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Health and Feeding Needs for Wapiti Contents
General InformationNutritional supplement formulas differ from region to region. A recommendation is to test your soil and natural feed to help determine a supplement plan which will best fit your animals needs. As you will see in the following charts, there are large discrepancies on some minerals, and others are very similar. Each rancher will need to look at all the information and make a decision which will best meet their needs and requirements. Typically, if hay is being fed the nutritional need can be met by feeding a pellet with about 200 iu/kg. Corn is the best energy source followed by a close second barley, then wheat, oats, and silage. Ruminants can only digest 2.5% of their total body weight, in dry matter, per day. The elk like the best alfalfa with the highest protein you can buy. They are not very excited about eating large stems, but they will if you force them (by not feeding properly or enough). They are primarily interested in the leaf part of the alfalfa. Here are two poisonious plant databases http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants.html and http://res.agr.ca/brd/poisonpl/ that might be helpful for your animals forage. The SPRING 1991 edition of "The Quarterly Journal of the North American Elk Breeders Association" included an article entitled "A Discussion on Elk Nutrition" written by Sharyon L. Doshier, Manager of Timberline Ranch, Ltd. Dr. Jerry Haigh, a rancher and veterinarian from Canada, has also assisted by updating some of the rations with more recent information. This supplement is charted as follows:
North American Elk Breeders Association has a custom wapiti pellet for mineral and vitamin feed supplementation, which is a bit different, published in the 1996 Velveting Brochure. This supplement is charted as follows:
*Fed at 1 LB/day to adults and 1/2 LB/day to calves 365 days per year. One more Nutritional Management chart is given by Steve Puntenney, a ruminant nutritionist with Foster Mills in Delta, Colorado (1995). This supplement is charted as follows:
DE=Digestible Energy; ADF=Acid Detergent Fiber; TDN=Total Digestible Nutrients
New BornNew born calves need their mothers milk quickly and on a regular basis. The need for the milk grows further apart as the calf grows up - The cycle is very similar to new born human babies. The cow must help the calf go to the bathroom by licking the rear quarters and allowing the muscles to start working. Later on the calf learns to lick themselves to get the muscles to work and then the licking can stop altogether when the calf has full control of their anatomy. The mother's elk milk analysis shows:
Many breeders use goats and goats milk as a substitute for calves that were rejected, pulled, or the mother cow had complications and is not providing the right nutrients. Diagnostic LevelsIf an elk is required to be slaughtered, you want to slaughter it, or it dies and you can get to it quickly, you might want to think about running a nutritional analysis on the animal. What needs to be tested is the liver of the animal. It can be frozen immediately and then shipped overnight to Dwayne Hamar, Ph.D., Biochemist and Toxicologist, Colorado State University, Department of Pathology, Fort Collins, CO 80523 - (970) 491-6148. The cost is minimal and you will need to call first. You will want to test the liver for Copper, Manganese, Selenium, and Zinc. You may also want to send a sample of your feed supplement in for analysis to make sure your levels are acceptable. The normal Diagnostic level for each of the named minerals are as follows:
There are some visual inspections that can be done to verify copper levels in the animals. Examples of copper deficiency are curly hair, hair loss, hoof growth, uncoordinated staggering gait, massive weight loss, and eventually the inability to stand. This will lead to eventual death. If caught in the early stages, damage to the nervous system may be halted, but tissues that have already been damaged or destroyed can never be restored.
Other sites with Nutritional Information
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