Quality assessment of mineral mixture and chelated minerals available in the market Saijpaul S.*, Singh Parminder1, Sikka S.S. Department of Animal Nutrition, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana-141004, India 1Department of Veterinary and Animal Husbandry Extension Education, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana-141004, India * Corresponding author: Dr. S. Saijpaul; E-mail: sksaijpaul@rediffmail.com
Online published on 2 February, 2012. Abstract Samples of 19 mineral mixtures and 6 chelated minerals were collected from the progressive dairy farmers and analysed. The range of DM, ash, acid insoluble ash (AIA), Mg, Mn, Zn, Fe, Cu, S, Ca and P were 93.69–99.8, 20.13–90.18, 0.85–23.35, 0.26–15.1, 0.01–0.25, 0.0–0.9, 0.0–2.69, 0.0–0.41, 0.19–1.98, 7.2–30.9 and 0.0–19.78%, respectively. As compared to the BIS specification for mineral mixture, all the samples had the required DM but contained 21.1% lower total ash and 94.7% higher AIA. The number of samples failing BIS specification for Mg, Mn, Zn, Fe and Cu were 57.9, 47.4, 47.4, 36.8 and 42.1%, respectively; whereas samples having lower Ca, P and S were 21.1, 63.2 and 73.7%, respectively. The price (Rs 40/kg to 350/kg) also did not relate to the mineral content or quality of the mineral mixture. In the 6 samples of chelated minerals, the range of Mn, Zn and Cu was 0.42–3.68%, 1.46–5.08% and 0.36–2.0%, respectively, and all met the daily requirement at the recommended dose. However, wide variation was observed in the total ash and AIA content. The price ranged from Rs 140 to 700/kg which supplied several times higher chelated minerals in the suggested dose. It may be concluded that there is a need to monitor the quality of mineral mixtures available in the market due to their non-uniformity in the minerals and higher AIA content. The chelated minerals supply the specific minerals in the daily dose but may not be cost effective due to its exuberant price. Top Keywords Quality, Mineral mixture, Feed supplement, Chelated minerals. Top |