The use of blood analyses to evaluate mineral status in livestock

Animal responses are useful means of evaluating and assessing nutritional status. Blood mineral concentrations can be useful nutritional responses, although there are important limitations. The nutritional value in monitoring blood mineral concentrations varies with the specific mineral, being generally most valuable for those minerals in which homeostasis is regulated primarily by renal excretion, as opposed to regulation by variable absorptive efficiency. Examples of minerals for which blood concentrations are good measures of nutritional intake are selenium and magnesium. Blood mineral concentrations are affected by multiple variability factors. The strategy for use in mineral status assessment is to minimize non-nutritional variation by grouping animals for testing based on physiologic factors that affect, or are likely to affect, the concentration of the mineral or minerals being tested. Care should be taken to use the proper sampling protocol, so as not to cause artifactual variation. Removal of the serum from the clot within 2 hours of sample collection is an important step, among others. Sampling adequate numbers of animals and evaluating the herd mean and SD can minimize the effect of random variation on interpretation.