[sokel]

How do you all feed your Orphan Lambs ?  We are feeding at Lib from the bottle racks and teat buckets, as they go down we refill the bottles. We also top the smaller lambs up every time we go into the shed
Is this a good idea or should we have set feeding times such as 4 feeds a day ?

[Remy]

I think if it was me it would depend on how many I had to feed!  The most I've bottle fed (at set times) have been six but any more than that I'd be tempted to feed ad lib.  How much milk do you think each lamb gets through, or is it impossible to guage?


I have one lamb bottle fed now, she has gone from 4 feeds to 3 feeds a day and takes about 400-450ml a time.

[fiestyredhead331]

We are feeding a week old orphan and he is taking about 1/2 pint every 4 hours, last feed at 11 pm then starts again at 7 am

[sokel]

We have 15 feeding at lib at the moment and they are going through around 25 ltrs a day of powdered milk ,everyone has full tummys and content.
we also have 3 that we are feeding by hand on the bottle as they wont latch onto the racks and they are taking
1 1/2ltrs a day

[ScotsGirl]

I've never had more than 2 at a time so just bottle feed. Any more and I don't think I could cope

[twizzel]

This year I've had them on a bottle 5 x day 200ml each feed, until they are sucking properly and then they went on the shepherdess. Much easier and they grew a lot faster too. Then it's just a case of refilling it twice daily, 1.5/2 litres of milk per lamb. Weaned at 5-6 weeks. I've had 12 this year.
Last year we had them on the bottle, 200ml 5x day in the first week, 250ml 4 x day in the 2nd week, 3 x day in the 3rd week and weaned at 6 weeks.

[SallyintNorth]

I'll be really interested to hear how you get on Graham.

Every year BH witters on at me about a Shepherdess system and ad lib creep, and every year I say they'll eat us out of house and home and will just get horribly fat and be worthless. 

It'd be good to know if I'm right or whether I should give in and get an automatic system!  It would certainly be a lot less work.

I use a bottle rack system in preference to a 4- or 6-teat bucket, pen them in groups of 6 (4 bottles in the rack, one in each hand - in extremis I can do 7 lambs at a time, the 7th bottle between my knees!)  This year I've got 12 so far, of which one is having to be kept on her own as she has some orf-type infection which (a) I don't want her giving to the others and (b) the sheep milk replacer stings so she's on Jersey milk.  So I've an older pen on 3 feeds, soon to go down to 2 and move to the outside pen with some grass and more space to play.  Smaller/younger pen just went back up to 4 feeds a day with a new entrant yesterday  but will be back on 3 feeds by the weekend.  They'll move up to the larger indoor pen when the older group move outside - and it will then be easier to feed one lot without the other as they'll be in different places.

The milk replacer I use is 1L per lamb per day (some are 1.5L), and I feed Jersey milk at 1.5L per lamb per day to those on that.  So they get a max of IL/(no.of feeds) each per feed, and I pull them off if they look well plumped and before they look triangular  .  (Little Diesel would take 250ml per feed if allowed, but is teeny, so gets 200ml max and sometimes is stopped at 150ml if getting too round.)

All have hay available at all times, as well as fresh water.  Fresh creep given an hour or so after each feed; the older lambs will start to eat more creep as the time between feeds increases.  Then I'll start to decrease the quantity of milk per feed, which will encourage further creep feeding.  Once I'm sure they're all eating 1/2lb per day, and they're at least 5 weeks old, then I'll wean them.

They won't get more than 1lb/day of creep, less if the grass is good and they are in good condition.  Friends who have used ad lib talk about 20 lambs eating their way through a sack a day...   Surely they'll be all fat and can't possibly make a profit???

[sokel]

Thanks for all the info , Sally on the bag it says 1.5 lts a day so thats what we are giving the smaller ones then the others have 14 teats among 15 of them, thinking seriously of ditching the bucket as you dont know who is getting what when there is 3 latched to each side.
I dread to think how fat your friends must be, a sack a day is a massive amout of milk   
Have to admit these do not empty the bottles each feed and infact the morning feed usualy lasts them untill late morning

[firemansam]

we have our 1st 4 cades, 2 weeks old and being bottle fed 4 500ml feeds at 6am through to 11pm, we warm our milk to body temp before feeding.
If you feed ad lib via a bucket or bottle rack doesnt that mean the lambs get cold milk??? Isnt that a potential cause of scours?

Buckets or a bottle rack does sound much easier!

[SallyintNorth]

Sorry, Graham - the sack a day was creep feed, once the lambs were on creep.  20 lambs, 1 sack - it's not a great deal over 1kg per lamb, but that's more than 4 times what I expect to feed mine!

People do say they self-regulate if they have ad lib milk, but I don't know at what level they would do this.  I have contemplated doing it with Jersey milk - they need 1.5L per day, so I doubt they'd drink very much more than that.  My 12 lambs would need 18L per day...    Not sure I want to be hand-milking that much, I'd have to invest in a parlour milking machine... 

If I use a bucket system, not on ad lib, then I pull lambs off as their tummies get full.  At first it's a wrestling match!  But if you are consistent, then they pretty soon learn that once you pull them off then that's it for that feed.  Or you can have a seperate area you pop them into once they're full.

Some milk replacers are designed to be fed warm or cold, but it's best to be consistent.  So if you are leaving it out in a non-heated dispensing system, then it's maybe best to make it up and serve it cold, so that it's always cold.  I'm speculating here though, I've only ever used warm milk not ad lib.  You'd maybe have to get lambs trained onto the teats using warm milk, then switch them to cold once they are gutsy little monkeys.

[twizzel]

Sally we have 12 lambs and go through a 25kg sack every 5 days. I'm sure given half the chance they would eat a sack a day but as you say they would be terribly fat and you would be very poor!
I moved ours onto a ad lib system this year and I have to say they look very well after being on the shepherdess for 4 weeks. The final 1-2 weeks before weaning I take them off it and feed 1 bottle each end of the day for 1 week, then 1/2 bottle for the last week. After 4 weeks on the feeder they don't tend to self regulate and just drink it dry so I take them off it. This worked really well, they look great and were more than ready to be weaned at 6 weeks. I think the shepherdess system is invaluable when they are tiny up to about 4 weeks old, they get milk regularly which is far more natural.

[SallyintNorth]

Sally we have 12 lambs and go through a 25kg sack every 5 days. I'm sure given half the chance they would eat a sack a day but as you say they would be terribly fat and you would be very poor!

12 lambs, 25kgs in 5 days - that's around 1/2lb per lamb per day, so that's about right, I'd say  .  Enough for healthy growth, not so much they just laze around getting fat instead of exercising and putting down muscle.

When they were on the shepherdess, did you keep track of how much they drank when you weren't regulating it?  And were you feeding it warm or cold?  Or starting warm and cooling?  And how many teats for the 12?  Sorry for the barrage of questions, but I'm keen to know more!

[twizzel]

Yes when I worked it out it seemed about right, they have a bit of soaked sugarbeet too because of the weather/grass situation and seem to be doing ok.
On the shepherdess I worked out they were having slightly over 1.5litres per day per lamb, split between 2 refills. When they were v young up to about 3 weeks old they would always have some left, drank little and often. When they hit 4 weeks they would empty it within a couple of hours of filling it, which wasn't a problem as the rest of the time they were eating creep. I think I introduced creep from week 2. We started off with warm, the heater was always on in the bottom of the feeder but kept it luke warm as any hotter and the milk would be a bit smelly after 12 hours. Any left over milk was tipped away (hardly any, but sometimes a bit left in the bottom). After 2 weeks I cooled it right down so it was tepid, not ice cold but cool to the touch, which they still drank. I did my lambs this year in 2 batches, first batch had 7 in, the 2nd batch had 5 in. We bought an extra teat kit so had 3 teats which worked well I think 3-4 teats would work for 12 lambs if they were all in together.
I sometimes can't be on the farm all day (I'm an event photographer so weekends for me are busy) so the shepherdess was great, when they were really young I could leave them for the day knowing that they had milk to get them through until I got home. They also aren't as tame as ours last year, the 2nd batch of 5 are really quite skittish and fiesty which is more how they should be IMO.
The thing I was worried about was them not having the need to pick at creep at an early age whilst the feeder was still full, but they suprised me and did, in fact I think they started eating creep slightly earlier than last years lambs. They are all out in the back garden now, grazing and on the creep/beet mix and doing well. The key is getting them out early so that they put down muscle and not fat, constantly moving about grazing is the key to good muscle which is in turn lean meat!
 

[SallyintNorth]

Thanks for the info, twizzel.  I may have to rethink my anti-automatic feeder stance...