The FARMER

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 6864, 21 May 1932, Page 12

The FARMER

ago consumption may be equal for all members of the flock. This experience has been duplicated in Now Zealand. Value of Salt Licks. The giving of salt licks to stock, they continue, is an admirable method of feeding minerals. The principle is that common salt, which is palatable and sought after by moat grazing stock,, is a substance of undoubted value in maintaining the thriftiness or health of all vegetable-feeding animals. Tho other minerals required are apparently not so attractive as common salt, and are not oaten to the same regular extent as the salt, put before them. It has therefore become the practice to mix any mineral required with a largo quantity of coarse o.r fine agricultural salt and feed it as a powder lick, or alternatively to put it out in the paddocks after pressing the ingredients into a brick or block in order to minimise the rvastage by rain. Both methods arc extensively practised. In tho case of the powder lick it is necessary to havo some box or trough protected from the weather, from which receptacle the lick may be fed. In this way such substances (presumed to be tasteless to animals as they are to human beings) as calcium phosphate, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, iron carbonate, iron oxide, charcoal and sulphur arc given mixed with tho salt. Some other mineral foods which are soluble and therefore presumably can be tasted by the animals, and which arc equally necessary, but arc used in very much smaller quantities, aro also mixed in with the salt lick. There are iodine, administered as potassium iodide, magnesium sulphate (Epsom salts), sodium sulphato (Glauber .salts). These, presumably, arc not repulsive to the animal, although magnesium salts have a bitter taste to human beings. Use of Iron Salts. It has been found in the cases of the bush-sickness region that it is undesirable to mix solublo iron salts in the lick for sheep. Tho particular soluble salt used was the double iron and ammonium citrate. Many formulae have been published, in which the use of ferrous sulphato is advocated, but how far this is attractive or nauseous to sheep has yet to bo determined. The experiment with the double citrate certainly indicates that tho taste might prevent sheep taking it. Tho iron sulphate, however, is useful perhaps in combating parasites, but for this purpose it would be more efficacious to administer the material as a bolus or drench. When iron is required in a lick as food-iron for continuous use it would be preferable to use finely ground limonite (hydrated oxide of iron) instead of the iron sulphate. “Tho pellet method of feeding is comparatively costly, requiring some patience to inaugurate on a run owing to tho time taken to teach tho animals to take the pellets, but when established as a practice there is no wastage due to weather and no expense is incurred in providing trough* for feeding,” conclude the writers. The salt-powder lick is necessary at present when phosphate's are used, as although much time and money has been spent by various organisations and by tho department of agriculture in endeavouring to make a brick or block with phosphates whioh would stand up to transport and keep its shape in the field, this has not been achieved. In using a powder-lick a trough or feeding box is, of course, necessary. “Block or brick licks of various sizes can easily be made where phosphates are absent from the mixture. These can bo hung up to fences when small in size by means of a wire staple let into tho brick, or may simply bo thrown on the ground, the salt being so little soluble in block form, that the loss from weather is negligible.”