We are enjoying a break between storms. The days are getting longer, the sun is getting stronger, and the night frost burns off by 9:00 AM now. By noon it's shirt sleeve weather if you are in full sun though it's still chilly in the shade and soil temperatures are still low.

My calves are in a stupor - like people after a feast - due to their increasingly rich and plentiful diets. I'll soon need to increase my stocking rate to keep up with the spring flush and keep the pastures from getting rank and unproductive.

I've been supplementing them with some minerals to balance their pasture intake. They get plenty of protein from the pasture, but they can make better use of that diet if I dose them. Being frugal, and burdened with my environmental sensibilities, I supply them with packing house wastes rich in minerals but of little or no value to humans. I'm using raisin stems and trash. We grow a lot of grapes down in the valley. Some are table grapes, some are for wine and some are dried in the fields to make raisins. There's a lot of raisin trash produced.

The calves love it since it's sweet. Some raisins cling to the stems, and some of them shatter in processing or are too small for commercial use. It's all cleaned away from the plump and juicy raisins that people eat and sells for a song to folks like me.

It isn't the sweet part that attracts me, though it pleases the calves and they eat it with gusto. I'm after the calcium, iron, zinc, iodine, selenium, copper, and manganese. There are vitamins, such as A, as well as minerals. Raisins are wonderful food.

It's not rare for cattlemen to use mineral supplements, but they often buy tubs containing a hardened mix of various things that the cattle can lick. The idea is that cattle will eat it all at once if there is no restriction. If they can only get a little at a time by licking then they'll get a little each day. Sometime the licks contain acids or salt to further limit intake. It's half nasty so they don't lick too much.

I just give them a small dose of raisin stems each day and let them wolf it down with pleasure. Since I do managed grazing in which the animals move to a fresh paddock each day I'd have to move the mineral lick too. The work to give them a raisin dose is no more than to move the tub. I've tasted it all, and I'd much rather have the rasins than the mineral lick. They're also cheaper. Cheaper and better. Works for me.

The carbohydrates in the raisins, the sugars, are also of value for animals who have a protein rich pasture diet. It takes energy to make use of protein, just as it takes protein to make use of energy. A proper balance gives the best results. Animals that get an unbalanced diet with too much protein will excrete the excess, but that takes energy too. It makes sense to give them a balanced diet since they will grow better and be healthier. In an odd sort of way their effective protein intake goes up as their energy intake balance is improved since they make better use of available protein.

The perfect solution would be to grow perfectly balanced pasture grasses and forbs that had protein, carbohydrates, minerals and vitmains in the proper ratio. That's very hard to do and very expensive as well. I'd have to add lots of minerals to the soil to get a little into the forage. I'm working toward that goal, but it takes years and years to perfect a pasture so well unless you have tons of money to throw at it. Then it's a hobby garden rather than a commercial enterprise.

Like my old truck, which works but still needs work, my pastures are always being renovated, seeking but never achieving perfection. Giving the calves some raisin trash in the meantime is a kindness as well as good business.