In Surin Province, roughly 450 kilometers from Bangkok, there is one veterinarian responsible for more than 200 elephants. That single doctor cannot be everywhere at once. But a simple mineral block made from Thai plants might be filling the gap.
Surin is flat agricultural land — rice paddies stretching to the horizon, sugar palms standing along the roads, the occasional water buffalo chewing at overgrown grass. The heat there presses down from a wide, open sky. And in a clearing a few kilometers outside town, three elephants stood beneath rain trees when researchers arrived to test something new.
Thailand's domesticated elephants have lived alongside humans for generations. Unlike wild elephants in Borneo or Sri Lanka, Surin's elephants have lost the instincts they would need to survive alone. They do not know how to find water across a dry season or which forest paths lead where. They eat what their keepers can afford to give them.
An adult Asian elephant eats around 150 kilograms of food every single day. They need a steady supply of minerals — sodium, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus — for strong bones, working muscles, nerve signals, and digestion. In the wild, elephants find these at natural salt licks in the soil. But decades of farming have drained the minerals from Surin's earth. The elephants started eating more dirt just to get what their bodies needed. The result was bloated stomachs, diarrhea, and lost appetites.
Mahout families — the traditional elephant keepers — tried to help by buying mineral blocks meant for cattle and pigs. These provided only partial relief and cost more than many families could regularly afford. With only one specialist elephant doctor serving the entire region, the problem went largely unchecked.
Researchers working with the AKAYA Polyclinic Thai Traditional Medical Council and local agricultural experts set out to build something better. Their goal: a herbal supplement made entirely from plants already grown in Thailand, cheap enough for mahout families to make themselves.
The finished product combines nine ingredients into 1.5-kilogram blocks. Ripe tamarind supplies calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and sodium while aiding digestion. Moringa leaf powder adds even more calcium. Black sesame brings magnesium. Rice bran provides fiber and acts as an anti-inflammatory. Sea salt replaces sodium directly, so elephants no longer need to eat dirt to get it. Nut grass, turmeric, and a plant called Tinospora crispa (boraphet) all work to calm the gut inflammation that the dirt-eating left behind. Ripe banana and honey bind the mixture together and make it taste better.
The blocks are dried at 50 to 60 degrees Celsius and stay good for up to two months — long enough for families to prepare batches ahead of time and store them without expense.
Working with groups including Play la Ploen, Elephant Kingdom Surin, the Zoological Park Organisation of Thailand, and the Surin–Ban Ta Klang Elephant Village, researchers have now given the supplement to more than 200 elephants across the region. Families have reported healthier appetites and fewer digestive problems.
The project is still growing. If more mahout families can learn to make the blocks independently, the hope is that Surin's elephants — animals shaped by generations of human bond — might finally get the minerals they have been missing, without their keepers having to wait for a single overstretched doctor to come around.