Northern Farmer

In the last year or so I have been reading about the range of trace minerals in sea salt and have read accounts of farmers fertilizing their land with sea salt. Doing this is purported to add trace minerals and increase the palatability of pastures. One sea salt distributor is recommending that 250 pounds of salt be spread on each acre - although this clearly won’t work in drier climates. So last winter I purchased some sea salt. I have given my livestock free-choice access to this salt and they are eating it very readily. I figure that the trace minerals in the salt should be beneficial to my cows, sheep and goats. Studies have shown the sea salt to be beneficial to animal health. I also spread around 50-100 pounds an acre on a small section of pasture during the winter while there was snow on the ground. I picked an area that I knew was not one of our cows’ favorite grazing areas, but that is also not an area that they consider unpalatable. The salt did not appear to have any affect on the growth of the pasture in this area. During early spring this area greened up as well as the areas around it. We just finished grazing this section of pasture for the second time. It doesn’t appear that the salt made this area any more palatable than other areas. Some of the reports from other people who fertilized with sea salt were that the cattle ate the areas fertilized with salt right down to the dirt. Now maybe I just did not spread enough salt, or maybe my soil is already high enough in sodium. Next winter I will continue the experiment, picking another area to fertilize with salt.

A commercial beekeeper has around 30 hives on our property. Someplace I read that adding some sea salt to the water that bees use would give the bees some added trace minerals. So I have some water with a small amount of sea salt placed out near the hives for the bees to use. They are making use of this water, even though there are a number of other places where they can get water. The beekeeper says that the bees on our property are doing well, although I am sure that a lot of it has to do with the fact that we are adjacent to land that generally is not sprayed with chemicals and also adjacent to about a 4 square mile section of woods. It will probably be difficult to determine any change brought about by the minerals in the sea salt, but it should be worth the small amount of effort that it takes to put out water with some sea salt in it.

Jim V

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Jim V. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.