Choosing goat minerals
One of the new
requirements that we're having to get used to with goats is the need to
provide free-choice minerals. With chickens, additives are
included in the bagged feed, and I've lazily assumed that the feed
company knows what they're doing. But since goats get most of
their nutrition from pasture, I need to choose a mineral supplement to
make sure their diet is well-rounded.
While
I'd like to buy goat minerals locally, my research thus far has turned
up only solid mineral blocks at our nearby feed stores. Unlike
horses and cows, solid minerals aren't recommended for goats since the
caprines' smaller teeth can't get enough minerals off the block to keep
them healthy. So I started hunting down loose goat minerals
online.
Your first decision when
choosing between different types of loose goat minerals is whether you
want to go with a scientifically formulated product, or whether you want
to follow the advice of Pat Coleby in Natural Goat Care
and figure your goat will get all of her trace minerals from kelp, to
which you add only sulfur, copper, and dolomite. I'll probably
take a hybrid approach --- providing free-choice kelp but also giving
our goats access to a mineral mix. In terms of the latter, the
table below includes the five main sources I've found online for loose goat
minerals to be shipped to your door. The only option that doesn't
require shipping is Manna Pro from Tractor Supply, which can probably
be found semi-locally if we call around (and which is cheapest on my
chart since shipping isn't included).
| Purina (Valley Vet) | Manna Pro (Tractor Supply) | Jolly German Ultimate Goat Mineral | Sweetlix Meat Maker (Jeffers Pet) | Golden Blend (Hoegger) | ||
| Protein (%) | 4 | |||||
| Calcium (%) | 10 | 17.6 | 10 | 15.4 | 14.3 | |
| Phosphorus (%) | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | |
| Salt (%) | 43 | 13.2 | 43.5 | 11 | 22 | |
| Potassium (%) | 0.1 | 1.5 | 0.1 | 1.5 | 0.9 | |
| Magnesium (%) | 1 | 1.5 | 1 | 1.5 | 1 | |
| Sulfur (%) | 1.2 | |||||
| Iron (%) | 1 | |||||
| Cobalt (varies) | 240 ppm |
0.01% | ||||
| Copper (ppm) | 1775 | 1350 | 1775 | 1780 | 1500 |
|
| Iodine (varies) | 450% | 0.0007% | ||||
| Manganese (varies) | 2750 ppm | 1.25% | 0.03% | |||
| Selenium (ppm) | 25 | 12 | 25 | 50 | 26 |
|
| Zinc (ppm) | 7500 | 5500 | 8000 | 12500 | 4000 | |
| Vitamin A (IU/lb) | 130000 | 300000 | 140000 | 300000 | 220000 | |
| Vitamin D (IU/lb) | 11000 | 30000 | 11000 | 30000 | 45000 | |
| Vitamin E (IU/lb) | 750 | 400 | 750 | 400 | 220 | |
| Price | 42.8 | 9.99 | 35.99 | 39.95 | 54.95 | |
| Pounds | 25 | 8 | 15 | 18? | 25 | |
| $/lb | 1.71 | 1.25 | 2.40 |
2.22? | 2.20 |
|
Assuming you don't need
to choose your goat minerals based solely on price, there are a few
other things to consider as you peruse the chart above. Plain salt
can be provided free choice 
in
a separate compartment, so you might want to choose something like
Mannapro or Sweetlix with a low salt content so that your goats will
only eat the trace minerals if they're craving something other than
(cheap) salt. You might also want to look at your soil test
results if you plan to feed your goats primarily on pasture, then to
select a mineral mix high in the ingredients that are scarce in your
soil.
And then there's the big
copper debate, which will be fodder for another post. Goats need a
lot more copper than other livestock, and some breeders provide boluses
(huge pills) of copper every few months to keep their goats healthy and
to combat worms. Others follow Pat Coleby's advice and add copper
sulfate to their goats' mineral ration for the same reason. More
on pros and cons of copper supplementation in a later post, but feel
free to chime in now if you have thoughts one way or another on any
goat-mineral-related issue. And I'd love to hear your feedback on
which mineral mixes you've used and on how well they've done at keeping
your goats healthy.
(As for the photos ---
yep, I'm busy leash-training our goats. When Lucy isn't involved,
the training sessions go quite well.)
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Ah yes, the great copper debate. I definitely have to add it for my cows, but people really think you're crazy when they see it.
I've had good luck with Jolly German's dolomite. Hard to find good quality except online.
Great post!
I've used the Manna Pro mix for years. They like it, it's fairly cheap, and I can always find it at Tractor Supply.
Hi Anna and Mark,
Most folks know that testing plants for proper mineral uptake is the ONLY way to know if the soil mineral mix is really working.
Same for animals. Do a hair trace mineral test on your animals (and yourselves?). Later see how their mineral content has changed. A poor man's version is Cary Reams RBTI tests.
For whatever reason getting real data and using it doesn't seem to be popular? Maybe $$ and lack of familiarity? Doesn't change the basic point :).
John (engineer in case you didn't guess
)