Introduction

• The assessment of mineral status is a useful tool when investigating herd performance and health. 
• The assessment of mineral status should always be a team approach, including farmer, vet, nutritionist and any other relevant person (farm consultant, stockman etc). 
• Often a mineral assessment is only requested when there is a problem on farm.  However it can be useful to undertake routine assessments to monitor the mineral status of the herd and pre-empt problems.  
• Such assessments may also include some cost benefit analysis.  The potential economic returns against cost of ‘correction’ do need to be considered.

Production/Performance Records

Before you start

Getting started

Feed and water sampling

Sampling the animal

Past, present and future

Sentinel groups/trials

Further Reading

Publications

Refereed Papers

• Recent references from PubMed and VetMedResource.
• Bone P A & Kendall N R (2011) How to determine on farm forage mineral problems. Cattle Practice 19, 133-136.

Other sources of information

• Kendall N R & Bone P (2015) Farm and Laboratory Assessment of Mineral Availability in Ruminants. In: Recent Advances in Animal Nutrition. Eds: Garnsworthy P C & Wiseman J) in Press.
• Kendall N R, Stubbings L A & Sinclair K D (2015) A Determination of Sample Number Requirements for Nutritional Analyses in Sheep. In: Proceedings of British Society of Animal Science. pp 157.
• Kendall N R & Bone P A (2014) Sheep mineral supplements: what do they do and when should they be used? Animal Health Advisor . Aug 6-8.
• Kendall N R (2014) Understanding and dvising on the need for mineral supplements in livestock. Animal Health Advisor  June 12-13.
• Kendall N R (2008) Choosing right strategy for large animal mineral supplementation. Vet Times 10th March 30-31.