I have written several times about Canadian studies documenting the importance of copper, selenium and other trace minerals, and their impact on health and reproduction. Although clinical disease can occur with severe deficiencies of these microminerals, many of the effects of deficiencies are not clinically obvious and may just result in lower productivity.

Two areas often affected are cow fertility and the ability to mount an adequate immune response.

A recent study published in The Bovine Practitioner adds some more information on this important topic. The study was conducted at the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory and used its database from 2012 to 2021. Researchers downloaded 857 beef cattle and 638 dairy cattle cases that included both a liver trace minerals test and a post-mortem diagnosis.

This study differs from others I have written about because the animals examined had died. This is a very different population than sampling healthy cows within a herd.

The populations also included a wide range of ages, from calves to cows. The study focused on three important trace minerals: copper, selenium and manganese.

One of the most striking results is the drastic difference between beef and dairy cattle. Copper deficiency in the liver was found in 33 per cent of the beef cattle and five per cent in dairy cattle. Selenium deficiency was evident in 45 per cent of beef cattle and five per cent in dairy cattle. Manganese deficiency was the only one more common in dairy cattle, at 32 per cent compared to 17 per cent in beef cattle. Overall, 73 per cent of the beef cattle in the sample had at least one trace mineral deficiency, compared to 45 per cent of dairy cattle.

Manganese deficiency was more common in dairy cattle, but less is understood about this mineral, including the difficulty in establishing normal levels in cattle.

This observation was somewhat expected because beef cattle often rely on free-choice minerals throughout much of the year, while dairy cattle are typically fed a total mixed ration that includes a trace mineral package. The authors noted many dairy cattle may have been over-supplemented with trace minerals, as many cows were above normal levels in copper and selenium.

Trace mineral deficiencies linked to illness

The second objective of this study was to evaluate associations between the cause of death determined by the pathologist and trace mineral status.

Results showed beef cattle that died of bovine respiratory disease were more likely to be copper deficient. This could mean copper deficiency is affecting the immune system of these animals, but the study cannot claim it “causes” bovine respiratory disease. Respiratory disease is infectious, but the authors established a relationship between the two factors in this population.

The study reinforces previous work showing beef cattle herds are more prone to trace mineral deficiencies. This may be due to a reliance on free-choice mineral intake or to complex interactions with elements such as sulphates or molybdenum, which can cause secondary deficiencies that beef cattle are more exposed to.

Trace mineral deficiencies are complex, and their impact is not always obvious.

As cattle come off pasture this fall and winter feeding begins, it may be a good opportunity to work with your veterinarian and nutritionist to evaluate your herd’s trace mineral status. This may involve taking liver biopsies or serum samples from a sample of cows and submitting them to a diagnostic laboratory for trace mineral levels. Feed and water testing may also be necessary when planning your winter feeding program.

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However, in recent years, new products have claimed to provide micronutrients and are being marketed to producers who want a boost.

These products and claims were the motivation for a SaskOilseeds-funded project investigating micronutrients, looking specifically at boron, copper and zinc within canola crops.

Kaeley Kindrachuk, a canola extension specialist with SaskOilseeds presented the ongoing trial at the Northeast Agriculture Reseach Foundation (NARF) field day in mid-July in Melfort, Sask.

“We wanted to look at whether or not micronutrients increase yield,” said Kindrachuk.

WHY IT MATTERS: Micronutrients have gained more attention as research hones in on their role in plant development and new technology makes analysis more applicable and accessible for farmers.

“But we really wanted to demonstrate the yield and quality response of canola to in-furrow and foliar applications of different micronutrients in different parts of the province.”

NARF is one of five trial sites across Saskatchewan, with others at research farms near Scott, Swift Current, Redvers and Indian Head.

The researchers hope the variety of locations will help them compare results in different soil conditions becauses micronutrients could be deficient in sandy soils, high organic matter soils and soils with high pH.

Boron is important for plant metabolism and pollen production, and has been the most researched micronutrient in canola.

Copper has also been well researched, and it’s suggested that if soil has low copper, polyps will form on the roots. It’s also been noted that copper can have a positive effect on yield, but only when the soil was showing deficiency and if there was manganese present in the soil.

However, when it comes to zinc, very little research has been done.

Kindrachuk said that while it’s uncommon to see a zinc deficiency in canola, if a soil’s pH is high and there have been high rates of phosphorous applied over the years, these two factors could inhibt zinc “translocation.”

The Melfort site is low in boron, while Indian Head is low in zinc and Swift Current is low in zinc and boron.

The study uses seven treatments: a control plot, in-furrow application of each micronutrient and a foliar application of each.

Kindrachuk said the plot had filled in well and was looking good following the rain that the area had recently received.

Key results of the first year will be analyzed in late winter or early spring.

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First of all, if you read my previous articles in Grainews, you will come to the factual opinion that wheat, barley and oats undergo closed pollination — that is, pollination takes place in the unopened flowers. If the flowers of wheat, barley and oats have sufficient copper micronutrients, they will stay closed and will self-fertilize before opening.

The only significant exception is if these closed-pollinated cereals are very deficient in boron. Boron deficiency, usually at less than 0.2 parts per million (p.p.m.) in the topsoil, causes pollen uptake failure and the unpollinated flowers will open. Severe boron deficiency is only known to occur in Eastern Canada, whereas copper deficiency is very common nationally in sandy and organic soils and, in particular, in the Prairies.

Along with rye and triticale, wild and cultivated grasses are open-pollinated and all are susceptible to ergot infection. So what’s the solution? Could we develop closed-pollinated rye? Perhaps in the future.

Meanwhile, what’s the solution to keeping rye free of ergot contamination? At present, some 50 per cent of rye grown in Prairie Canada is from newer hybrids first grown in 2014. The hybrids are said to yield some 20-40 per cent better than the non-hybrid types and are said to be less susceptible to ergot infection. This is due to the shorter pollination time for the open flowers of the hybrids over conventional rye. Once rye flowers are pollinated, they become immune to ergot infection.

Now let’s begin with information I was told some 50 years ago in Ontario and later on in Alberta: rye should be grown on sandy soils or soils high in organic (peat) matter. It was stated that rye did much better on these soils than all other cereals. I did some investigating over the years and found rye had what researchers in Scotland said are copper efficiency genes. In other words, rye was able to grow on soils that were low or deficient in copper and yield much better than wheat.

When you grow wheat and barley in particular on these sandy or organic soils, the deficiency of copper can cause yield losses of 10 to even 100 per cent. This is very true of wet springs and summers that result in shallow rooting where the copper levels are most deficient. Such copper-deficient soils occupy some 30 per cent in Alberta, 10 per cent in Saskatchewan and 15 per cent perhaps in Manitoba. Think: you have grown crops on these fields for 100 years or more, and every crop removes a few grams of copper per acre. You are exhausting the sandy soils in particular, which had low levels of available copper to begin with.

Please, please read “Copper Deficiency: Diagnosis and Correction” (Agdex 532 – 3, Alberta Agriculture Agri-Facts). You’ll get a proper understanding.

So, if you grow rye on these sandy or organic soils because it yields better than other grains, you are growing it in cropland that’s most likely harbouring ergots from previously-grown wheat and barley crops. In other words, these wheat and barley crops infest the soil annually with ergots — then you plant rye.

You are a rye-growing farmer, so what can you do?

• Check your harvested wheat and barley crops for ergot. This means you have some degree of copper deficiency.
• Avoid seeding rye in these fields that have ergots in your wheat, barley or even oats.
• Apply early-boot foliar copper to your wheat, barley and perhaps oat crops to reduce or eliminate copper deficiency and the consequent ergots.
• Remember, when wheat and barley heads are infected with ergots, most of these ergots often fall to the ground before harvest.
• If you have any doubts about the absolute correlation between ergots in wheat and barley and copper deficiency, apply three to five pounds of copper as copper sulphate to about 10-20 acres of cropland. That amount of copper sulphate, 12 – 20 lbs., will be good for 20 years or more if you have copper deficient cropland. (Copper sulphate is 25 per cent copper by weight.)

I get so frustrated with these armchair scientists who pay little or no attention to crop micronutrient needs in Canada. In Ontario they recommend growing winter or spring rye on the now-available sandy cropland that grew tobacco. Were they to add copper to this soil, they could grow wheat, barley or any other cereal crop. In the B.C. Peace region, on the other hand, where they have large acreages of sandy soil, they now pay particular attention to soil copper levels with excellent crop yield results.

Additional factors for ergot-free rye

Most soils on the Canadian Prairies still have fair to good soil copper levels, with six million to seven million acres of copper-deficient cropland.

Obviously, then, one of the answers to get ergot-free rye is to grow the crop in soils with adequate levels of 1.5 to five p.p.m. of available copper in the top six inches (15 cm). Then there will be no ergots on your wheat, barley or oats.

Mow all grasses on crop headlands where you plan to grow a rye crop at least >a year< in advance to eliminate ergot formation on the wild grasses.

Ensure all of your cropland is adequately fertilized with copper. Yes, it’s expensive, but so is yield loss. Copper sulphate is around US$2,400 per tonne or more at present. Connect the dots — at 12 to 20 lbs. per acre, that’s US$12-$20 an acre, or Cdn$18-$30. Expensive. Then compare 40 bushels of sample wheat that could have been 70 bushels of No. 2, then you are talking 30 x $10/bu., or Cdn$300 per acre just for year one. The copper at that rate applied is good for 20 years or so, since it does not leach. It stays in the soil until it’s used up. So, can you do a 10- or 20-acre strip if you have an ergot problem? Go for it.

Ergots in grain for feed should not be more than 0.1 per cent, or one ergot per 1,000 wheat grains — put another way, two to three p.p.m., weight wise. In hog feed, there’s zero tolerance for ergot.

Follow-up facts

I got a call from a B.C. cattleman who lost seven head of cattle due to ergot in cattle feed screening in 2024.

To reiterate: ergot infestation is not due to prolonged flowering and wet soil conditions. It’s due to the shallow rooting of the wheat, barley and oat grains in the most copper-deficient parts of the soil. This leads to pollen sterility due to a lack of copper and open flowering resulting in either a) missing grains, b) cross-pollination from another nearby wheat (or barley or oat) field, or c) an ergot infection.

Get this clearly in your mind, if you as a grower, 1) remove any source of ergot infection due to copper deficiency in wheat, barley or oat, or 2) prevent any headland grasses from heading out, including any on nearby grass pasture, then you have no ergot inoculum (source) near your rye crop.

Copper has no role in ergot infection in rye or triticale, but it’s the key to the primary source. The absolute role that it plays — by its absence — in ergot infection is in closed-pollinated wheat, barley and oat.

This role that this micronutrient has in the world’s cereal crops is slowly sinking in. Yes, you can grow ergot-free rye, or triticale for that matter.

Back in 1999 a colleague and I checked out a field of wheat near Moosomin, Sask. in early August. The field was 90 per cent wheat and about 10 per cent rye. The rye could have been mixed deliberately or volunteer plants from the previous year. I offered a bet of $10 for the first wheat plant with an ergot — none was found after around 40 minutes. At the same time, virtually every rye plant had one to 10 ergots. We did find the odd rye that was ergot-free. Why? The soil likely had good copper levels and all of the wheat heads were able to “closed-pollinate” without a single wheat plant showing any ergot infection.

Until next time: A fact is information without emotion.

A reasoned opinion is information plus experience.

Ignorance is an opinion lacking information.

Stupidity is an opinion that ignores fact.

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For some reason there are agricultural specialists on the Canadian Prairies and in some states who cannot face actual facts. When you have specialists who refer to wheat as a self-pollinated crop and then follow it up with a statement such as “When you have periods of prolonged rainfall that causes the blooms to stay open for longer” — what do they mean? Self-pollinated crops such as wheat, barley and oats, under any normal circumstances, never open their florets prior to seed set.

Rye, on the other hand, has open cross-pollination of the florets, is highly susceptible to ergot infection and can be cross-pollinated by any rye crop that may be growing even up to a mile or more away.

My colleagues and I at Alberta Agriculture solved the problem of ergot in wheat, barley and oats some 30 years ago. It’s a result of copper, copper, copper deficiency. A lack, or deficiency, of copper results in pollen sterility in these three cereals. Wheat is the most susceptible crop, followed by barley and oats. Rye, to repeat, is always open-flowered and susceptible to ergot infection.

Copper is an essential plant and animal nutrient and in higher plants its primary roles are to provide pollen fertility and stem or branch strength. In wheat, barley and oats, as indicated, copper is responsible for pollen fertility and stem strength in the formation of lignin, the wood-like product that gives cereal straw its rigidity and strength.

A deficiency of copper in a growing crop of wheat, barley or oats results in pollen sterility and lignin formation failure, causing crop lodging. Please read this sentence again.

As a consequence of pollen failure, due to copper absence or deficiency, the normally closed flowers of wheat, barley and oats will not stay closed. The pollen sterility or failure causes the normally closed flower to open up.

Four major results occur, especially in wheat:

• The open flowers can become ergot-infected.
• The open flowers can be cross pollinated by stray wheat, barley or oat pollen from nearby cropland.
• The flowers become blanks — that is, no seed or ergot formation.
• Cereal crops lodge badly because there are no copper enzymes to form lignin — that is, the product that gives the straw strength.

Farmers in Alberta who used to look at low yields, ergot infestations and lodged crops, particularly for wheat and barley, benefitted immensely from my colleagues and I solving this copper deficiency problem over 30 years ago.

Yields of wheat in particular that were often lodged, ergot-infested and given sample grades at 30 bushels an acre went 70-80 bushels of No. 2 or No. 1 annually with an absence of any significant lodging and an absence of ergot. Many cereal growers in the Brandon, MacGregor and Swan River areas of Manitoba followed up on the copper research and reported major yield and quality improvements to my colleagues and myself.

In recent years I have known of significant research funding that has been provided to look for ergot resistance in wheat, lodging in wheat and even a recent five-year trial in North Dakota applying fungicides to ergot-prone wheat fields. The results were a total failure in attempting to control the ergot infections.

I keep hearing of provincial funding for the use of products for the control of lodging in wheat, barley and oats. In these trials, presumably on lodge-prone cropland, there is never a mention of soil copper amendments. That blue powder, copper sulphate at 25 per cent copper, at a rate of around 20-40 lbs. of product (five to 10 lbs. actual copper), could well put an end to crop lodging, ergot infection, low-quality wheat and very depressed yields.

Another factor we identified in Alberta was that certain weed control products, in wheat in particular, would induce severe lodging. We attributed this to, and ultimately identified it as, a herbicide-induced copper deficiency.

I published some 14 papers and fact sheets on this copper issue and many more were published by colleagues. Could it be a case of ‘Don’t confuse me with the actual facts since I have my own opinions’? Together with a couple of colleagues I published a chapter entitled Copper and Plant Disease, in the best-selling book ever by the American Phytopathological Society, Mineral Nutrition and Plant Disease.

The only other known factor causing ergot in both barley and wheat was reported and published by a P. Simojoki in Finland in 1981, when he showed severe boron deficiency caused pollen tube failure in barley, resulting in heavy yield loss and ergot infection. This research was confirmed by Dennis Pageau in Quebec in 1990 in barley growing in soil with less than 0.1 p.p.m. of boron. Prairie soils are rarely, if ever, that deficient in boron.

A footnote

I did write a rebuttal letter to the ergot article that appeared in the Aug. 22, 2024 edition of the Producer. In all my very many years working with cereals I did find a few ergot anomalies.

Very hot dry conditions on oats killed the pollen in the unopened grain. A few days of rain and we had oats with ergots on the opened-out flowers.

A late May frost in Ontario damaged some winter wheat just before the boot stage. The frost killed the pollen cells but not the stigmas. The pollen-free wheat with open flowers now got some ergot infection.

If you are an agronomist involved in agriculture or horticulture in Canada, I would strongly advise you to buy a copy of Horst Marschner’s revised 2022 fourth edition of Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants. Dr. Ismail Cakmak, a frequent speaker at agronomy meetings in Western Canada, was a major contributor to this revised text.

Japanese wisdom: If it’s not yours, don’t take it. If it’s not right, don’t do it. If it’s not true, don’t say it. If you don’t know, shut up.

Misinformation can hit you hard in the pocketbook.

ALSO: Required reading

To dispel the copper naysayers who inadvertently may be responsible for millions of dollars annually in grain losses, ergot infestations and crop quality, I will list the following references:

• Graham, R.D., 1975. Male sterility in wheat plants deficient in copper. Nature 254: 514-515. This work, done in Australia, showed in cross-pollination experiments the non-viability of copper-deficient pollen and it also showed the continued viability of the ovule. No seed was set from copper-deficient pollen.
• Mantle, P.G. and Swan, D.J., 1995. Effect of male sterility on ergot disease spread in wheat. Plant Pathol. 44: 392-395. Cytoplasmic male-sterile winter wheat grown in England with a limited supply of pollen set over 80 per cent less seed than fertile wheat. Sclerotial mass (ergots) in poorly pollinated male-sterile wheat comprised more that 20 per cent of the threshed grain yield.
• Azourou, Z. and Souvre, A. 1993. Effects of copper deficiency on pollen fertility and nucleic acids in the durum wheat anther. Sex. Plant Reprod. 6: 199-204. This work, done in France, stated that “copper deficiency induced a nearly complete sterility of the pollen formed and inhibited all grain production. In wheat copper deficiency is at the origin of pollen sterility, which results in decreased yields. Boron or molybdenum deficiencies also decrease pollen fertility.”
• Evans, I.R., Huber, D.M. and Solberg, E.D., 2000. Deficiency diseases, pages 295-302 in Encyclopedia of Plant Pathology, Vol. 1. O.C. Meloy and T. D. Murray, eds. Jon Wiley and Sons, New York.
• Copper Deficiency Diagnosis and Correction. 2000, Agdex 532 – 3. Alberta Agriculture website.
• Evans, I.R., Solberg, E.D. and Huber, D.M. Copper and Plant Disease, pages 177-188 in Mineral Nutrition and Plant Disease. Lawrence E. Datnoff, Wade H. Elmer and Don M. Huber, eds. The American Phytopathological Society, second printing, 2009.
• Horst Marschner, 1998. Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants, Academic Press Inc., San Diego. A92101. The ultimate guru says “Impaired lignification of the cell walls is the most typical change induced by copper deficiency” and “two copper-based enzymes are needed for lignin biosynthesis for stem strength.” The “highest copper content in plants is in the flowers” with “inhibition of pollen release caused by copper deficiency.” “High nitrogen availability can accentuate copper deficiency…” and “foliar application of copper [is needed] for correction of deficiency.”

CORRECTION, Jan. 28, 2025: The print version of this article (Jan. 14, 2025, pgs. 20-21) incorrectly described Dr. Ismail Cakmak as deceased. We regret the error.

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Stoller also said peat soils in Alberta, particularly neutral-pH soils prevalent in the Westlock and Barrhead regions, could be farmed if we applied micronutrients, copper in particular.

Following his initiative, an Alberta Agriculture district agriculturalist applied a few ounces of copper sulphate to a fixed footage of a barley crop sown on a flat, fairly dry section of neutral pH peatland. The results in 1981 were dramatic.

I took a photograph that can be seen on page 3 of the fact sheet “Copper deficiency: diagnosis and correction” (Alberta Agriculture, Agdex 532 – 3). Later work on copper nutrition in cereal crops, particularly wheat, was then done on peat soils and sandy/loam soils at Lacombe by Lu Peining and at Edmonton by Alberta Agriculture’s crop protection group. We all got amazing results with copper fertility, particularly on wheat and barley, and we also had to cope with mountains of skepticism, primarily from soil scientists.

Peatlands in Canada cover 12 to 13 per cent of the country’s total land area. This amounts to some 320 million acres. Much of this acreage is wet, shallow or acidic and it accumulates annually at some 60 times the rate that it’s harvested for compost. Despite this, many in the general public seem to think it is a limited resource.

Of those 320 million acres, only about one million are used for agriculture in Prairie Canada and less than a million for grassland. Elsewhere in North America, these black agricultural peat soils are referred to as fenlands, such as the 200,000 acres in Florida’s Everglades and the black peatlands of Ontario’s Bradford (Holland) Marsh.

On the Bradford Marsh, some 7,000 acres are used for horticultural crops — and believe it or not, on page 35 of Ontario’s Agronomy Guide for Field Crops, it states that when these organic soils are brought into production, they must be treated with 12.5 pounds per acre of copper per year for three years.

That means 50 lbs. of bluestone per acre for three years, which is 25 per cent copper. Copper is 25 per cent by weight of copper sulphate. About 230,000 acres of peat soils are cultivated in the Everglades for horticultural crops and sugarcane. These peat or fenland soils are heavily fertilized with copper sulphate on a regular basis.

Here in these tables we see the factual data from a Manitoba Agriculture fact sheet published in March 1990 and written as part of a master’s degree by Ray Dowbenko. It was provided to the Manitoba Peat Growers Association but otherwise hardly saw the light of day.

Across Western Canada there seemed to be a consensus among soil scientists that micronutrient requirements in field crops were fictional. Dowbenko listed wheat, flax and canary seed as the most sensitive field crops to copper deficiency, barley and alfalfa as medium-high, oats and corn as medium and peas, clovers, canola, rye and forage grasses as low.

He found that producers who burned their peat fields in the past could grow good cereal crops. That practice is now forbidden in our Prairie-wide dry cycle. In fact, in Alberta there are dozens of smouldering peat bogs that inevitably fire up in windy dry summers — forest fires in the waiting. That’s a good reason to harvest dry peat bogs.

When Dowbenko did his research in the 1980s, there were three copper fertilizer products available: copper sulphate; EDTA copper chelate; and sequestered copper chelate. Today there are far more copper-based products. Both chelates are liquids and, when mixed with water, can be applied with a herbicide sprayer.

Copper sulphate is somewhat corrosive and should only be applied with a Valmar spreader or similar equipment and incorporated after broadcast. Rates of 10 kg/ha (nine pounds per acre) of actual copper (copper sulphate is 25 per cent copper by weight), translates to 40 kg/ha or 36 lb./ac. of copper sulphate and may be effective for six to eight years.

Table 1 above is taken directly from the Manitoba fact sheet. Note the huge yield differences. Even with the high price of copper, do the math and figure out your cereal yields over eight years.

Table 2 shows the effect of the three kinds of copper, taken as a mean of two barley sites. The foliar application was the least effective at 27 and 39 bushels of barley with either EDTA chelate or sequestered chelate. Soil incorporation was by far the best of all three products.

Table 3 gives the 1989 prices of copper so you will have to substitute those with 2024 prices. Both barley and wheat have risen considerably in price as well.

In 2010, I persuaded a Swan River farmer to apply 25 lbs. of bluestone to a quarter section, at a cost of about $150 an acre. This quarter usually produced around 40 bu./ac. of sample wheat. Following the fall copper application on this 10 per cent organic soil, there was a 70-bushel yield of No. 2 wheat. The cost of the copper application was covered by the increased wheat yield in one season. I estimated the copper application on this quarter was good for at least 10 years.

The original fact sheet is unavailable, but a few years ago I obtained an original copy from Dowbenko. I have since given away hundreds of copies.

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Pretty soon, in the ’70s and ’80s, I was involved in controlling sclerotinia disease of canola, blackleg of canola, sulphur deficiency in canola and, later on, fusarium head blight (FHB) in cereals. In conjunction with the late Phil Thomas, the canola specialist, we at Alberta Agriculture ran a number of highly successful disease control programs. The crop protection branch at Alberta Agriculture published fact sheets on these diseases which are still available on the net, essentially fully relevant and currently almost abandoned by Alberta Agriculture.

This story started in the early ’80s, when we had outbreaks of a browning destructive disease of wheat. This distinct browning and a much-reduced yield were initially blamed on a bacterial disease, pseudomonas. This browning disease was most common on Park wheat, especially in wet summers. Dr. Lu Piening, a cereal research scientist at the Lacombe, Alta. federal research station, had a number of discussions with me on his views about this problem. He had previously done research on wheat diseases in the Aberdare mountains of west-central Kenya. In areas where wheat grew poorly, he said, they were treated with Bordeaux mixture — a mix of copper sulphate and slaked lime. This mixture, applied on the wheat seed, gave much better wheat yields than the untreated checks.

In a sandy soil area near Lacombe, Dr. Piening set out plots of wheat, barley and oats on cropland that returned low yields and quality of these cereals, particularly wheat. The plots treated with copper chelate more than doubled the yield of all the wheats, and the browning of the wheat heads and lodging were absent. Some of the barleys and oats also responded very positively.

As a consequence of Dr. Piening’s work Alberta Agriculture’s Edmonton crop science and soil science units actively initiated work on copper deficiency in the Edmonton area on cropland that produced unexpectedly low yields of wheat and barley.

In the meantime, we found that a Dr. Robin Graham and colleagues in Australia had published a full review of copper deficiency in Australia and its occurrence worldwide in 1981. Despite Dr. Graham’s research, Canadian soil scientists, as well as those in the U.S., were for the most part very skeptical of any soil copper deficiency influencing cereal yields. On sandy, peaty and peat soils in general in Alberta, we found huge yield responses to soil or foliar copper amendments, particularly for wheat. Research in Manitoba on peat soils at five separate locations, published in 1990 by agronomist Ray Dowbenko, showed yield increases of 13 bushels of barley to 80 bushels, and at another location from three to 83 bushels per acre. By the late ’90s, Alberta Agriculture published a fact sheet, “Copper Deficiency: Diagnosis and Correction,” and it is fully relevant today.

Farmers who crop land all across the Prairies and south of the border have had incredible yield and quality increase when they have identified copper deficiencies. Unfortunately, we still have many influential skeptics who refuse to even understand this problem.

How does ergot fit into the story?

When we ran field plot trials in the Stony Plain area of Alberta, one of our technologists, Lloyd Davidson, told us that while the check wheat samples in the yield trials had lots of ergots, they were few or absent from the copper-amended wheat plots. We checked all of the harvested grain samples from the copper-treated and equivalent check plots, and sure enough, there were few or no ergots in those wheat trial samples.

Ergot infection as a consequence of copper deficiency was something that the world had missed. Australian, British and French researchers had previously shown copper deficiency caused pollen sterility, but they failed to equate it with ergot infection.

Agriculture Canada and the Western Grains Research Foundation had spent millions of dollars looking for resistance in wheat to ergot. The answer was simply pollen sterility in wheat, barley and oats, brought about by copper deficiency that caused unpollinated female flowers to open and become infected with ergot or, alternatively, stray grain pollen. Ergot in a field of wheat is sure sign of cross-pollination as well, since the flowers are also open to stray viable pollen that can travel for miles.

In Quebec and in Finland (1981), it has been shown that severe boron deficiency can also result in ergot infection in barley and wheat, due to pollen tube failure from a severe lack of boron. Soil boron levels in Quebec were 0.1 parts per million.

As an epilogue, there were no bells and whistles when we proved conclusively the relationship between copper deficiency and ergot infection in wheat, barley and oats. Identifying copper deficiency as a cause of ergot infection had worldwide implications. Just remember the incredible answer came from the Canadian Prairies and the accolades were non-existent.

Consequences of copper deficiency

In spite of a few prominent soil scientist skeptics out there, several of whom have retired recently, copper nutrition plays a major role in Prairie agriculture. Back some 70 to 100 years ago, wheat yields were 25 bushels per acre, and barley perhaps 40 bushels per acre. A soil level of copper at 0.5 p.p.m. (parts per million) in the top six inches (15 cm), equivalent to one pound per acre of copper, could well have been adequate. Every crop removed for grain or hayland would remove perhaps a half ounce (15 grams) of available copper or less. Sandy, sandy loam or sandy silt soils may have had less than one to two lbs. of available copper in the top six inches. They would over the years become copper-depleted. Peat soils or peaty loam soils also tie up or sequester available copper, making it unavailable to the crop, resulting in lodged, low-yielding, low-quality cereal crops.

With expectations of 70- to 100-bushel yields of wheat or 120 bushels of barley, soil copper levels should be at least 1.5 to 2.5 p.p.m. Such levels would be good for many years since copper does not leach in cropland. It has been recently estimated copper-deficient soils may be as much as 30 per cent of the acreage in Alberta, 10 per cent in Saskatchewan and 15 per cent in Manitoba.

Copper for cattle

In many areas of Prairie Canada, we have had significant problems with copper deficiency in cattle. Animal nutritionists and veterinarians are now fully recognizing the role of this vital element in the animal’s life cycle.

A few points:

• The blood of slugs and snails, as well as of oysters, octopus and squid, is copper-based. They live and breathe copper.
• Copper is not a heavy metal such as gold or lead, but rather a ferrous bio-essential mineral. Look at the list on your multivitamin bottle.
• Rye and wild grasses, and to some extent triticale, are open-pollinated and invariably end up with some degree of ergot infection — and it’s not copper-related.
• If you come across any individual who states that ergot in wheat and barley is caused by wet weather and prolonged flowering, I hope you ask for the source and proof.
• At Bradford Marsh — black peatland, north of Toronto — horticultural growers apply 150 lbs. of bluestone (copper sulphate) at 25 per cent actual copper per acre to bring the land into full production.

My final message to all Prairie farmers who grow cereals, particularly wheat: the appearance of ergot in your harvested crop is like the proverbial canary in the coal mine. It indicates you have a minor or perhaps major problem with copper deficiency that could result in very significant crop losses in both yield and quality.

Please let this statement stick in your mind. Copper sufficiency completely — yes, completely — eliminates ergot in wheat, barley and oats. Don’t let the naysayers confuse you with their opinions; just stick to facts.

Copper in crops: Talking points

• Copper deficiency, in wheat and barley, results in minor to major ergot infection.
• Sterile pollen, in both wheat and barley, results in blanks and loss of yields.
• Ergot in seed wheat or barley is a sure sign that cross-pollination will have taken place, affecting grain quality or purity.
• Ergots must be cleared out of infected grains.
• Severe lodging is a consequence of copper deficiency since copper-based enzymes are responsible for stem strength — that is, stem lignification — in all cereals.
• Low copper soil levels result in delayed crop maturity of up to 10-15 days.
• Grass quality in copper-deficient soils makes for inferior cattle grades.
• Yield losses in copper-deficient wheat fields in Alberta can be as much as 50-60 per cent of expected yield or more, and the grain will be of inferior quality.
• Heavy manuring, especially on light or sandy soils low in copper, can create a major copper deficiency since the soil microflora have first dibs on the low copper levels, resulting in copper deficiency and very poor crop stem strength and severe crop lodging. Some say it’s an excess of nitrogen; that’s just nonsense.
• Peatland will not produce a crop of wheat or barley until it’s treated with a “heavy” copper application.
• Certain Group 1 wild oat herbicides can severely affect uptake of copper on copper-deficient soils. Have you seen spray wheel lines in wheat fields? Can you figure this out?
• In very wet summers, cereals will have very shallow rooting in the top six inches (15 cm). This copper-deficient zone can result in severe crop lodging. In dry summers, little or no lodging results, since the cereal roots can move two to four feet into the subsoil where there is adequate copper. So, a wheat field may lodge one year, but not the next, depending on rainfall. That confuses soil scientists.

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I will stick my neck out as usual and make a few observations and prophecies across the Western Prairies.

Crops are late in the northern part of the Western Prairies, but the canola crops look good and as a consequence of the rain they seem to have little in the way of sclerotinia stem rot. The continuous rain in this central area can drown out or wash down the aerial sclerotinia spores onto the soil surface and canola roots, unlike sunflowers and beans, are immune to sclerotinia root infection.

On a clear day in late July I flew from Edmonton to Winnipeg and trucked around Manitoba. The canola fields from west to east went from clear yellow to some yellow in Saskatchewan to green in Manitoba. Canola, corn and wheat crops looked surprisingly good from Winnipeg to Brandon despite the lack of substantial rainfall.

In the central and northern Prairies, the grazing pastures with 20 inches of rain or more in June and July are still green and lush. Hay crops were damaged by prolonged wetting and the lateness of the season caused many Edmonton area farmers to cut barley, oat and some wheat crops for greenfeed, fearing an early September frost and shortage of hay.

Potato growers in the Alberta central areas from Lacombe to Edmonton, particularly seed potato growers, can look forward to exceptional yields this year provided they have good September harvest conditions. Table and seed potato fields grown on a previous year’s fallow would typically run 15 to 18 tons per acre. With the heavy rainfall in June and July I expect to hear of many fields in the 20 ton per acre or more. Some potato fields have drowned-out areas due to the exceptional rainfall. The “Little Potato Company” is centered in the Edmonton area, but yields of six to nine tons are the expected for this North American-wide table product.

While everything these days is blamed on global warming, I can recall that the earliest killing frost just North of Edmonton occurred on August 11 on field peas around 1990, cutting short the ripening process. The latest frost in the central Alberta area occurred on July 10 damaging potatoes and many garden crops. The biggest fluctuation in a single week occurred late in August of 1994 when the Tuesday temperature went from 30 C to -5 C with snow in less than four days.

Lodging in wheat and barley

With this year’s heavy to excessive rainfall in June and July, we are seeing lots of grain lodging in central (northern) Saskatchewan and central Alberta. I saw field after field with flattened grain but some with good standing crops but somewhat late in maturity by early August. Now think and smell the coffee. Think! Didn’t you notice that the lodging in almost all fields was in the low spots and the turns? How come the grain, whether wheat or barley was standing on the higher and better-drained, windiest areas of the field?

Did you believe that this lodging was caused by wind and rain even in the best looking grain crops?

Did you examine the lodging for broken or bent over stems? You didn’t find any broken stems? It looked as though the cereal crop had sort of rolled over. The stems were, for the most part not bent badly they just rolled down.

How could the grain on the higher parts of the field and ridges still be standing despite the wind and rain?

Stem strength in cereals and all plants is dependent on lignin — not any magical dwarfing spray. What is lignin? Lignin is the complex carbohydrate that gives the wood in trees its strength. Without lignin the cereal stems are like pieces of rope — they just roll over and lodge.

Land in the prairies has been farmed for at least 100 to 200 years. Every crop that is removed or animal that grazes that land removes a few grams of copper (a half-ounce or so). Most cropland on the prairies only contained a few kilos of copper (two to three pounds) per acre, sandy soils even less in the top six inches. There is still lots of copper deep down the soil profile but when we get an abundance of rain, cereal roots stay in the top 15 centimetres (six inches) where the nutrients are — but the copper in this top 15 cm is missing. You haven’t replaced it. In the higher and sloped well-drained areas of your cropland, cereal roots go down deeper into the soil where there is still enough copper to form lignin and keep the cereal crop standing.

As growers, you might spend $20 to $40 per acre on pesticides. Why not, in some years, spend $40 an acre on about 10 acres of cropland where you have had lots of crop lodging in a wet year? The copper effect will last for 10 years or more.

In the field

Take a good look at these photographs that I took on August 15. Notice that on the edge of the wheat field the crop is standing and ripening. The rest of the low-lying part of the field shows severe lodging. How does this happen? The sandy loam field has been cultivated and cropped for over a hundred years. The ditch alongside the field was only formed about 15 years ago — the subsoil from the ditch a clay loam was piled onto the edges of the field. The subsoil contained good levels of copper and relatively low levels of organic matter — likely less than two per cent. The sandy loam in the field had five to six per cent organic matter.

Copper was available on the edge of the ditch, the wheat stood up and maturity was perhaps one to two weeks ahead of the rest of the field.

Conclusion, especially on sandy loams with wheat and barley crops lacking in copper in wet seasons:

1. Severe lodging in wet years. Shallow roots.
2. High probability of ergot.
3. One to two weeks later in maturity.
4. Significantly reduced grain yield and quality.

In dry seasons, even in sandy or clay soils the cereal roots will move down the soil profile 60 to 90 cm (two to three feet) where there will be adequate copper. This will result in little or no lodging, giving you earlier maturity, an absence of ergot and the expected target yield.

Wheat is very poor at extracting copper from the soil, barley a little better and oats are relatively efficient. Copper is vital for fertile pollen formation. Without enough copper, you will get pollen sterility and consequently, the normally closed flowers of these cereals will open in order for the female part (the stigma) to catch stray pollen. Instead of stray pollen, they may get ergot infection. You will never get ergot infection in wheat, barley or oats if they have adequate copper.

In dry years, the wheat fields would look like the gold maturing border since, in dry years, the wheat roots go deep into the soil — two to three feet, and pick up adequate copper. Please smell the coffee. We have had over 30 years of diagnosing this problem. There are many fields like this in the area, but also many fields in the area that have had three to five pounds per acre of copper applied recently that have very good-looking crops. If you have any alternative explanations please let us know.

Please, please do not pay heed to the fables that say, for example, ergot in wheat is due to cool wet weather and prolonged flowering. This type of statement comes from individual types who believe in fake news, a flat earth and Santa. Wheat, barley and oat flowers never open unless they are deficient in copper which causes pollen sterility, forcing the pollen-free cereal flowers to open and thus get ergot infection.

If you want to prevent or minimize lodging and avoid toxic ergot in your crops, pay attention to soil copper availability.

As a final footnote, rye is an open-flowered cereal and frequently gets infected with ergot. Triticale sometimes has open flowers and ergot infection can result. Check all grains on your farm for ergot as well as checking greenfeed and pasture hay for this toxic fungus that could well be prevalent this year.

The post Identifying copper deficiency in wheat appeared first on Grainews.

Ergot in wheat, barley or oats

The presence of ergot in wheat, barley or even oat seed is a sure-fire confirmation that you have some copper deficiency in your cereal cropland. When ergot shows up in these normally closed pollinated seed crops, it’s a sign that low to very low soil-available copper levels result in pollen sterility in these cereal crops. Pollen sterility causes these normally closed cereal flowers to open up in order to pick up stray cereal pollen from surrounding plants or surrounding cereal fields.

Once the flowers are open, if ergot spores show up you end up with ergots on the open, pollen-free flowers (stigmas) instead of grain. At that point, if pollen from within the crop or from the next field shows up you will have normal grain. But if pollen from an adjoining wheat or barley crop of a different variety appears, you’ll have sure fire cross pollination, bread wheat pollinated by utility wheat or malt barley pollinated by feed barley. If neither pollen or ergot shows up you have got blanks and a yield loss since grain is not formed.

If ergots are present in seed wheat or seed barley kept over for crop seeding, don’t worry. Since the ergots did not get wet and vernalize in the soil over winter they will not germinate in the coming spring.

It has been frequently correlated that when we have years with lots of ergots we have higher levels of wheat midge. That is, the midge can lay more eggs in open, copper-deficient wheat flowers. Some scientists have also observed higher levels of fusarium in copper-deficient wheat fields since normally closed flowers open up.

Weather and soil

Cool, cold or rainy weather and so-called prolonged wheat flowering (closed flowers) have nothing directly to do with ergot infection. What really happens is that in wet seasons we have much shallower rooting of wheat and barley. You have farmed the land for 100 to 200 years. As a consequence, you have removed about one ounce (30 grams) of copper per acre per year, particularly from the top six to eight inches (15 to 20 cm) with each crop. Remember there were only two to three pounds of actual copper mineral in the topsoil of an acre. So over 100 years at a removal rate of one ounce of copper per acre you could have removed 100 ounces or more than six pounds of copper per acre.

In dry years the wheat or barley roots move into the subsoil where they can still access adequate copper in most soils.

Light sandy soils are the most likely soils to become copper deficient due to poor nutrient holding capabilities.

Peat soils and soils very high in organic matter sequester or tie up copper. In Bradford (Holland Marsh) north of Toronto, horticulturists add about 150 pounds of copper sulphate (bluestone 25 per cent copper) per acre to the soil over three years, which will meet crop needs for 20 years or more. This fixes the copper need and they grow some of the best vegetable crops in Canada. Similarly, the high organic soils in the Barrhead/Westlock area of Alberta respond remarkably to generous copper amendments in both yield, quality and absence of ergots.

Copper and lodging

When you add cattle manure to soil, particularly light soil you get severe crop lodging. Too much nitrogen, you say? Nonsense. The nitrogen becomes limiting due to a high carbon ratio causing a surge in soil microbiology (bacteria, fungi, worms) and a tie-up of copper needed by these organisms. The cereal crop lodges due to copper deficiency. Low copper levels cause crop lodging because two copper-based enzymes are necessary for straw strength. Good soil copper levels mean strong standing straw and plump grain.

Some herbicides, particularly the Group 1 fop types, interfere with copper in cereals and can result in moderate to severe lodging. If you see lodged wheat crops but the wheat is standing in the sprayer tracks then you can bet that the herbicide has interfered with copper uptake. The spray track wheels have crushed the cereal plants and greatly reduced the herbicide uptake. Change your herbicide and pay attention to your soil copper levels.

Copper deficiency

Low copper levels in some soils may not be low enough to influence final yields but they can delay maturity of the cereal crop by five to 15 days — critical in years of late-summer frosts. Under severe copper deficiency, such as in high peat or sandy soils, an expected 70-bushel crop of wheat, particularly in wet years can result in 15 to 30 bushels of sample wheat infected with ergot.

Its time that we faced scientific facts. A significant percentage of Canadian and U.S. soils have become depleted in copper. Lodging, low yields, inferior quality, grain cross pollenating and ergot infestation are a consequence. Remember there are still individuals out there who believe that the earth is flat and the U.S. space mission did not land on the moon.

Soil tests, ergots or unusual crop lodging will let you know if copper is deficient in your cropland. Soil copper amendments can be in-row, broadcast or foliar to achieve your target yields.

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With much of this discussion centered on feeding copper to beef cows, it is interesting to note the mineral is only required in very small amounts.

A daily total of 125-140 mg copper should be consumed by beef cattle in order to satisfy all their vital and performance functions. After it is consumed, absorbed, and retained; copper does not become part of any final structural component in the body (a.k.a. 99 per cent of calcium is found in bones). Rather, it sits in many enzyme systems as an invisible activator (re: on/off switch) involved in many body chemical reactions.

For example, copper plays an indirect role in making red blood cells. It activates special enzymes used to regulate iron absorption (another metal involved in the manufacture of oxygen-carrying hemoglobin). Other copper enzymatic functions include immune function, cell health and integrity, maintenance of bone and connective tissue, normal reproductive activities and hoof formation.

In most copper-deficiency cases, either cattle do not consume enough copper in their feed (primary deficiency) or excess antagonistic nutrients such as molybdenum and/or sulphates in the feed or from water tie up biologically usable copper (secondary deficiency). As a result the deficiency symptoms are subtle and often similar to other nutrient deficiencies or even are associated with non-feed related issues.

Checklist for copper deficiency

Here is a practical checklist broken into three categories that I use to investigate the possibility of a marginal primary or secondary copper deficiency in a cow herd:

• General — Lethargic cows and calves, poor milking cows (slow-growing calves), unexplained sickness or deaths, higher incidence of injury, poor growth on replacement heifers, failure to maintain overwinter BCS, poor hoof condition.
• Health — Higher rates of scours, respiratory (pneumonia) and other common cattle diseases, greater susceptibility to bacterial, viral and other disease, poor response and recovery from disease, higher rates of treating cattle, higher rates of sudden death, poor vaccination takes (including measured titres).
• Reproduction — Silent heats in cows and heifers, high percentage of open cows, high incidence of early embryonic deaths, difficult calving season, poor calving percentage, post-calving problems, delayed or failure to recycle after calving and getting rebred and spread-out calving/breeding seasons.

From this checklist, if a producer suspects an underlying marginal copper deficiency in a cow herd, before calling a veterinarian to take blood samples for testing, I suggest that forage samples (and pasture — when available) are tested first. Test for copper as well as sulphur, molybdenum, calcium, and zinc.

This is good first-step advice. A few years ago, I worked with a feed mill that supplied a typical loose cattle mineral to a cow-calf operator whose cows had suffered from poor pregnancy rates and other ailments for years. We suspected some type of trace mineral deficiency (not necessarily copper at the time) in several of the owner’s pastures, because his trouble seem to originate from a specific area of the farm.

Forage tests came back and showed that their molybdenum level was 5.0 ppm (dm. basis), which could significantly tie up dietary copper in the total cattle diet. As a result, the feed mill fortified copper to the mineral in a more biologically available form (re: chelated organic copper) and adjusted the total dietary copper fed; to a ratio of at least 2:1 copper to molybdenum in the diet. By blocking the inference by molybdenum, these cows responded with higher conception rates in the following pasture season.

In this particular case, we didn’t take any blood samples for copper testing, but this practice is common among veterinarians when determining copper status in a cow herd. Blood collection is simple to do and copper analysis is relatively inexpensive.

Keep in mind, since blood pulls copper from the liver (re: liver stores most of the copper in the body), testing blood/serum copper levels is only a good screening tool in the most advanced cases of copper deficiency. Although, liver copper levels are the most reliable test for verifying poor copper status in cattle, the downside of taking liver biopsies is high degree of stress to the animal, time-consuming, expensive and the results taken from animals dying from disease are questionable.

Regardless, the general recommendation for correcting a verified marginal copper deficiency in many cow herds can be a straightforward matter of feeding cattle a well-balanced commercial mineral containing supplemental copper. The NRC copper requirement for young and mature cattle is no more than 15 mg/kg of diet (dm. basis), which takes care of the beef animals’ basic copper requirement and also takes into account the antagonistic effects on dietary copper by moderate molybdenum or sulphur levels in forages, other feedstuffs or water.

A purchased mineral containing 1,500-3,000 mg/kg of dietary copper and fed at 50-100 grams per head per day should prevent or solve most copper deficiency problems.

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It needs to be clear that sheep and goats and cattle absolutely do not have the same copper needs. Over the years I have personally known two sheep producers who faced copper toxicity in their flock and it was devastating both financially and emotionally. Both times it was due to feeding a product that was supposed to be for sheep but the feed mill had mixed it wrong. The sheep were fed the product for several months with no ill effects. Then there was a weather stress. Immediately the flocks started to experience death loss. The feed was tested and discontinued but the damage was done. There was little the university or veterinarians could do and it took several months and much financial/emotional hardship before this settled. Therefore our management recommendations reflect a healthy respect for this condition.

Basic requirements

Generally, sheep require about five ppm (parts per million or mg/kg) of copper in their total diet. Sheep absorb copper from their diet in proportion to the amount of copper offered, not according to their dietary needs. Excess copper is stored in the liver. The storage level in the liver can take months or even years to reach a toxic level (more than 1,000 ppm DM). Toxicity can occur at levels above 25 ppm. However, dietary molybdenum levels also affect copper requirements and there are areas of Manitoba where high or low molybdenum levels can be an issue. If in doubt it is best to contact the local agricultural extension office or the provincial sheep specialist in your province for this information.

If molybdenum is high in feed, a special mineral mix can be ordered with a nutritionist’s prescription. Molybdenum forms an insoluble complex with copper to prevent copper absorption. If molybdenum levels are low (less than 1 ppm), sheep are more susceptible to copper toxicity. If molybdenum intakes exceed 10 ppm, copper deficiency may occur on diets that would normally be adequate. Sulphur further complicates the copper: molybdenum relationship by binding with the molybdenum.

Copper toxicity in sheep usually results from the accumulation of excess copper in the liver over a period of a few weeks to more than a year with no clinical signs. This usually occurs when sheep are fed a product that is made for cattle or specifically for goats. Cattle need about 10 times more copper than a sheep. When a sheep is under any kind of stress the liver will allow a sudden release of copper stores to a rapid breakdown of red blood cells. Affected sheep are lethargic and anemic. They may grind their teeth incessantly and experience extreme thirst. Membranes are very pale and may appear yellow, as jaundice sets in. Urine is a bloody colour. Death usually occurs one to two days after the onset of clinical symptoms. At post-mortem, tissues are pale to dark yellow and the kidneys are a very dark colour.

Other copper sources

Copper can be added in places other than feed or mineral mixes. In recent years, copper oxide wire particles (copper boluses) have been recommended as an anthelmintic (agent causing parasite death) for sheep and goats. Researchers are also re-evaluating copper sulphate drenches as a deworming agent. Copper has anthelmintic activity and has been historically used as a deworming agent in sheep; however, its use was discontinued because of toxicity issues. This is the situation with many “natural dewormers.” They can control parasites, but in effective doses they can increase the risk toxicity to the animal.

Copper deficiency in sheep can occur, although it rarely happens. It bears mentioning only because of the fact that soils in some areas are very high in molybdenum. Fresh grasses are poor sources of copper in comparison to hay. Acid soils increase copper and lower molybdenum in forages. Liming can increase molybdenum in the forage and alter the copper: molybdenum ratio. Where two or more of these three elements exist together on a farm, in quite ‘normal’ concentrations, they will act synergistically to bind out copper from a diet.

Effects of deficiency

Copper deficiency in ewes during mid-pregnancy may lead to swayback in lambs. This is due to a lack of copper during the formation of the neural tube. In young lambs, a copper deficiency may result in a poor fleece without its natural “crimp” which has been described as “steely wool.” Poor growth, anaemia, and increased susceptibility to bacterial infections can also be seen. Caution should be used in diagnosing a copper deficiency in sheep due to delicate balance of this mineral. Soil testing is highly recommended if a deficiency is suspected. The local agriculture office can help with this. There is also an online resource for water and soil testing in Canada at: www.certifiedorganic.bc.ca/rcbtoa/services/soil-testing-services.html.

A common inquiry is if people can house their goats and sheep together. We do not recommend it. Keeping our sheep housing separate for the winter months works the best for us. Over the years we have seen a lowering of fertility in our bucks if housed with our rams. We have seen does with kids that presented copper deficiency symptoms when housed with ewes. We do graze them on the same pastures but they are kept in separate night pens so they have access to their own mineral mixes.

Every season brings with it a new bunch of things to learn. Our wish is that people don’t have to learn things the way others have — the hard way. Minimizing the financial and emotional impact of mass death loss is a goal.

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