Be careful when mixing your own feed and supplements!

If you want to mix your own feed concentrates to cut costs, you will need to do so very carefully. Getting it wrong can result in toxicity or scours, and may even prove fatal to the animals, says Shane Brody.

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I am often asked about mixing extra rations for free-range livestock, such as goats, sheep and cattle, as well as for more intensively farmed animals, such as pigs, feedlot cattle/sheep and chickens.

The problem here is that national legislation regulates the ‘home mixing’ of feed, especially if it is intended for sale to other people. There has even been some talk about preventing meat producers and others from mixing their own livestock supplements and feeds.

There are indeed some feed additives that are dangerous if used incorrectly. Urea, for example, which is often added to rations to enable better utilisation of roughage or poorer-quality grasses in cattle, can become toxic if the rations mix with rainwater or infiltrate a drinking water source.

Mixing your own concentrated rations, if done incorrectly, can also lead to scours (diarrhea).

In the past, I have given farmers advice on how to better use feed concentrates, only to be told later that someone advised them to add more salt or other concentrates, and this led to animal fatalities.