Wedoany.com Report-Mar 3, In Utah’s arid landscape, cattle producers face a critical challenge: deficiencies in essential trace minerals like copper, zinc, manganese and selenium, which are vital for cattle health. These mineral deficiencies, worsened by drought and environmental conditions, lead to severe health problems, including increased mortality and illness among affected livestock.

Dr. Kara Thornton is helping both graduate and undergraduate students collect samples and data from the steers that were on trial. 

Dr. Kara Thornton-Kurth of Utah State University, supported by a Western SARE Research and Education grant, led a project to compare how various mineral supplementation practices impact deficiencies, feedlot performance and response to vaccinations. Their findings revealed that targeted, feed-based mineral supplementation improved cattle health and carcass quality while being more cost effective than injectable supplements.

As a result, the project is enabling producers to make more informed and cost-effective decisions regarding mineral supplementation practices to enhance the economic sustainability and production efficiency of their production systems.

A recent post-project evaluation of SARE projects awarded between 2016 and 2019 found that listening to producers was key to the project’s success. “A couple of producers had gotten calves from areas that were mineral deficient. Some of them had up to 50% death loss … and wanted to know what they could have done differently to change this in the future,” says Thorton-Kurth. “The big takeaway from our research is that even in really mineral-deficient cattle, the injectable (method) is way too much mineral for the animals.”