Enhancing Lambing Success with Organic Trace Minerals
Enhancing Lambing Success with Organic Trace Minerals
Lambing season is a critical and demanding time for sheep producers across Australia. With the need to manage both ewe recovery and lamb survival, ensuring optimal nutrition becomes essential. One effective strategy is supplementing with organic trace minerals, which can help bridge nutritional gaps and support better outcomes during this high-stress period.
Adding organic trace minerals such as zinc, chromium, and methionine can help fill the nutritional gaps that can occur when pasture quality declines. When absorbed through feed, these organic trace minerals can help improve immune function, reproductive performance and recovery during this high-stress period.
Let’s explore how incorporating organic trace minerals into pre-lambing nutrition strategies can support healthier ewes, stronger lambs, and smoother lambing outcomes.
Navigating winter lambing challenges
Winter presents several obstacles for farmers to navigate during the lambing period, including increased energy demands, cold and wet weather, challenges to immune health, and more.
- Increased nutritional demands: With peak lambing season occurring in the colder months, which can impact pasture quality, ewes require adequate nutrition during late pregnancy and lactation to help with recovery and milk production.
- Harsh, wet conditions: Winter’s increased rainfall brings several challenges, including higher lamb mortality rates, hoof problems such as footrot and scald, and a greater risk of infections.
- Reduced feed intake: The wet weather that comes with winter can impact the quality and availability of pasture, leading to reduced feed intake and nutrient absorption for ewes.
Including organic trace minerals in your ewes’ feed can help support nutrient absorption, strengthen immune function, and boost lambing outcomes during the winter season.
Zinc: Supporting Ewe Recovery and Lamb Survival
Zinc is an essential trace mineral that plays a critical role during lambing season. It supports immune health, improves nutrient utilisation, and promotes strong skin and hoof integrity—key for ewes facing wet, cold conditions. Because sheep can’t store zinc efficiently, consistent dietary supplementation is important to meet increased demands during late pregnancy, lambing, and early lamb development.
Key Benefits of Zinc
- Immune Support: Essential for the function of white blood cells and antibody production, zinc is crucial during the stress of lambing and the colder weather.
- Hoof Health: Helping with the synthesis of keratin, zinc helps maintain hoof integrity and prevent problems like footrot, which is prevalent in wet, muddy winter conditions.
- Wound Healing: Zinc supports epithelial tissue generation in sheep, helping ewes with tissue repair postpartum and recovery from lambing-related injuries.
- Colostrum Quality: Improved zinc status in ewes can enhance colostrum production, transferring the benefits of zinc to the lamb.
By ensuring adequate zinc intake through feed rations, producers can support ewes’ metabolic demands during lambing season, promoting stronger immunity, better recovery, and healthier lambs through winter.
Chromium: Kickstarting Recovery
Ewes in winter often face higher metabolic stress and may have lower feed intake. Supplementing chromium into their diet can help make better use of available energy, reducing the risk of pregnancy toxaemia.
- Stress Reduction: Chromium enhances insulin sensitivity and reduces cortisol levels, which supports metabolism and reduces the negative effects of stress (including cold, lambing, and transport).
- Improved Glucose Utilisation: By enhancing cell sensitivity to insulin, chromium helps ewes more efficiently utilise glucose, supporting energy balance during late pregnancy and early lactation—periods of heightened energy demand.
- Enhanced Immunity: With better glucose utilisation and lower stress, chromium indirectly strengthens the immune system, helping ewes stay healthier through the season.
Addressing the metabolic, immune, and stress-related challenges of winter, chromium supplementation offers a valuable tool for supporting ewe health and improving lambing outcomes.
Methionine: Improving Mineral Absorption
Methionine is an essential amino acid that must be supplied through the diet, as the body cannot produce it naturally. It is often the most limiting amino acid in standard ruminant rations.
When bound to trace minerals such as zinc and chromium, methionine acts as an organic escort, bypassing rumen degradation and enhancing their absorption in the gastrointestinal tract.
ZinMet: Zinc, Chromium and Methionine Working Together
ZinMet is a unique blend of high-quality organic trace minerals—zinc and chromium—bound to methionine to bypass rumen degradation, allowing it to be more readily available through the gastrointestinal tract.
Research shows ZinMet help sheep flocks:
- Allows for higher body retention of zinc in ewes, allowing for greater bioavailability.
- Enhance weight gains in ewes up to 7%
- Improve feed-to-gain ratios in sheep up to 3%
Lambing season places significant demands on ewe health, nutrition, and resilience, especially during wet Australian winters. ZinMet offers a single, effective source of essential organic trace minerals to help manage the key challenges of this critical period. By proactively supplementing before lambing begins, producers can give their ewes the nutritional support they need to perform at their best when it matters most.
To learn how ZinMet can support your flock this season, contact your local Austasia Animal Products representative today.
