My question is this: why is more soluble neccesarily better?

In figuring rations for production animals (like we did on my father's dairy farm) we would take availabilty of the feed/supplement, cost, and bioavailability of the nutrients into account. If we could get a cheap feed stuff that had a low bioavailability we would just feed more of it and there wasn't any detrimental effect.



In other words - if the diet you are currently feeding is meeting the needs does there NEED to be a change? Okay, so I quess that is two questions 1) is the diet you are currently feeding meeting the daily need of free calcium and 2) is there an advantage to changing the diet.



There are two ways of answering the first question - either do an analysis of the diet you are feeding and balance that against reported daily need of nutrients or compare your diet to diets that have proven to work in the past.



As far as answering the second one - I don't know exactly; Although I can add that in talking with my dragon's vet he told me that the number of cases of hypercalcemia [overdosing on calcium suplimentation] is on the rise 'cuz people have heard 'bout MBD and think that if a small amount is good, a larger amount is better.



So, I would say if you are follwoing a 'tried and true' diet there should be little to worry 'bout as far as health of the animal but looking into the topic is very interesting and I bet the info will come in handy to someone down the road (like if you have an animal that doesn't acidify it's stomach enough, then the 'tried and true'diet probably won't meet that one animal's needs)



Like I said - no definite answers but thanks for sharing the info
-----
Russ

[ Show Entire Thread ]