VIDEO USING SALT TO IMPROVE PASTURES

I've got something to show you here you might find it interesting. I'm out on our cattle pasture and

this rubber tub here is where we provide the cattle with free-choice salt. Cattle need salt

and they can be trusted to take only to lick up only what they need. This salt has other minerals

in it so it's a kind of a nutrient supplement as well but if you look closely you'll see these beige

and dark gray circles. Those are seeds. Those are seeds of three kinds of plants. There's

bird's-foot trefoil, white clover, and a certain variety of alfalfa. And the idea is that the

cattle will take in these seeds with the salt when they lick it up and a certain amount of

the seed won't get digested. It'll come out in the manure and the cow patties are a perfect

environment for these to germinate and start growing and enriching the pasture because those

three plants are high in protein so it improves the nutrient level of the pasture. The nice thing

too is that cattle stay away from their droppings so it's not like the little seedlings

will get grazed off. The cattle will intentionally stay away from the cow patties and the seedlings

giving them a chance to grow. So every time I give them some salt, putting in a little bit

of this seed so that we can cooperate with the pasture and help it to grow more nutritiously

without going into all the trouble of plowing it up and and reseeding it and starting from

scratch which is one of the usual ways of improving hay fields and pastures