supplements: kelp

Once or twice a year we offer our cows as much kelp as they will eat. A fifty pound bag will last a couple of week with twenty or so bovines, all sizes. They eat it voraciously for a little while, then slack way off. We don't often bother to give them a second bag.

Tuesday we took a bag of kelp back to the dry cows and filled two tubs, and the hustle and bustle were tremendous, as all the cows, big and little, shoved to the front, or hung back to wait their turn, as seemed to them desirable. Then we set fence for the day's new paddock. Interestingly, the cows immediately moved up onto the new forage, leaving the kelp to the respectful yearlings. It wasn't because they were hungry, since they still had plenty of grass in the day before's paddock. No, they just weren't so tied up in the kelp that they forgot to race for the new paddock. We've never seen that before.

Could it be that, with good grazing and increased organic matter in our soils, our pasture plants are beginning to provide all the minerals our cows need? It would account for the animals' relative indifference to the offered kelp: maybe the cows have no significant mineral deficiencies. Exciting thought.