It seems kind of funny to me that by learning how to take better care of my livestock, I learned how to take better care of my family. I always assumed that items I purchased at the feed store were what my livestock needed. Just like the grocery store, the products offered for sale are good for you… . Right? It took learning alternative farming methods to wake me up.
We always bought the 50 lb trace mineral salt blocks for our cows. They lasted a long time, and gee they sure lasted quite a while in the rain too. I never questioned the practice of having refined salt mixed with minerals and pressed into a block. Like the cow says in Babe, “The way things are, is the way things are.” Just like taking the germ and bran from the wheat and then combining them again in a granola recipe. Not good. Sure all the ingredients are good for you, but in their natural state, not after they have been subjected to the Industrial Revolution method of extracting every last item that possibly can be sold for some “better” use.
We used loose salt, for salting our hay when storing it in the barn, but give loose salt to the cattle? Pshaw, who heard of such a thing. Throw a block or two out there and call it good, and if the pattern they licked into it was interesting, just enter it in a contest.
Once we started giving the cows loose salt, we realized how little salt they had been able to get from those hard licks. We still were using refined white “feed mixing salt” and they were going through it like mad. “Geez, a couple of them ol’ blocks would last all summer – what gives, now the dang fools got brain fever or sumpin.” ” We’re gonna go broke just buyin’ salt fer them critters!” We stocked up on salt after that first summer of salt enlightenment. Big mistake. We discovered how to make our own salt blocks. Let’s just say we live in a “moist” environment. By spring, all our extra bags of salt, had become concrete pillows of salt.
But something had happened over winter, we had read even more about salt, and found some like minded individuals. We learned that salt was really more important as an industrial commodity. The industrial concerns get first pick, and the lowly humans and even lower livestock get the rest. Human salt gets subjected to the same caustic soda treatment as the industrial salt. Extracted components so important for health are worth much more in the chemical market. Dessicants and bleaches are added to the refined salt, making it even more unhealthy to consume. No wonder they recommended low salt diets. Salt missing it’s magnesium salt component is very bad for us. After reading this, we bought Redmond mineral salt for our cows. We offered it free choice, and they loved it. It only cost about $2.50 more per bag, and even though the salt was naturally moist, it never became hard and unusable. We never looked back.
Along these same lines, we had also attended several symposiums where Sally Fallon was a keynote speaker. Her talks about forming the Weston A. Price Foundation were stimulating and especially sessions about good salt being so necessary for true health. Her recommendation for table salt was Celtic Sea Salt, real sun dried sea salt, with its actual brine intact. Not to be confused with refined sea salt found in most stores, (including health food stores) Celtic Sea Salt retains all the macro and trace minerals present in natural salts.
There are many excellent natural salts available. We have settled on Celtic Sea Salt, and Redmond Real salt for the humans that reside at our farm, and Redmond Natural mineral salt for our livestock. In our area these are easy to obtain and aren’t really that much more expensive than the alternative.
A great book on the subject of Celtic Sea Salt and salt in general is: Seasalt’s Hidden Powers, The Biological Action of All Ocean Minerals on Body and Mind, by Jacques de Langre, Ph.D.
RealSalt and Celtic Sea Salt.
RealSalt and Celtic Sea Salt. I use the RealSalt in recipes and for the table, and the Celtic Sea Salt in moist recipes that give the salt crystals time to dissolve.
….”Sure all the ingredients are good for you, but in their natural state, not after they have been subjected to the Industrial Revolution method of extracting every last item that possibly can be sold for some “better” use.”….
Wonderful insight here! You are sooo right about that!
Now that I look back, I used to have horses and was always in wonder if they ever got anything off those blocks. Now, in the days of the gourmet foods revolution, TV chefs are singing the praises of grey salt or fleur de sel (flower of salt.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleur_de_sel. It’s full of minerals and the flavor is so much better.
I found some in a specialty shop… paid a bundle but I’ll never go back to that over processed salt product again. I’ve since found a more reasonably priced natural salt source.
Feeding this stuff to our livestock… what a novel idea!
Thanks for the post and Merry Christmas!
I usually just buy kosher salt, pickling salt, and regular iodized salt for human use. In fact, I just took inventory and I have 13 pounds of it. I need the iodine for my thyroid condition. Have you read anything about “better” salt sources with iodine?
Good post, I too just thought salt was salt. Never even hit my ‘radar’ to question. This site is helping me to not be such a ‘sheeple’ or is it sheeople? Whatever -someone who follow the herd 🙂 K
I’ve been using sea salt for some time, greatly appreciating the better flavor. Matriarchy brings up a good question, though, can sea salt be used for canning and pickling? And what about the iodine?
Thanks for yet another informative, provocative post.
liA
2F5L, you are right to wonder, horse’s tongues are soft and it is even harder for them to lick those hard blocks. Cattle have rough tongue (similar to a cat) to help them grip grass for grazing (no top teeth, cattle have to tear grass, not bite it), and even they give up licking before they actually get what they need.
Thanks for the comment, and Merry Christmas to you!
Matriarchy, Celtic Sea Salt aka as Fleur de Sel has natural iodine. The Grain and Salt Society sells the Celtic Sea Salt and there is quite a bit of good information in Nourishing Traditions Cookbook about salt and when to use it in cooking etc. The crystals (size of rock salt) are more affordable, and there are ceramic grinders available to grind it for table use. It may be available at a healthfood store, just make sure it is really Celtic Sea Salt, and not just sea salt. The problem with iodized table salt, is that you need ALL the minerals natural salt contains, not just a supplement here and there added back in to a refined product. We feed Thorvin Kelp to our cows for iodine, good kelp or sea weed products for humans are a possibilty for you also. But, I found it easier just to use good salt in all my cooking and the problems take care of themselves. I do use kosher salt for pasta water, since that water is going to go down the drain. Hope this helps 🙂
HickChick – as a former part-time sheeople myself, it is a full time job just learning industrial farming and food production just so we know what to avoid. Sheeople is a great term. 🙂
Thanks for this great post and discussion – I use Redmond and Celtic salts too.
I am hypothyroid (very low thyroid function) due to an autoimmune thyroid disease. I’ve done a lot of research on thyroid function and nutrition, and and I STRONGLY recommend to Matriarchy (and even to those who don’t have known thyroid conditions) that you rely on naturally occuring sources of iodine rather than the iodine additives in processed salts. Not sure what kind of thyroid condition you have, Matriarchy, but if you need iodine, good naturally-occurring sources are seaweed and natural sea salts. These or other natural iodine sources (fish) are much more thyroid supportive than “iodized” salt.
1 in 8 women are hypothyroid today, and there is a great deal of speculation that our diets contribute mightily to this. Eating natural salts is a great way to support your thyroid function.
I know this post is about salt, so I won’t veer to much further into thyroid land, but if you are interested in more, here’s an article I wrote a few years ago called “Bringing The Thyroid to Life:
http://www.newlifejournal.com/Oct06/Trigg.shtml
If I could amend it, I would add a section about good salt and bad salt!
Thanks for the post, Ms. Matron.
Ali, I have went to mostly lactofermenting using Celtic Sea Salt, but when I do make vinegar pickles I use kosher salt, and I don’t use any salt in my canning preferring to add salt at the end of cooking.
And more on iodine too for Matriarchy, the iodine supplement put back in refined salt to make it marketable as iodized is in an unusable form and in such toxic amounts overdoses can occur. Overdoses can be responsible for vague maladies, and other health problems, which can be hard to pinpoint. As with anything, too much iodine can be as bad as the lack of it. With our cattle, pinkeye can be a problem. Conventional treatment calls for iodine injections or vaccinations. Feeding kelp free choice has cured the problem, not masked it. It is much easier to prevent something prophylactically through nutrition than it is to treat after the fact. Will this work for everyone? No, but like most natural methods, it doesn’t harm either.
Milkweed, thanks for your great comment and link to your article. Switching to natural salts is so easy, and the difference is miraculous. I had high blood pressure the last weeks of my pregnancy, and all that abated when I started paying attention to what kind of salt I was using.
I believe part of what makes the Celtic Salt so good, is that it is sun dried and not subjected to high heat kiln drying. We found the same with the Thorvin Kelp which is geothermally dried. We offered the cattle 3 kinds of kelp at the same time to see which one they preferred. Cattle have an extraordinary sense of taste and smell, and they picked the Thorvin. To us it all looked the same, with some variation in color and scent. Our new motto: In cows we trust
Baaaa. I never even thought about salt. *eek gads* I will begin my search for Celtic sea salt.
Can we see a post about sugar? How/when to substitute with other sweeteners like honey, applesauce, etc.
Thanks!
Another interesting post would be about Omega 3 FA.
As a veterinarian who sees WAY too many dogs with allergies I believe that the corn based diet these guys receive are at least partly to blame! Corn (and the cows/chickens who eat it) has a much higher ratio of omega 6 vs grass which has more omega3’s. Sorry to go off on a tangent!! K
Wow. You never know what you will learn, do you? Thanks, everyone!
I AM hypothyroid, and it never occurred to me look into different kinds of salt, just “iodized” or not. Guess I better figure out how to eat some seaweed, too. Haddock is supposed to be good for iodine, but I am so confused about sustainable fish that I’ve all but given up eating it.
In my food storage, I have 9# of kosher salt, and 3# of canning salt, which is mostly destined for pickling and brining. I also have 4# of iodized, which I bought *just* for me to use for my stupid thyroid. I had dismissed all the fuss about expensive gourmet salt as just another TV chef fad.
It would certainly be easier to have all of us using the same natural salt products. AND maybe help my daughters be less likely to become hypothyroid when they are older. Now, if only I could figure out how to affordably eliminate fluoride from my water….
Hickchick, I was just recently researching raw-food diets for my cat. If anyone is doing BARF or other raw food regimes for cats (or dogs), I would love to see a post and discussion about that.
Thanks for the interesting post – we love real salt too!
Just a word of caution – stock can overeat salt (and other food) if allowed to adlib feed on salt. That is why it is added to feedlot rations, as an appetite stimulant, to make cattle eat more and grow fatter faster. On some (Australian) farms, where feedlot manure is used as fertiliser on fields, there is so much salt in the manure that the soil becomes saline to the point of killing crops. Just remember that whatever salt you feed your stock is in the manure – so if you spread that on farm you are spreading salt on your land. A bit is ok, too much will harm your soil.
Sally Fallon and the Weston A Price Foundation’s information and insight were the beginnings of my journey out of sheeple-hood. I was amazed at how our diets have not only taken us away from health but common sense all in the name of convenience. From switching to Celtic Sea Salt, Raw milk, soaked grains, cod liver oil, honey and real maple syrup, etc., my little family hardly gets ill and we all have better clarity of mind, energy and sleep better! I can only imagine that pets and livestock would benefit from eating more traditionally from less processed, whole foods. Great article!
Annette, I will defer the sweetener post to the others on the blog. We are trying to cut out all cane sugar due to DH’s allergies. As for the honey, and applesauce issue, it’s easier for things to fly around here that don’t use substitutions. So we eat applesauce as applesauce, and use honey and maple syrup only occasionally.
Em, I have never heard of grass fed livestock overeating salt or minerals. Feedlot beef and high grain consumption dairy cattle are a different story though. Pat Coleby does a good job of outlining the differences between Australian soils and European and American soils in her articles in Acres USA and in her books on livestock care.
Once we quit giving cattle refined feed mixing salt, and started them on the Redmond salt, they consumed very little. We still offer minerals and salt free choice. Their choices change with the seasons and the grazing. In our poorer fields, the cattle consume more minerals, in our better grazing areas, they hardly consume any at all.
Your point is good one, definitely too much salt would be very harmful to the soil. Thank you!
Neohippiemama, it is amazing isn’t it, how far food production has progressed. And not in a good way either. We are amazed how much better the real food tastes. If we fall off the “wagon” and eat junk food, it is like a hangover – and I always wonder, how people eat like that three meals a day. No wonder kids act up in school, and adults are tired and sick all the time. Congrats on your better health! 🙂
I’ve been meaning to start a series of posts on how to change the basic, store-bought diet that is prevalent today and the first step is to change the type of salt you use. So simple, but so effective!
Great post.
Great post. We also have used redmon for the same reason for a long time….though ours was partly to supply copper for our animals (sheep included) because of deficiencies of many small nutrients on our property because of excesses of others. Our soil was bad…still is a bit bad… but better with the care we have given it over the years. Soil is were it starts for sure.
We also feed kelp and one thing I highly recommend your readers of this subject to research is selenium.
For the last few years we started feeding our animals an organic form (organic as in natural form instead of man made) of selenium called High yeast selenium.
We noticed such extreme differences in the health of our livestock with it that we now take our own supplemental form.
Testing showed us that selenium was deficient in our area EVEN THOUGH the “higher ups” say it isn’t.
We have found many friends across the country that did testing for selenium on our encouragement even though vets and ag people said that was not their livestocks issue—-only to find it was. They all have switched to high yeast selenium and our finding their animals too show much improved health.
Natural forms…always outrank anything that is “man made” in my opinion. And bah humbug to all those “experts” that tell us we are fine eating the way we currently do.
Monica
Sarah, that would be a great idea for a series of posts.
Monica, are you using Diamond V products or something else? I would be interested in moving to a higher plane of health on our cattle. They have made such an improvement since we switched to free choice minerals, but I can’t resist the tweaking. We now only have a few cows that were not rotationally grazed, and better mineralized as “children” and the differences are so apparent.
Thanks for the great comment!
How do you feed loose minerals? In a bucket, protected from rain somehow?
I’ve got horses, and right now I just feed white salt blocks. The red mineral salt blocks are “formulated” for cows – they’re not great for cows anyway, but they’re certainly not intended for horses and I stay away from them.
I’m definitely open to changing their type of salt, I’m just not sure how to feed it!
Wow, really nice article! I’ve been wondering what that lovely pinkish salt you’ve been using is…have seen it in some of your cooking pictures. I’m glad you included the brand names of the salts and detailed explanations of the benefits and uses. Often I’ll be on the lookout for a better alternative for this or that but will have little idea where to begin if it’s not carried in the few stores I frequent.
We have been using the Redmond’s Real Salt for a while now and I really enjoy it. I have never seen the Celtic Sea Salt in stores around here. I will have to look around for it.
I have been thinking about the little salt block we have for our bunny. Do you suppose I could just give her a bit of the Redmonds in a dish?
This is a great post. We use the Celtic and Real Salts in the house. Also some kosher and pickling and canning salts for cheese making. Making brine with the first two salts can get expensive!!
I must admit that we’ve switched to standard refined livestock salt. We bought 200 lbs just to have in case we need to make a salt box to preserve meat in the future. To save $$, we started feeding it to the cows. But we do prefer the Redmonds.
What minerals do you all feed to your animals? We used a Pat Coleby mix for a year or so to correct an obvious copper deficiency. But the cows were still missing something….I suspect phosphorous. So we’ve switched back to Countryside Natural’s Healthy Minerals.
Where do you buy your Celtic Salt? The best price I have found is at Azure Standard, even shipping it here to Tennessee. The Celtic Salt and Fleur de Sel are slightly different. The latter naturally forms on the surface of the water while the “plain” Celtic Salt is “worked” more to dry. It is the tastiest!!
Funder, we feed our minerals in a barn or loafing shed during the rainy season. If you have a place for your horse to get out of the weather or a stall that would be perfect. They don’t have to have access 24 hours a day, hopefully just at some point every day.
Robbyn, I get my salt usually from Azure Standard, they have great pricing and sometimes it is cheaper than even locally. I do have to drive to the drop site though, when I order.
Stephany, I think a dish would work great for your rabbit, although they really like to play with their dishes, just make sure she isn’t spilling it and you’re thinking she’s eating a lot of salt. 🙂
Kristin, we have a lot of the white stock salt on hand too. We use it still for salting the hay, and for our cattle hides. Plus I still have 4 buckets put away from Y2K! How’s that for hoarding? I always figured it would be better than no salt. I use a kosher salt for pasta water and cheese brining too, so really we have a lot of different kinds of salt around here. I have quit buying the Fleur de Sel because of the cost and either grind the Celtic or just use Realsalt for recipes that require the fine salt. It seems mostly anymore I use the Celtic for lactofermenting and then it doesn’t matter what size the crystals are.
I’ve had the best luck with the Nutribalancer from Fertrell, I offer it alongside the Thorvin Kelp, and put out Redmond salt once a week. The Nutribalancer has Redmond salt and kelp in it so I don’t worry about offering salt all the time. I never could get the cows to eat Pat’s mix, too dusty I think. But, I do add copper sulfate, and sulfur, and sometimes Azomite. I also couldn’t get the cows to eat the Fertrell Graziers Choice with diatomaceous earth either.
Don’t hit me, Azure isn’t too far from my farm, so I don’t have to pay shipping. 🙂 And, they price cost plus, so if their cost goes down, so does the price to the customer. They carry an amazing array of products and the best part is that they are farmers, gardeners and canners. They sell what they use for their family and livestock, plus what customers request. Great company.
MatronofHusbandry,
In one of your responses you said you use kosher salt in the pasta water because it goes down the drain: Don’t dump that water use it! You can use it as part of a liquid base with stock when making soup or stew, you can water plants with it. There are lots of ways to get another use out of the pasta water. I have even used mine to water the herbs I keep in pots right outside my kitchen door.