Winter 2005
MurrayÕs Musings
As I sit here looking out the window writing this segment of the newsletter I see a world of white, snowflakes starting to fallÉ
It is a time of year to again sit and pause and reflect on the past, the present and to gaze into the future, and try to understand what the future may hold for each and every one of us.
This past year has again proven to be somewhat difficult for those of us in
rural agriculture. This includes ourselves as mineral mixers, those of you as hog, beef, or dairy farmers, in fact any of you that are in farming. One of the things that is absolutely, consistently, positively sure is that change will forever be a constant that we will be dealing with for now and in the immediate future. We do have many things to be thankful for as we end 2004, and the main one is that we still have friends, family, and people about us that do have a sense of caring. We see the devastation that has occurred in certain parts of India, Sri Lanka and Thailand with a 9.0 earthquake. As I sit here writing this newsletter, the devastation keeps growing by leaps and bounds. We certainly need to keep these people in our thoughts and prayers with all of the hardships they have suffered.
At this time I want to talk to you just briefly about several things of interest that we are working on for the January seminar. Many of you were very excited about hearing Dave Stetzer and learning about many of the problems that are associated with electricity. We are again privileged to have Dave back to speak to us some more about the problem. We actually now have tested and installed filters on several Ontario farms, and Dave will be showing wavelengths and patterns of what is going on in OntarioÕs farms. The talk
by Stetzer will also include many of the problems that we see with human health as well as animal health, donÕt miss it!
The other speaker we have will be Brewster Kneen. Many of you will remember him from many years ago, who talked about big multinational corporations and our food supply, Brewster will be talking more about seed saving and the effects of multinationals on our ability to feed ourselves.
I will be doing a brief overview of Perma Guard/Diatomaceous Earth and Bio-Lac and how they relate to our farm operations. All in all we hope we have a great seminar planned for each and every one of you.
ThereÕs an exciting new development that the Americans will be opening the borders to live Canadian cattle in March. The sad part is that many of our farmers are broke or out of business. On the negative side of this is also the fact that there is another mad cow case in Canada. It is our hope that calmer heads prevail to work things out. There are, however, American groups that are threatening suits to try to keep Canadian cattle at home. We would certainly need to see the movement of dairy cattle breeding stock again and we would also need to see the movement of some of the backlog of beef cattle into the United States to some of the kill plants.
In closing, I will leave you with something to think about in terms of how we are feeding and nourishing our animals, which in turn feed and nourish us. Many of you know that Bio-Ag has had special chelated minerals as well as natural sources of Selenium and Vitamin E for many years. We know that certain minerals and vitamins have long been recognized as essential supplements for feeding livestock. Early mineral supplementation was solely to prevent deficiency situations. Of course many of these only became apparent once they became really acute, causing a lot of detrimental effects on animals. As we have improved our understanding on the roles of these minerals, we now have begun to move away from just preventing acute deficiencies; weÕre working at using optimal mineral levels.
With the chelates that Bio-Ag uses, this can actually help in many ways. Most of these trace elements that are chelated have two main functions; A) to maintain a proper functioning metabolism, B) to activate enzymes in a variety of functions such as reproduction and immunity. The other functions related to our chelates are Cobalt – which aids ruminants in reproduction as well as the production of B12.
The interesting thing is that when you use oxides or carbonates, which are definitely very, very cheap, they wind up only being absorbed at about a 1% rate. So therefore, the unabsorbed mineral has nowhere to go but out. Animals excrete them in manure and urine creating their own kind of toxic waste. When manure with high mineral content is repeatedly spread on the land, it can render that land and associated waterways basically unusable. Much of this has been seen in certain parts of the South East United States; where high levels of copper sulphate have been used, and now the land is totally toxic.
In the end what we really want to do is have a kind of livestock that A) produces no toxic waste in terms of heavy metal content being hauled back out onto the soil, B) that this animal does not accumulate high levels of toxic lead, cadmium, or mercury which oxides and carbonates tend to have much more of, and C) to have a healthy product to feed and continue to nourish the human race.
In summing up, I wish all of you a very happy and prosperous 2005, and wish for you all the best in terms of health, happiness, and prosperity.
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Effect of Bio-Lac on Feed
Bio-AgÕs own probiotic, Bio-Lac, is a combination of lactobacillus acidophilus and live plant enzymes. Bio-Lac works the opposite of antibiotics; instead of destroying life, Bio-Lac promotes life.
Feeding Bio-Lac will help to:
á Improve immune system function by strengthening helpful microbial populations and suppressing harmful bacterial growth;
á Counteract ill effects of antibiotic treatment by sustaining the good bacteria;
á Improve overall health & productivity of all species;
á Lower pathogen loads in manure.
A stable product with an extensive shelf life, Bio-Lac can be incorporated into a grain ration or top-dressed. Bio-Lac increases both absorption and assimilation of nutrients at the cellular level, where the cell responds to the vitamins, minerals, enzymes and oxygen brought to the cell in response to feed inputs. Our unique formulation provides the bacterial and enzyme boost to make the cellular conversion fire, giving maximum feed conversion.
Call Head Office for more details 1-800-363-5278!
Staff Profile
Florence Bast was born and
raised on a Dairy/Beef Farm in
Waterloo/Perth County. She
attended Millbank Public School, and upgraded her secondary school diploma and
studied Stenography at Conestoga College in Waterloo.
After graduating Florence
worked for two years at Equitable Life Insurance. Marriage came next, and in 1970 she wed a Dairy Farmer, who
grew up outside of Wellesley named Murray Bast, A.K.A. the President of Bio-Ag.
They milked cows until 1991
on MurrayÕs family farm. Florence
helped with milking and was responsible for raising calves. Since they sold the Dairy herd, the
Basts raise Beef Cattle, Holstein Heifers, and Alpacas.
Florence has been with Bio-Ag
since Murray started collaborating.
At first sheÕd lend a hand wherever a hand was needed; making
deliveries, loading orders, answering phone, giving advice from all the years
of experience working with livestock having various problems, etc. Now she spends each day at her computer
in Accounts Receivable and Customer Service.
Florence and Murray have two
sons, Parry who works for Bio-Ag, and Lindsay who is in his last year of
Naturopathic College.