The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Moleskins on April 10, 2012, 11:33:16 pm
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Has anyone any tips on how to start lambs on creep feed, if I walk onto the field with a bucket and just put it down the ewes will scoff the lot. If I make some sort of pen with the feed in will lambs bother to go in and find it ?
Any good cheap ideas appreciated. :-\
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Last year I sectioned off a small area at the back of a shelter with battons so the lambs could get through but not the ewes and the ewes couldn't reach through - they got the idea in the end, especially as the greedy ewes always wanted a look
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Mmmm - interesting thread. I've been wondering about creep feed. We don't give our lambs any hard feed. They drink milk and start experimenting with grass from a few days of age. Should we be giving them hard feed as well?
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I made a creep feeder by making a square of sheep hurdles but putting one of them on end. To begin with the widest space, that should have been at the top, was big enough for the lambs to get through. Eventually I ended up taking off the second but bottom bar, as they got bigger.
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Mmmm - interesting thread. I've been wondering about creep feed. We don't give our lambs any hard feed. They drink milk and start experimenting with grass from a few days of age. Should we be giving them hard feed as well?
Grass fed lambs are fine. Ours nibble a bit of their dams 'tup and lamb' coarse mix but don't get anything else until their first winter, when they get a small amount of the same stuff if it's a hard winter. Grass fed lamb, if you will be eating it, is much better for you. It has been shown that sheep which have no access to grain develop CLAs (conjugated linoleic acid) which are good for lowering blood cholesterol, but if they are grain fed they lose that. It is assumed that the same thing happens in other breeds.
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Yes, we sold a proper creep feeder (the wretched thing kept pulling lambs horns off) and what with everything going on, I didn't creep feed at all last year. Didn't notice any difference to be honest, I sent the tup lambs to the butchers at the same time and they killed out at similar weights.
I'm not intending creep feeding my Shetlands therefore, I shall do as Fleecewife describes.
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We have a creep feeder for ours but then they don't have horns! but we do also have some hurdles, old calf feeder ones, that the lambs can get through but mum can't. so we just pop a feed troll down and away they go.
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Phew- thought I might be missing something there.....
I'm glad I never had children....... Having lambs is quite enough!!
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Thank you Fleecewife, we were wondering about what kind of creep feeder would be suitable for our Soay and when we should start feeding. Will follow your advice as in other years we have had a lot of grass. They often seem more interested in browsing the hedges than grazing! :)
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Thank you Fleecewife, we were wondering about what kind of creep feeder would be suitable for our Soay and when we should start feeding. Will follow your advice as in other years we have had a lot of grass. They often seem more interested in browsing the hedges than grazing! :)
As SteveHants has just said on another thread, no point in treating a non-intensive breed intensively. With Soay, if you feed them too much concentrate they will scour. They will eat it though ;D Soay love to browse as do most of the primitives and some other breeds, and I feel they benefit from it. There is plenty of good stuff in leaves and bark and Soay seem to need some of that to prevent scouring which even really rich grass can cause.
One of the reasons to keep rare breeds is to preserve their unusual traits for future breeding back into more numerous breeds, to help them adapt to changing conditions such as no close shepherding, no housing, no added grain-based supplements, so it makes sense to maintain these differences between the types. Most of the sheep information out there is for the fast growing, intensively reared stock most sheep farmers keep, so it can be difficult to pick out what is essential for all sheep and what doesn't or does apply to your own breed.
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I thought creep feeding was to get weight on lambs quickly for market, I've never given my ewes or lambs any supplementary feeding except for this year when I doubled the size of my flock and the grass had been eaten down in certain fields over winter. I didn't give the pregnant ewes any, just haylage with the horses - I always get good sized lambs and didn't want to risk birthing problems.
However I have just bought a sack - this being for the two little cades I bought in to foster onto the ewe, that didn't work out and they are so reluctant to take the bottle (only taking about 50ml at a time) I thought I had better put creep with them. They are eating it!
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Good info Fleecewife - when this post can up I thought that has to be on my shopping list now we have the massive number of 2 lambs - but mum is getting a bit of hard feed which the lambs are taking an interest in so I guess I shouldn't. They will be here for a while, I mean no rush to grow up. I've been giving my last years lambs I bought in a bit of feed 2 x per day but mainly to keep them coming to me but it's not very much per lamb - must cut that down to 1 x per day now
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Just make sure that ram lambs don't eat feed intended only for ewes, such as ewe pencils. These can cause urinary tract calculi ie bladder stones which can cause fatalities in male sheep, including wethers. Sheep coarse mix, Tup & Lamb, or 'Champion Tup' by Carrs which is what we feed to all our flock, is great for sheep of all sexes (both sexes ::)), although might not have enough protein for big ewes when in lamb.
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I thought creep feeding was to get weight on lambs quickly for market, I've never given my ewes or lambs any supplementary feeding except for this year when I doubled the size of my flock and the grass had been eaten down in certain fields over winter. I didn't give the pregnant ewes any, just haylage with the horses - I always get good sized lambs and didn't want to risk birthing problems.
However I have just bought a sack - this being for the two little cades I bought in to foster onto the ewe, that didn't work out and they are so reluctant to take the bottle (only taking about 50ml at a time) I thought I had better put creep with them. They are eating it!
Absolutely! we lamb December so no grass but we want our lambs finished and gone for the Easter market so we feed creep. we also have big Hampshires which need that extra push, to try to finish these off grass would be hard, although the hamp x Llanwenog does finish well of grass but we lamb them later in the spring.
If i had a choice i would prefer to lamb later and finish off grass so why spend the money when you don't have to.
Good point Fleecewife each breed is different and should be treated in accordance with it's makeup and how it has been developed over the years.
This should be a big factor when deciding what breed to buy, people must think of their ground conditions and what the chosen breed needs. I see too many people flounder and get despondent because they haven't thought through what they want to do with their sheep and treat all breeds the same.
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I see too many people flounder and get despondent because they haven't thought through what they want to do with their sheep and treat all breeds the same.
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It's taken me about 4 years to figure that out !!
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Ooooooo ........ perhaps my soay are too fat :( I didnt think they were likely to have twins as first time lambers and I already have one set .... maybe too fleshy when they went to the tup.
Did take advice from Soay Society lady and others but I suppose everyones grazing is different. Have I fed too much?
Have 7 ewes on just under 2 acres split into 3 paddocks. Grass got really quite long last year.They dont seem to keep it down and when moved into fresh paddock are more interested in our thick hedges. When the man that I had ewes from came to visit he said you could keep double the ewes on here ???
Not much snow last winter but grass obviously not growing. Fed hay more or less ad lib and a good mug full of coarse mix per ewe once per day and twice per day as they have got closer to lambing ( coarse mix because the ram was in with them until recently). Also a red lick bucket for ewes and lambs. I know my neighbour has laughed and said that they could live on just the hedges.
Have I fed too much? ???
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Ad lib hay is great, licky bucket great (esp if its Crystalix), browsing the hedge is great but I would say that that much coarse mix is a bit excessive for Soay. The only way to tell is to check their condition score, which in primitives should never be more than about 3, but more like 2 1/2. Don't suddenly change the amount they are getting, but next year you could monitor how much you give more carefully, by seeing what their condition is each week on whatever rate of coarse mix you are giving them and adjust accordingly. They don't need any coarse mix for most of the year - the routine is to introduce it gradually at 6 weeks prior to lambing, slowly increasing it up to lambing time. This partly compensates for the space taken up by the lambs which prevents the ewe from eating enough hay, so to get adequate nutrition we give it in a concentrated form. The exception to that is if there is severe weather with thick snow lying when a little coarse mix is needed for the whole flock.
I don't want to give actual quantities per sheep as so much depends on individual circumstances, but definitely far less than a big commercial ewe would need.