Re: [AlpacaTalk] Re: Feed
Another issue brought up in a previous post was the apparent
difficulty in having a correct feed formulated. I think the word used
was "Risk". Oooooo, so scary! Don't try this at home!
Well, really, it's not risky and it's not all that difficult. We had
our wish list, we have Norm Evans' book with pages and pages of
nutritional requirements by region. We took our wish list and the
relevant pages from the Alpaca Field Manual, along with some more
pages of research on selenium levels in the Pacific Northwest, and we
got our first run some time later. We still tinker with the formula.
Do we need this ingredient at all? Do we want more of that? Why is
this in here at all?
Please, to anyone who wishes to have their own custom feed milled,
please please please don't be scared off by those tactics. It's
funny, I was reading on the website run by that private feed label
with the Amway marketing scheme. The owner actually says that his
feed mill "...to my knowledge, we are the only urea-free, antibiotic-
free, meat and bone meal-free, insecticide-
preservative-
that's just laughable. Unless he's intentionally not looking at any
other mill specs for any reason, and refuses to do so to make this
statement untrue. You can find many feed mills close enough to your
location (where ever you may be) to make it possible to have your own
feed milled, to your specs, and with the best ingredients you wish to
include. Many mills in the country are organic, or otherwise will
mill a product exactly as you want it. That link I put up is by no
means the only list of custom feed mills in the country. Ask your
local mom & pop feed store owner about small custom mills.
And actually looking over the ingredient list, that feed looks mostly
ok, although I would leave out quite a few of them for my own feed.
The ingredients look acceptable, the problem was, our alpacas
wouldn't touch the stuff when they were in the Houston area and no
other alpaca feed was available. And they were there for months.
Didn't like it, wouldn't eat it.
Why try to fool your alpacas into eating something that they wouldn't
normally eat if they were on their own? That's why our feed now has
fewer ingredients than ever, and is only what they need, plus flax
seed for exceptional fleece (Please see Kallista's fleece shot! :D )
I mean, really, it's only meant to be a carrier for those minerals
and vitamins that otherwise would be in a free choice bin that they
might take or might not depending on if they need salt, because the
salt in those vitamin mineral mixes is the limiting factor, and it's
the inducement to take it. Plus Flax Seed.
Thing is, we don't want them to have anything else.
Heather
Heather Zeleny
White Lotus Alpacas
Creswell, OR
541.895.0964
Holistic Farm and Elite Fleece
http://www.whitelot
http://tech.
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posted by Chaddo at 8:19 PM
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