Mineral disorders in grazing livestock and the usefulness of soil and plant analysis in the assessment of these disorders

Abstract

Summary. This paper briefly describes common mineral disorders affecting livestock at pasture in Australia, their mineral requirements, factors affecting these requirements and laboratory methods of assessing the mineral status of the animal. The benefits and limitations of mineral analyses of soil and pasture samples for the purposes of identifying and preventing mineral disorders of the grazing animal are discussed. Mineral analyses of pasture are of particular value in the identification of the causes of copper and magnesium deficiency and of acute calcium deficiency in livestock. Selective grazing, adventitious ingestion of soil and variability in the mineral reserves of the animal, however, limit the usefulness of pasture analyses to identify a mineral disorder in the grazing animal.