A Difficult Test to Produce
One of the many things that make GMS so unique is its ability to be used as an animal mineral supplement. More specifically, a ruminant animal supplement. Cattle, because of their stomach structure, make use of GMS bacteria enhancing traits that we have seen and documented in soil. Other animals have a different stomach structure, so while GMS can be helpful, the amounts needed are very small and if presented in excess can have a negative effect on those animals.
The GMS research team is in constant search of ways to document the mounds of word-of-mouth claims of the benefits of GMS use in cattle over the decades. Last year, we had a very effective test protocol laid out that went awry. Like other tests with animals within our customer base, this test ended when a group of dry cows that did not "take" were fed 1 oz. of GMS/day. At the next check, nearly all of the animals were pregnant. The farmer put the whole herd on GMS, including the milking cows we had set up for a production, butterfat, cell count test. This happens all the time: the on-farm observation test is convincing enough that that any more detailed testing documentation is deemed not needed!
So how to show GMS benefits cattle when presented correctly? A swab of a recently ruminating cow was taken (and that itself is a story) and instantly placed on an agar plate (a medium that promotes bacteria growth) and labeled "S" for spit (see the photo below). Then a liquified mixture of a common dry mineral at the same TDS as the diluted GMS was place horizontally crossing the vertical spit line. The plates were immediately placed in a heating chamber at 100 degrees.
One must understand the degree of difficulty to do each step very quickly as the ruminant bacteria do not survive long outside of the animal.
After 24 hours, one easily observes that, like in the many soil and plant experiments done over the years, the stomach bacteria of the cow show favor to the GMS. We now have a visual observation to go along with the hundreds of stated benefits farmers have observed over the decades GMS has been fed to animals.
This is an excerpt from the Spring Growers Solution (2022) written by Research & Education Team.
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