No Serious Deficiency Problems

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31984, 10 May 1969, Page 8

No Serious Deficiency Problems

, Dry stock or animals ' being fed a maintenance ' ration of grain should , hot run into mineral or vitamin deficiencies, Mr ' G. BL Scales, a. scientist 1 at the Department of t Agriculture’s Tara Hills > research station in North ! Otago, told farmers ] attending a field after-1 The only stock that were 1 UVnlvTnriin iiWhtaprnhlem < Wtttt taletum. vfainln A and 1

being increased by 10 to 15 i per cent for a Romney. With 1 a few pickings, he said that i a maintenance ration for a I 1001 b sheep might also comprise jib of grain and a jib < of hay. , On the basis of American ] standards, he said that a , maintenance level for a beef i calf might be 51b or 61b of , barley or wheat a day and . 61h_or 71b of oats a day, but j he said that work needed to i be done under local condition withlocai grain to fix i the level definitely. • i While trials were also i needed on the desirability of < crushing grain, Mr Scalps > said that on present evidence 1 it seemed to be advisable to < for cattle but

not for sheep. There was, however, no advantage, he said, in crushing grain too finely. Mr E. C. Orr, a livestock instructor with the Department of Agriculture, at Fairlie, suggested that old ewes with broken mouths should be fed with crushed grain. Australian work, he said, had shown that those fed with broken grain had done much better. The same speaker expressed some concern about the feeding, of concentrated feed rations without an accompanying element of roughage. It could not be expected to change the course of nature overnigbt, he said. . He recalled that where ewes

were being fed in the United i States on a balanced diet of i cereals, minenils and protein supplement it had been found at lambing that a high pro- ; portion of weak lambs' were . being born. It had then been . found that when the diet was : made up to 50 per cent of roughage it put an end to j this problem, and if this , roughage contained half le- , gumes it was not necessary to use a mineral or protein . supplement A speaker in the audience I remarked that the reduced wear on teeth of four, and ■ five-year-old ewes under grain ’ feeding meant-that they could , be retained for an extra i year. ■ US: