The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: FiB on May 08, 2014, 06:30:30 am
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Spotted a wanted on free cycle for baby milk and sent a polite email saying please don't, they have diff digestive systems to us and it will make them I'll (thinking it might be someone who had had one dumped on them and they didn't know)....... And received a msg back saying she had been doing it for years with no ill effects (for her maybe... :-\ ). How bad is this? Animal health?
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Assuming it is not toxic (which if her experience suggests it's not and unlikely to contain copper) then it's not going to be bad but it might not be "optimum" so to speak. Without getting into the nitty gritty of milk proteins and absorbability and they relative differences between infant formula and lamb formula it's hard to say.
From my understanding lambs need a high fat and calorie content. So do babies.
I don't have an answer, just some thoughts.
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Comparisons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_milk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_milk)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/392766 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/392766)
It's a reasonable assumption that any 'artificial' replacer milk is modified from cows milk with supplementation. (as opposed to some inherent allergy or toxicity to 'cow')
It's also likely that so long as you shove enough down then a healthy recipient will excrete the unnecessary. it's when you have an unthrifty youngster that it's most important to get the best balance with what little they may take....
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Thanks, I'll wind my neck in then!! A little knowledge and all that :-[ ....
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Decades ago I reared puppies for local farmer on lambs milk replacer powder. I was in awe of him and loved caring for the puppies so didn't say anything. I should think these also have very different nutritional requirements. They grew into healthy long lived dogs.
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I dug into my ailig memory and recalled that cetaceans have the highest milk fat content.. just checked and found this table:
http://ansci.illinois.edu/static/ansc438/Milkcompsynth/milkcomp_table.html (http://ansci.illinois.edu/static/ansc438/Milkcompsynth/milkcomp_table.html)
And the winner is the grey seal...
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Handy table (book marking that one) - 4th year vet student :thumbsup:
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Fascinating!
Empirically, I have found I need to feed 1.5 x the volume of Jersey milk to the sheep milk replacer we use, and using the figures in those references, that's about right!
The problem with feeding 1.5L per lamb per day, rather than 1L, is that really that's too much volume for three feeds until they're about 5-6 weeks old, so you end up feeding more often. So what time you save in mixing up the powder you lose in washing bottles! (I really ought to work out whether it's cheaper to feed the cow to produce the milk, or buy the milk powder... ;) )
Also, you don't want them full all the time or they don't get onto eating creep. So now I give them 100% sheep milk replacer for the first week, then mostly sheep's milk with a little Jersey milk (to get them used to it and because I think it helps them to have local antibodies in their milk) until about week 4, then roughly half-and-half for a week or two, then as they start eating creep properly, at about week 6, I move them onto 3 meals of Jersey milk (1L per day so they aren't always full, so want their creep), then down to 2 then 1.
All varied according to how they are batched and how much Jersey milk I have available. And when I say creep, it's a lamb finisher pellet actually, I've never found creep any more appealing to them and it's a heck of a lot more expensive to waste - which is what they do with most of it while they are learning to eat it! ::)
People keep telling me I should wean earlier, not feed cows' milk, etc, but as long as the majority of my pet lambs grow and eventually sell for good money, I shall keep on doing it this way!