Spicing Up The Cows' Diet!

This year we tried an experiment that I read about over the winter.  Putting garlic in the cattle mineral reduces flies!  Yes, seemed hard to believe but many farmers were adamant about how much it helped reduce flies. We give free choice mineral (they come and lick as much as they want but usually eat about 2oz per day) to all our cows.  There are critical minerals they need to survive/thrive copper, selenium are critical for reproductive health, calcium, iron…. Magnesium (without which they develop fatal grass tetany when grazing fast growing pastures in the spring).

So we had our local mineral producer add 1% garlic to the mineral.  And we are now believers.  We tried an experiment on a farm with 100 acres and 2 groups of cows.  The group without garlic had normal flies the group with garlic had 4x less flies!!!  This is huge for cow comfort, performance and in reducing diseases such as pinkeye which is spread by flies.  Apparently the flies don’t like the smell that the cows now emit.  We don’t smell it on the cows but definitely do in the mineral.  After handling a few bags of mineral the smell is all over you.   And no garlic mineral allowed in enclosed vehicles.  And we will have to eliminate the mineral for the last 60 days prior to slaughter to make sure we don’t send any preseasoned meat to you!