Selenium is one of the vital trace minerals that your goat herd needs to be healthy. In order for goats to be well-balanced nutritionally they need around 0.10 to 0.30 ppm or parts per mil
lion of their feed to be Selenium. What do we mean by parts per million? Well ppm is a ratio of whatever your looking to measure, in this case Selenium, versus the total amount of a whole. In our case the whole is the feed our goats consume.
For example: let 1.00 = 100% of our feed. 1 parts per million would be 1/1,000,000 or 0.0001 which translates to 0.01% of our feed. And we are don't really need even that much Selenium on a daily basis to keep our herd health.
Rather, if our goat feed needs to have at least 0.10 ppm, or 10% of 1 part per million, then that means the feed needs to be 0.00001 or 0.001% Selenium. This seems like a small amount, but surprisingly it can be difficult at times for herds to get even the 0.001% minimum Selenium they need. Our safe ranges of Selenium consumption per day would then be 0.001% to 0.003% of a single goats feed.
Hay is generally not broken down into trace minerals as they are not considered to be material to the nutritional composition of the hay. Instead when hay is tested the producer is more concerned with protein, fiber or moisture content than trace mineral content. This makes it hard to tell what the forage or hay we provide really contains trace mineral wise. Add in that vast parts of the US are Selenium deficient and you end up with forage or hay that is selenium deficient as well.
One good way to help increase Selenium consumption in your herd is to supplement the mineral via a good goat mineral or Selenium gel. In severely deficient areas you might even consult a good vet on whether or not utilizing an injectable Selenium compound would be helpful. The most well know injectable compound is called BoSe. BoSe is a concentrated formula of Selenium and Vitamin E that can be utilized by farms as needed (with vet approval). It does require a prescription from a vet to fill, but when BoSe is needed you generally cannot use a goat mineral or Selenium gel to solve your issue.
Why does Selenium or Vitamin B matter in the first place? Well, they are some of the basic building blocks needed for dams to safely produce kids year after year. A lack of Selenium and Vitamin B can cause a variety of issues like bones not forming correctly, or white muscle disease. In severe cases goats deficient in Selenium can become weak and pass away without proper intervention.
The first step in figuring out your Selenium management for your herd is to figure out if your area is Selenium deficient or rich as that will give you an idea of what the hay composition will be like. Check out the map here: https://mrdata.usgs.gov/geochem/doc/averages/se/usa.html to get started.
It is also recommended that you have your herd's blood tested for mineral levels before administering any significant amounts of Selenium. You don't want to over dose on Selenium as that can be fatal.
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