reference identical problems in both chemical and organic forage – if soil minerals are unbalanced, neither practice will produce nutritionally balanced feeds.)

Those interested in reading the original 1948 study, Variation in
Mineral Composition of Vegetables by Bear, Toth, and Prince, will find
it at Steve Solomon's excellent website, the Soil and Health Library,
www.soilandhealth.org

Mineral Catalysts in the Fabrication of Nutrition

Throughout this succession of articles, I have tried to elevate the role of soil minerals above the perception of their singularity of importance as merely “minerals.” I have been trying to show that their life sustaining action through the plant is vastly greater than the sum of their parts when fabricated by grass into complex nutritional compounds, which no animal is capable of producing.  This aspires to displace the misconception that grass is merely a transport system of raw minerals into the horse’s body.  

 

In the course of hours of research it has become plain that the message of declining soil fertility has almost universally been spun into a need for synthetic vitamins, minerals, and professional nutritional consultation.

 

The simple truth is the minerals are gone from the soil, or going quickly.  Sometimes, certain minerals dominate in the soil to lock up and deactivate others.  This causes the same metabolic meltdown in the grass that primary deficiency does, which in either case, then delivers its prefabricated disease to the horse.

 

What a splendid opportunity for profit!  Profit in the form of supplements, profit in the form of nutritional consultations, profit for the disease mop-up crews that have been educated and trained to view disease as the normal state.

 

So I’ve spent hour after hour, trying to validate the mineral-as-catalyst-for-vitamin-fabrication concept that Albrecht proved, Voisin echoed, and others following in their tracks are trying to elucidate for those who are trying to understand the nature of the problem, and how to reverse it.

 

Reverse – a very important word!  Reversing depletion of soil minerals is infinitely possible.  That is the fundamental truth that is being withheld.  We are instead constantly reminded that the earth is dying, and the only way we can save ourselves (not the earth) is to BUY something to treat the symptoms.  Albrecht and his co-workers created the blueprint of balanced soil minerals for fertility.  Although their work has been bulldozed by NPK agriculture, the blueprint is still available and remains unchanged.  The average horse owner or gardener isn’t likely to be able to balance minerals in their pastures or gardens without a $50 soil analysis by an Albrecht based agronomist.  That $50 won’t buy you a month’s supply of one fractionalized horse supplement.  The follow-on soil remineralization won’t be cheap if you’re dealing with acreage, but once the minerals are banked, it’s more a matter of restocking the ones that leach or are taken out by the crop.  When the soil begins to work again – and it will – the emergence of true sustainability becomes more of a reality.  We look at the dollars we are applying to the soil in the form of recommended mineral applications and we’re a little stunned (after all, we started with dead soil to begin with), but the cost of the resulting “Albrecht” hay in the first year was on par with the going rate for NPK or unfertilized hay.  This did not include months of quality grazing for the sheep and improved lambing results. We’ve tossed the expensive supplements in favor of a few cheap raw minerals to balance the figures that are still a “work in progress” and we’ve pretty much eliminated grain, except for a handful to deliver the critical “Coleby Mix” to the sheep, which not only delivers the missing copper, but wipes out parasite populations as well.  So we can add to the growing list of benefits, not buying toxic wormers and not having to traumatize the sheep with excessive handling and toxic chemistry, which leaves the poisons out of their delicious meat. In posting my farm expenses for tax purposes last night, my expenses for grain and alfalfa pellets (some of which were toxic for excessive iron) was $579 for about 24 sheep.  The horses received no grain from July on.  At the first of the year a 50 lb. Bag of COB (corn, oats, barley) was $8.75.  At the end of the year that same bag was $13.95.  Ironically, feed grains are so depleted of soil minerals now, that I am sure to be wasting my money for the “energy” component of the sheep’s feed.  So we are moving toward a self- sustaining reality, as we now produce almost ALL the feed for 24 head of sheep and 2 horses on six remineralized acres.

 

In originally writing this article, I completely overlooked the opportunity to make an extraordinarily important point.  That $579 spent on grain and pellet inputs last year entirely evaporated into the commercial ag machine.  Three balls for a dime.  When we put the minerals on the soil, we not only put that investment into the barn in the form of one healthy harvest, but a large part of the investment remains in OUR soil on OUR farm, to return to us harvest after healthy harvest.  And a good part of our “mobile” investment stayed right in our neighborhood, in the pockets of the good people who harvested the hay for us.  Part of our investment in the soil built fertility, part of it built community.

Part of it built health in the animals, part of it built health in our lives.

 

So it is not just a matter of “cost.”  Everything we do involves some “cost.”  Then again, is it “cost,” or is it “investment?”  We generally think of the word “investment” as a financial term.  Webster’s New World Dictionary also defines the word “invest” as “to endow with qualities.”  Leave investments in ConAgra to Wall Street and see what happens.  Invest in your soil.

 

 

My research has been focused lately on discovering the role of minerals in catalyzing the synthesis of vitamins in the plant.  When I look up individual vitamins, I find they may be a deceptive complex of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in various atomic combinations.  Beta-carotene, for instance, is a hydrocarbon.  But this is what minerals do.  They serve as catalysts in the fabrication of vitamins and other nutrients within the grass plant.

 

As Albrecht says, a catalyst will effect a reaction within the plant to fabricate these nutrients such as vitamins, but not be present in the vitamin.

 

The absence of minerals in the plant-derived nutrients they served to catalyze into existence is what primes us to buy the concept that animals (and humans) can consume minerals directly and obtain a health benefit. Indirectly, we may or may not be able to use the minerals we (and our horses) consume in the form of supplements.  But we will never benefit from the bypassed plant fabrication of vitamins and other nutritional compounds such as proteins that our food should be making for us.

 

Albrecht states:  “It is in this catalyst class that magnesium serves when it is the core of the green chlorophyll of leaves catalyzing the process of photosynthesis…magnesium demonstrates its service as the catalyst in the green chlorophyll of leaves by causing carbon dioxide and water to be reduced, to give off gaseous oxygen, and to result in the simple sugar.

 

“…Magnesium is only 24 parts in the total of 900 or more parts of either of the two kinds of chlorophyll.

 

“When connected with magnesium many proteins become catalysts, but without the magnesium they are not.  They are said to be denatured when the magnesium is removed.  Magnesium is said to be a coenzyme, or a prosthetic element in this situation, determining the enzyme’s possible service.”

 

In other words, the processes within the plant which create, compound synthesize and fabricate complete nutrition for the animal body, cannot take place if the minerals are not first available to the plant.  It is a grand scheme of Nature that the plant does not “consume” the minerals in the fabrication of this nutrition, so that the plant can deliver its payload of minerals to the animal that consumes it, for further service in the animal body.

 

Andre Voisin, famous French Scientist/Farmer in his Soil, Grass and Cancer points out the sheer absurdity of the standard test for nutrients in plant (hay) analysis.  For instance, using nitrogen content as a measure of “Crude Protein.”  He has made a very good case for the fact that a high Crude Protein hay may very well be just a toxic load of nitrates in the absence of soil minerals, and that a lower Crude Protein hay from a fully mineralized soil may actually have a higher level of real protein.  He shows how thiamine is increased in the presence of adequate phosphorus.  He also relates a study that proves cattle can be protected against Bang’s disease (brucellosis) with sufficient soil manganese, but that supplemental manganese in the ration offers no protection from the Bang’s bacillus.

 

I think it was Albrecht who said that brucellosis is “no more contagious than the stomach ache.” And yet every breeding cow in the United States is required by law to be vaccinated against brucellosis.

 

I will continue to try to relate specific mineral catalyst actions to the fabrication of nutrition in the grass in an effort to explode the myth of inorganic salts satisfying the innate animal craving for minerals.  It must come from the soil via the plants.  For now, this is the best I can do.

 

I also want to continue spreading the important message that the path back to soil fertility has not been buried under the NPK superhighway.  We CAN return our fields to fertility.

It starts with a shovel and the empty, washed plastic bucket that your last order of supplements came in.