Licking the Salt Block

From a young age, I was fascinated with salt. Up until I was about five, we raised sheep in the ranch. We had about 150 sheep. In their natural diet, sheep do not eat enough salt. Thus, when you raise sheep, you need to provide salt licks for them. 

We had some old car tires that had been cut in half (see picture) that we used for providing salt to the sheep. I remember one on the knoll of the hill in the sheep pasture above the board gate and one in the little pasture by the sheep barn. We likely had one in the buck pasture but I do not remember for sure. 

Example of salt tires we used for sheep

Dad would buy “rock salt” in twenty-five pound bags. We would pour the salt into the tires for the sheep to eat. I have two memories about the rock salt. I remember being in the back of the blue station wagon. Dad placed a bag of rock salt in the back and a few pieces of salt fell out of the bag. I picked up one of the smaller pieces and ate it. As I think about this experience, I can taste the salt as it dissolved in my mouth. 

I also remember going with Kelly to check on the salt in the sheep in the sheep pasture. There was still some salt in the tire. He and I both picked some salt crystals out of the tire to eat. 

example salt block with added minerals 
(the type of block we most frequently bought)

example salt block

The cows and horses we raised also needed salt. We purchased salt blocks for animals (see example photos) to put out for the cows and horses to lick. We usually bought the mineral blocks that had additives like zinc, magnesium, iodine, etc. We would put the salt blocks out for our stock to lick. We also usually had a few blocks is storage in the grainery. I do not remember when I started doing it, but I liked to lick the salt blocks. It was not a frequent thing, but I would lick the salt blocks. 

The experience of licking the new salt blocks in the grainery was a rough texture on my tongue. However, the blocks of salt in the yard, had smoothed out indents. I liked to lick these indents because of the smooth texture in my tongue. It was not until I was 8 or 9 years old that I finally figured out why the blocks in the yard had smooth indents. It was because the cows and horses licked the block so much it made a smoothed indent in the block.

After I realized this fact, I stopped  licking the smoothed out indents on the salt blocks in the yard. 

example salt block with smoothed indents