Horslyx Smallholder Block 15kg – Correct Nutrient Deficiencies & Support Animal Health

Horslyx Smallholder Block – 15kg

Despite the name on the tub, this is not a horse product. The Smallholder Block is Horslyx's lick for grazing livestock — cattle, sheep, goats, camelids and deer — and it exists because a smallholding usually runs two or three species over the same grass and nobody wants three separate mineral buckets in the field.

It is a hard, concentrated lick rather than a soft one, so stock have to work at it and a block lasts. Horslyx's argument for the format is trickle feeding: a little and often across the whole day, rather than one daily dose that the boldest animal takes most of. The 15kg is the larger of the two sizes they make it in.

Performance & Benefits

• Balances the vitamin, mineral and trace element shortfalls in forage and grazing.
• Free-access lick, so intake is spread across 24 hours instead of taken in one go.
• Hard and concentrated, which slows consumption and makes a block last.
• Horslyx say it improves the efficiency of rumen microbes, so stock get more feed value out of fibrous forage.
• Supplies additional energy and protein alongside the minerals.
• One lick covers mixed-species grazing instead of a separate product for each.

Suitable For

• Cattle, sheep, goats, camelids and deer — the classes Horslyx name for this block.
• Smallholdings running more than one species over the same ground.
• Year-round use, at grass or indoors.
• Herds and flocks on forage-based diets with no other mineral supplementation.
• Not a horse product despite the brand name — the Original, Garlic and Mint Balancer licks are the equine ones — and pigs are not ruminants and are not among the classes Horslyx list for this block.

Feeding

• Offer on a free-access, self-help basis and let stock regulate their own intake.
• Site it near water or a loafing area where stock already gather.
• Horslyx publish no daily intake figure or expected consumption rate for this block, so none is stated here.
• It supplements forage; it does not replace it. Keep forage and clean water available at all times.

Composition & Analysis

• Horslyx publish no composition or ingredient list for the Smallholder Block on their own website, so none is stated here.
• They publish no typical analysis either — no protein, oil, fibre, ash, sugar or mineral figures — only that the block supplies vitamins, minerals, trace elements, energy and protein.
• Across the Horslyx range the wording used is that the licks are extremely low in starch, with no starch percentage attached and no inclusion levels given for named extras.
• 15kg block. Horslyx also make the Smallholder in 5kg.
• The declaration printed on the tub is the authority for what is actually in it.

Care & Caution

• Because Horslyx publish no mineral levels for this block, read the tub label before offering it to sheep. Sheep accumulate copper and are the species most easily poisoned by a lick formulated with cattle in mind.
• A free-access lick is not a controlled dose. Watch a new group for the first few days in case one animal monopolises the block.
• A complementary feed only. It does not replace forage or a balanced ration, and stock in poor condition need more than a lick.