250 Day Mineral Bolus...

Amazing Cargill would point out the short comings of their loose mineral in order to promote the bolus. Wondering how this works. Why does it not pass through the animal like all other feed stuffs. Seems it would have to lay in the rumen with slow release action in order to last 250 days.

The site says this " After entering the reticulum, boluses are secure from further movement."

I am interested in this as well but the skeptic in me says no stinking way this will work.

I'm sure it will work.
However as my Vet says, just balance your ration and then there's no need for phoo phoo dust.

How well it works is another story.
I would like to see the data that made them decide to bring it to market.

TexasBred":3pv6kk32 said:

Amazing Cargill would point out the short comings of their loose mineral in order to promote the bolus. Wondering how this works. Why does it not pass through the animal like all other feed stuffs. Seems it would have to lay in the rumen with slow release action in order to last 250 days.

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It doesn't enter the rumen, it gets trapped in the reticulum (honey comb structure that allows small particles to enter the rumen, larger ones are "unswallowed" and rechewed) and slow releases form there. The big let down for me is that it is not recommended in areas with high soil antagonists. If it could be used in areas with high molybdenum and other antagonists the product would have real promise for producers that struggles in those areas with lower than ideal conception rates.

Price/h/d (if you buy 240 at one time- 120 HD not sale price)
$15/cow for 250 days or $0.06/h/d. If i recall fairly cheap compared to loose mineral. But you still have to supply salt to the cows, so that kind of ruins there "you save labor" argument in my opinion and bumps the $/h/d too

Seeking opinions on this... Could this product benefit your bulls at turn out? Do you feel your bulls are hitting the mineral feeders consistently or are they too busy doing other "stuff"?

CJ - my impression was it only covered trace minerals plus vitamins and in addition to salt, di-cal would still have
to be provided.... perhaps I'm wrong, but that was my thought.

Son of Butch":3ezf2o6z said:

CJ - my impression was it only covered trace minerals plus vitamins and in addition to salt, di-cal would still have
to be provided.... perhaps I'm wrong, but that was my thought.

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You would be correct, It doesn't supply much in the way of macro minerals. So you would need to supply & balance macros somehow. Another negative IMHO.

Using them in young growing breeding bulls might be the first choice and give you some peace of mind.
As far as increasing conception rates, they provided no data to back it up.
IF they had actual data from successful trials wouldn't they have provided it?
:2cents:

Butch- Unfortunately improved conception rate studies are very challenging/ expensive to do so you rarely see them. Mostly because of boring statistical stuff nobody here wants to read about. The long short of it is you would be trying to prove a difference exists between very similar numbers (say 89% vs 90%) and that would take a lot of animals (in this case the experimental unit would actually be pastures) to provide the statistical power to prove.

Yup and when splitting hairs at 1 or 2% (and then calculate margin of error to boot) is it worth $15 when you still need
to provide salt and macro minerals?

Plus if you run enough studies, I bet you could prove watering cattle from the right side of a hydrant vs the left side
increases gain or conception or whatever.

I did a grazing research project with a hard plastic bolus with wings on it that was about the same size as these. The wings stuck out 2 inches on each to help keep the cows from losing the bolus. the retention of the bolus was not good. I would not try it.

Cattle magnets are about the same size and retention is fine.
They could or perhaps did do blood draws to test trace mineral levels to determine effectiveness.

cjmc":30fhbbi1 said:

Son of Butch":30fhbbi1 said:

CJ - my impression was it only covered trace minerals plus vitamins and in addition to salt, di-cal would still have
to be provided.... perhaps I'm wrong, but that was my thought.

Click to expand...

You would be correct, It doesn't supply much in the way of macro minerals. So you would need to supply & balance macros somehow. Another negative IMHO.

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Reloader 250™ is not intended to be a year-round mineral program. The 250 day trace mineral coverage is designed to augment high quality, free-choice mineral programs when providing traditional minerals is problematic during the recommended use period after early lactation.

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Looks like just another needless expense to me.