Articles

Understanding and correcting mineral deficiencies can mean the difference between a poor and a good lamb crop next year.

Trace elements play an important role in livestock nutrition and contribute significantly towards health, immunity, growth, fertility and lactation. However, care must be taken to ensure that supplementation overcomes any deficiencies in forage but at the same time, the risk of toxicity and exceeding legal limits must be avoided.

You may not have heard of it but this bacteria is the most commonly diagnosed cause of abortion in Scottish cattle.  Bacillus licheniformis abortions are most common in housed, pit silage fed, spring calving beef cows in the last 2 months of pregnancy. 

Poor sampling technique is one of the main causes of unreliable silage analysis results.  It is important to take a representative sample of the silage which will be fed to stock.  This ensures the results are reliable and accurate, in order to ration livestock as effectively as possible.

Barley stubbles can be a useful area to keep sheep for a period in the autumn/early winter to let grassland rest or buy more time outdoors, however there are many considerations to make.