Clay

[Guest]

 

 

Dirt as Medicine in the Animal Kigndom Animals, domestic and wild alike, instinctually drawn to clay deposits have been observed licking the clay as part of their everyday diet, and rolling in it to obtain relief from injuries. Clay has helped cows with scours and pneumonia. Veterinarians use it on dogs, cats, horses, etc... for various afflictions including injuries and infections. Pets are helped, too.  Recently more information has become available outlining the important role clay can play in the recovery and maintenance of health. Many wild animals, and some people, develop 'pica' when ill, a craving to eat earth - particularly clay, which assuages diarrhoea and binds to many plant poisons. Among the most famous clay-eaters are the parrots of the Amazon. Scarlet macaws, blue and gold macaws, and hosts of smaller birds perch together in their hundreds to excavate the best clay layer along a riverbank. Parrots' regular diet is tree seeds, which the trees defend with toxic chemicals, and clay is an essential buffer to the toxins. Specially formulated clay baths have been shown to be able to literally pull pollutants out like a magnet, getting rid of years of toxic accumulation in just one bath.  

In her marvelous book, Wild Health: How Animals Keep Themselves Well and What We Can Learn From Them, Cindy Engles, Ph.D. devotes an entire chapter to geophagy (clay or earth-eating). She documents the benefit of clay to human and animal health all over the world. Mammals, birds, reptiles, and invertebrates have been observed to eat dirt on every continent except Antartica.

 

Why would animals want to lick clay? Bill Roundy is a retired rancher. He remembers a generation ago, when he lived in Utah, that he and other cattle ranchers, learnt a valuable lesson by watching their cattle. Whenever a cow got sick and went off her food, the ranchers would turn her out to fend for herself, as they could not afford to throw good money after bad. But, they noticed that, time and time again, the cows would return after a few days, fully recovered, and ready to feed with the rest of the herd. It wasn't long before these ranchers discovered how the cows were recovering. The sickly cattle would take themselves across the desert to clay banks, and feed on them until their health returned. When the ranchers saw how easy and cheap was the solution, they transported clay to their sick cows - a practice still continued today. Free-ranging cattle dig into ancient clay sub soils to access clay and so have no need to be supplemented in this way. [Mahaney,WC Maximilliano, B Hancock, RGV Aufrieter, S and Perez, FL 1996. Geophagy of Holstein hybrid cattle in the northern Andes, Venezuela. Mountain Research and Development, 16 (2) pp 177-180.]

 

Many species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and even insects, in all parts of the world, eat dirt. Known as geophagy (earth-eating) this habit has long been assumed to be an attempt to rectify mineral deficiciencies in their diet. However new evidence suggests that this cannot always be the case. It has become apparent that the clay content is often the most important ingredient of selected soils. Clay is an effective binding agent as its chemical structure allows other chemicals to bond with it and so lose their reactivity. Clay is therefore an effective deactivator of toxins from diet or pathogens.

 

 

 

[Fair Play]

I can remember the use of Kaolin poultice (clay) for all sorts of aches,pains and respiratory problems slapped on hot.

[Guest slugmonkey]

Some of the belg grits are in a clay base

have also heard of bricks and flower pots being crushed and given in the grit pan these are clay based

[OLDYELLOW]

great post TonyW and if birds have been down on race day for water ( which they shouldnt be ) then clay mineral blocks are great also good if suspect poisioning  

[Guest IB]

The brown-coloured pickstones are clay-based, the red-coloured ones are brick-based.

 

Remember well the 1st clay pickstone I bought, cake sat in an earthenware dish for best part of a year, untouched.    Waste of money this, I thought, till I picked it up and accidently broke it - pieces fell on loft floor and the birds were on it like no tomorrow?

 

Since then, give crushed clay pickstone maybes once a week - it doesn't last long.

 

Still on clay - watched a David Attenborough film that showed fruit-eating birds, after a meal, flock to an embankment with exposed clay. He reckoned they ate it to counter the acidity in their diet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest joshdonlan]

good posts guys