Skip to main content

Minerals, mastitis and miracle cures

Its funny that I have recently read two very different books that both focused on the importance of minerals for ongoing health.  The first book was Natural Cattle Care, by Pat Coleby, as recommended by Bel at Home Grown.  I was eager to read the book as Bella had mastitis at the time and I wanted to know the quick solution. The first few chapters are all about minerals in the soil.  I read them, thinking to myself "yeah, yeah, get on with the natural cattle care!", until I realised that was it.  Pat's theory is that if cattle have all their mineral, vitamin and protein needs met, they will be naturally healthy.  The interactions of the minerals is quite complex.  A deficiency in one mineral can cause a deficiency in another, so its hard to summarise, however the main points for me were:
  • Calcium and magnesium levels must be sufficient or cows will be susceptible to mastitis infection
  • Copper must be sufficient or cattle may suffer from worms
  • Sufficient sulphur will prevent external parasites (ticks and fleas)
  • Other trace elements are important for overall health
  • These minerals must be either in the soil (and therefore in the grass/plants eaten by the cattle) or supplemented in their feed.  I have organised for a soil test so that we can see what minerals are lacking and in the meantime we feed all the cattle a mineral mix, some extra sulphur for each of them and extra dolomite (calcium and magnesium) for Bella.
The second book I read was Norishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon, which again began with a discussion on the importance of minerals and vitamins, this time for human health.  At first I found the similarities a bit weird, but I suppose its no surprise that cattle have similar mineral needs to ourselves.  The premise of both books is that if cattle or humans are receiving sufficient nutrition (i.e. minerals, vitamins, proteins, fats etc) then we will all be in good health.  This is to say that we only get sick when our bodies are compromised in some way and more susceptible to infection (whether by bacteria, virus, parasites or cancer).  This means that they key to good health is not preventative chemicals, as we had been using on our cattle, such as drenches for worms and ticks, and antibiotics for mastitis infections.  If we balance the body's nutritional needs, it can fight infection/invasion without the need for chemicals.



This seems so simple, but it is not common practice.  Is that because the drug companies and agrochemical companies make so much money from letting us think that we need to take medicines to maintain our health?  Balancing our nutrition would be cheaper and easier and lead to long-term health rather than a dependency on drugs.

What do you think?

You might also be interested in my series on getting started with homestead dairy

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here .  You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!).  I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months.  I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog.  I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people.  I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts.  I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo.  Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about chicken tractor

How to make soap with beer (and tallow)

I may  have mentioned this before.... soap making is addictive!  Once you start, you just want to keep making more soap.  And not the same soap, you want to try all sorts of different soaps.  I made the mistake of joining a facebook group called Saponification Nation  and now my facebook newsfeed is full of glorious soaps, in all colours and shapes, which makes it even harder to resist the urge to experiment.  One soap that kept popping up a few weeks ago was soap made with beer. I generally prefer not to use ingredients just for the sake of it, I like to know that they are adding something to the properties of the finished soap.   As you know, I don't like to use artificial ingredients either (colours or fragrances).   When I read about beer in soap I found out that beer adds sugar to the mixture, which increases lather.  I use tallow in my soap, which has limited lather, so anything that adds lather could improve the soap.  It also contributes a tan or brown colour to