I get requests from time to time to comment on old posts I've written about feeding mineral mixes to sheep containing copper sulfate. Pat Coleby from Australia popularized this and her mineral mix recipes are available online.
We made this mix from ingredients purchased at gardening stores for two years and had no problems and our sheep were healthy and had no parasite problems. In February 2008 we had the mix made for us at a feed mill. I double and triple checked all the info provided by the mill and everything seemed fine. In May 2008 we nearly lost one of our ewes to copper poisoning. I ended up driving to the large animal department at the OSU Veterinary College and picked up some Ammonium Molybdate and dosed the sick ewe with it for three days. She was jaundiced to the point where the whites of her eyes were light brown and her urine was dark brown. She was nursing newborn twins at the time. Contrary to the prediction of the doc at OSU, she lived and continues to be healthy to this day. She continued to nurse her twins and gave birth to another set in May 2009. We added Sodium Molybdate to the sheep mineral and kelp for the next 30 days to help safely flush the excess copper from the other ewes.
We are currently feeding sheep mineral from Countryside Natural Products. It is quite expensive but the sheep don't eat much. We are using the Coleby mix for our cow and calves.
This post should not reflect negatively at all on the recommendations of Pat Coleby. To this day, I believe she is way ahead of the pack when it comes to animal health and root causes of illness and disease. My belief is that I simply had a ewe who overate the mineral. I understand that she has changed her recommendations with the latest edition of her books but I haven't read them yet.
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