MINERALS FOR STOCK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 August 1938, Page 3

MINERALS FOR STOCK

PHOSPHORUS AND CALCIUM. INCREASE IN MILK YIELD. An important factor, but one perhaps not widely noticed or appreciated, in the feeding of the bacon pigs which won the first four places in the New Zealand bacon championship held recently at Whangarei, was that their breeder and feeder, Mr Johnston, stated that all had received a mineral supplement; Minerals, and particularly phosphorus and calcium, are absolutely essential an the nutrition of all animals and humans, and particularly so in the case of pigs, which, according to the findings of research, require more than any other domesticated animal. Pigs quickly show the effects of phosphorus and lime deficiency. These two minerals compose about threequarters of the mineral matter of their bodies, and over nine-tenths of the mineral matter in the skeleton. They make up more than half the total mineral content of milk and are therefore a primary essential for all young, growing stock and children, whose diet is chiefly milk. Recent tests at the Minnesota experiment station have shown that phosphorus, when supplied in the ration of animals suffering from phosphorus deficiency, increased the milk yield from 50 to 146 per cent. In these tests not only was the quantity of milk increased, but its health-giving qualities were greatly improved. The man who starves his stock qf minerals is deliberately limiting their capacity for health, growth and milk production, and this applies most of all in the case of pregnant animals, and those which produce litters of fast-growing young.