Newsletter - January 2002
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Welcome to our first newsletter of 2002.

We would like to wish everyone a very happy New Year, hopefully this year will be a good year for farming. Maybe we will have the ideal year and we will get sun at the right time and rain at the right time.

 

We would like to extend an invitation to all of you to attend our Bio-Ag seminar, which will be repeated in Wellesley two different days, January 22 and January 23. See the flyer included with this newsletter for more information.

 

We are very proud to announce that we are celebrating our 20th anniversary of being an incorporated company this year as is featured in our 2002 calendar. If any of you have not received a calendar please call our head office and we will have a distributor drop one off or we will mail one out to you.

 

We are very proud of our progress, as we have become a recognized company in the agricultural field. In fact one of the sincerest forms of flattery comes from our premix competitors in the area who also claimed recently they have chelated minerals in their premix as well. What they fail to tell you is that their chelates have a lot more heavy metals, are not nearly as effective, and do not necessarily work at a cellular level such as ours do. They also seem to be able to intimidate farmers. Telling them that their worries about their sick animals are not a result of poor nutrition or lack of understanding. It is however, this terrible bug and they must vaccinate the animal to death to overcome the problem. Another form of flattery is when people say they have a product just like Bio-Lac. Many have tried to copy it but they haven't duplicated it.

For our customer the bottom line is still the most important. It is not necessarily if you can save a couple hundred dollars a month on your feed bill but, how much can you keep your veterinarian bills down due to good nutrition and early prevention.

 

As we have grown over the years we have always tried to deliver new products, services, and ideas. Several of our new ideas are now in the works and there will be some brand new products coming out late spring early summer. We will keep you informed of those. We also have our Laboratory, which by the end of January we are hoping will be fully functional. The primary function of this lab will be to make sure that you our customers are getting the product we are saying you are supposed to be getting. There will be a lot of emphasis put on quality control. Eventually we will provide bacterial and fungal analysis for our clients only.

Copper Debate

 

Right now there is a raging debate going on that sheep should have absolutely no copper. It is very interesting because for many years if you read the word from Dr. William Albrecht, he spoke very clearly how important copper is in their diets. First of all it is essential in developing the bone structure and protecting the bones from chipping and breaking, Secondly in sheep it is important to aid in the production of fine quality fleece. The less copper in the diet the coarser the wool will become. We have been adding copper into our sheep premixes for many years now and have yet to hear from anyone who has experienced copper toxicity. The biggest part of the problem with copper toxicity is that many of the people in the premix business are using oxides, carbonates or sulfates or a combination of all three. This is where the problem lies due to the excessive heavy metals these contain. If they were to use copper sulfate in a small quantity as well as chelated copper they would probably have no problems. This is what happens when so called 'experts' start condemning one particular vitamin or mineral in favour of research they have found when the research has not been performed extensively enough.

 

 

 

GMO Free Feed

 

Starting in the New Year Jones Feed Mill in Wroexeter will be partnering with us to produce a GMO free complete feed. If you are interested in this please place your orders with our head office and we will arrange delivery to your farm depending on quantity of feed ordered. Our minimum amount for delivery is 1 tonne. With the ongoing concern of Genetically modified organisms we are now only beginning to see some problems emerge. This has to do with an article in the Ontario Farmer in the last week of December, where they are now finding GMO's in the silt of one of the rivers that enters the Saint Lawrence Seaway. No one seems to be able to explain that one away. We have got to look at this in an entirely different fashion then we have before. GMO's are still a debatable thing because they have never been proven in terms of safety over a long period of time. Also, nothing has been proven as to what is going on inside the body when we ingest food with these organisms.

 

 

 

Organic Producers

 

To all organic producers please when you call in an order be sure to specify whether you want conventional or organic premixes, and also please let us know which organization you are registered or certified with; either O.C.I.A. or O.C.P.P. It is important that we know so we can properly mix your premix to your organization's standards.

 

 

 

Grass Fed Beef

 

If you raise grass fed beef we recommend that the grass feed you purchase or grow be a mix of more grasses and clovers than alfalfa. The reasoning for this is that Alfalfa does not stand the rigors of hoof traffic on the soil, secondly alfalfa tends to create far more problems with bloat. There may be some new varieties that work however, the big secret in all of this is having enough legumes to support the nitrogen requirements of the grasses so that you get proper growth and yet at the same time do not have an abundance of legumes which promotes excessive proteins. See the For Sale section on page 5 of this newsletter for Doug Shirray's contact information. He has input and ideas on how to make your pastures healthier.

(Traditional Non-GMO Hybrid Corn Seed. Most maturities for silage or grain in untreated or treated seed. Also organically produced seed in limited supply. Phone Doug Shirray (519) 655-2570.)

 

 

 

Hot Off The Press

 

There is an interesting piece of news in the Jan. 1st issue of the Ontario Farmer. In it a company by the name of Gemma functional food wants to extract a certain kind of protein from milk, which has been recognized as a booster to the immune system. The research finds that it will work for both people as well as livestock. It is very interesting because the article claims that it is naturally produced in cows milk but is destroyed by pasteurization.' How interesting that every one has said raw milk is so bad for our health but this product has apparently been in there for thousands of years, produced by the cow herself. This company now holds a patent and is lining up ways to commercially extract the protein from the cows milk and then run scientific trials to make sure it is safe and effective and meets 'the government's standards' what ever those might be. This protein is called CD14 it is a Lactation Associated Immuno Trophic Protein hence the name L.A.I.T. which happens to be the French word for milk. How interesting that for thousands of years our animals have be producing this kind of thing for our benefit and we have felt the need to rush down the road of stupidity in terms of pasteurization and homogenization of our food especially milk. No wonder for many years the Germans have been saying that raw milk actually helps people in the hospital to get better than they would otherwise. They are hoping to use this formula in nutrition for infant baby formulas as well as for elderly people. They believe it may have a strong link in helping to produce better T cells in the body for people who have infections. Somehow in all of this human stupidity, nature and the Creator still know what is best for us.

Biography

We are privileged this year to have the Honourable Eugene Whelan speaking at our seminar coming up later this month. For more information on what he will be speaking about and the details regarding the seminar the flyer included with this newsletter. Eugene F. Whelan was born in 1924 in Anderdon Township; Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada. He was raised on a farm and after attending high school and studying to be a tool and die maker, took up cash crop farming. He became active in public life at the age of 21 when he was elected to serve on a local schoolboard and, subsequently, became Reeve of Anderdon Township and Warden of Essex County. He held elected positions as president and director of numerous producer and community organizations. Mr. Whelan was elected to the House of Commons in 1962 and re-elected in all subsequent federal elections until 1984, when he stopped running. He served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Forestry until in November of 1972 when he was appointed federal Minister of Agriculture. As the Minister he introduced a wide range of legislation and was responsible for the Farm Credit Corporation, Canada's 10th largest lending institution, and succeeded in raising the loan limits for young farmers. Mr. Whelan is well known for his closeness to and understanding of the nation's farmers, his commitment to their problems and aspirations, and his perspective and strong advocacy of the scope and importance of agriculture within government.

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