By John Lawrence, Senior Mineral Supplements Technical Manager
With rising input costs becoming commonplace, there has never been a better time to arrange a mineral review for your dairy herd.
This is a relatively straightforward process which will start with a mineral analysis of your silage. This will show the mineral footprint of your farm and highlight elements that are deficient and potentially in excess.
We then use the results from your forage mineral analysis and take in to account the precise detail of your ration and herd performance to arrive at the level of supply of each element to your cows.
We then compare these levels with the requirement of the cow, the result will allow us to formulate a precise specification to balance your ration on your farm and importantly highlight areas of over supply which could save you money.
We have recently saved many customers £100 or more per tonne of minerals using this process
Please note that we do not charge more for a bespoke formulation, cost is based on what is in the formulation, not because it is bespoke.
Did you know that Mole Valley Farmers specialise in the manufacture of custom-made minerals for ruminants? Approximately 95% of the dairy minerals that we manufacture are bespoke formulations to suit the farm, herd performance and the ration being fed. This has evolved over the past 30 years or so as this service to our members has become increasingly popular.
Where “Custom-Made” comes as standard
At Mole Valley Farmers, we know how important it is that your livestock are fed the correct mineral to suit your situation. We want to ensure that this will meet your specific requirements whilst taking into account other important factors such as the milk yield and performance of your herd, the ration being fed on farm health challenges such as milk fever, udder health, lameness, or fertility and in particular, the mineral status of your silage confirmed by analysis.
The challenges facing the feed raw material marketplace will mean that many rations will be changing either now or in the coming months so a mineral review should be undertaken whenever you make a significant change to the ration, once we have an up to date forage mineral analysis, this can be carried out fairly quickly once we have the details of the new ration.
We recommend that you arrange a forage mineral analysis of your 2022 silages as soon as possible so that we can help you to identify the supplementation you will need.
For more information on our free Mineral Check service or any mineral related matter, please speak to your Mole Valley Feed Solutions advisor, ring the Mineral Line on 01278 420481 or email minerals@molevalleyfarmers.com