The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Richfergy on November 19, 2012, 08:11:20 pm
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Hi - I am keen not to let my Ram lose too much condition during tupping - he has been in for 14 days so far, on reasonable grass and hay if he wants it. I am feeding the ewes some ewe nuts to supplement them but have read that these should not be fed to the Ram?? (so I distract him whilst they are scoffing)
Can anyone help - what should I feed him or is there something I can feed them both
Thanks for any help
Richard
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Most rams when in with their ladies are far to busy to be thinking about food. Doesn't matter what you offer him, he may not want or take in enough food to keep his condition. He will make up for it during the other 9 months of the year. Just make sure you look after him during those times and he'll be fine (as long as he has all his teeth!).
Rams can develop uriniary calculi due to certain minerals in ewe nuts and some course feeds. Most feed manufactures produce a ram mix which will be lower in these minerals to prevent any blockages of his widdle tract.
If you have a handful of ewes, good grass and you give him a mineral/vitamin drench lick you might not need any concentrates anyhoo.
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are sugar beet pellets ok for both rams and ewes as an alternative, my borrowed ram came with a sack of them (his owners are soooo sweet!) and I just put a few out and they all hoovered them up, but dont know if they are ideal / ok for rams.
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i heard that sugar beet pellets are not good for tups - i fed them to mine all last winter! only feed tup ration now just to be safe :fc:
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Other than carbohydrate I cannot see what advantage pellets would be on their own. I do feed some pellets in a mix for show/sale sheep to make them fatter. If you had a lean mean lamb making machine, there are probably better things to feed him on. Bit like feeding your dog just mixer biscuit as opposed to complete dog feed.
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I know I am uber paranoid about it at the mo, but please be careful feeding unsoaked beet pellets.
I watched my favourite ewe choke to death last week after she got sugar beet pellets stuck and they swelled to block her oesophagus. The vet, my husband, myself and all the kit could not save her :'(
I know it is a one in thousands chance, but when I does happen it is nightmarish to watch :gloomy:
But they DO like it soaked mixed with a bit of rolled wheat!
Hurrah! cos up till this week I couldn't ever get my sheep to eat it soaked ::)
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Most feed suppliers do a 'Tup & Lamb' mix which would be safe for all; it's usually fairly high energy (and price) but with a small flock it won't add up to too much to feed them all on it just for the duration of tupping. Or if the tup is pretty tame you can probably feed the Tup & Lamb to him from a bucket while the girls eat their nuts off the ground.
Some suppliers also do a lower energy (16%) stock blend which is safe for tups - check with the supplier. For instance, Jim Peet's Stockblend 321 is safe for all stock - cattle, sheep (both female and male), and won't hurt any other livestock either. (Cattle and goats would need additional copper if fed this cake.)
He'll probably eat normally after the first 17 days anyway, after a couple of checks around each day for any ewes returning to him.
A tup with 50 ewes on a hill farm certainly does need caking while working, but as onnyview says, with only a few girls to see to, your boy shouldn't be running himself ragged anyway.
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Thankyou for letting me know about the sugar beet (didnt want to hijack but thought it might be useful for OP too). Not sure what to do with the rest of the bag now, will try and get him something more suitable (and hide the bag when they come to take him home) :-)))
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I'm feeding my ewes a coarse ewe mix and the tup is having the odd bite of it - I can't see it's going to do him any harm the amount he's getting.
He's also eating hay, once he's paraded up and down the rack and made sure no-one is requiring his attentions for the next 10 minutes :D
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One of the things they say, jaykay, to avoid problems in tups and wethers eating the ewes' ration, is to make sure there's always plenty of water available. Not a problem at your place! :D Especially if you have a salt lick too, so he can lick on at that and get a good thirst up, then drink plenty of water to flush everything through.
I just went searching for the good info that has been posted on this subject before. Heygates have a really good info page here (http://www.heygatesfeeds.co.uk/SheepFeeds/UrinaryCalculi.aspx).
From the Heygates sheet, one of the key things is that the cake should have a calcium:phosphorous ratio of at least 2:1 and should have no added magnesium. If the ingredients list includes Ammonium Chloride, it's probably fine for tups and wethers.
It's worth reiterating that this problem is actually even more likely to occur in castrated males than in entire ones.
I'm sure I remember someone talking about something simple that could be added to the tup's ration to make sure he had no problems, and I couldn't find that one. Anyone remember?
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My rams all know what a bucket is and they get pelleted beet, but not in any significant quantity. Throughout the year, I may remind them what a bucket is, but thats it. I mostly use it for when they are in with the ewes and I want to do a quick count on when they are tupped. I think if you want lambs that can do on grass, it is important to have tups that can get through the most of the year on it too (snow-covered scottish mountains excepted, but then - do people feed blackie tups of the non showring variety?)
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Thanks all - as usual some great insights and advice!! :)
I was looking at the Heygate website - will try and get a mixed feed asap and supplement as appropriate - as you say Sally - he is about through the worst I hope!! lol
Cheers again - really really helpful - as someone else commented somehwere - alot to learn!! :-)
Rich
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do people feed blackie tups of the non showring variety?
If they want to them to live past tupping, yes, they will.
A Blackie or Swaley tup on the hill / moorland will often be covering a square mile or more of very very rough terrain, and may have 50 - 100 ewes to cover (or often, several square miles and several 00s of ewes will be covered by several tups.) These tups really work for those 34 days, and often won't stop to eat except if/when the shepherd comes along with the daily 1-2lb of cake. Sometimes it'll be two feeds, it depends on the dedication and workload of the shepherd. Most hill shepherds like to gather the ewes around the tup(s) twice a day, to give him maximum chance of finding ewes that are ready. Some of the tups won't eat even then, and will lose an enormous amount of condition until they give in and come feed. I only ever had one, a Blue-faced Leicester and one that had seen a good few seasons on another farm before he came to us, too, who wouldn't feed at all during tupping. But you could only leave him out for one cycle, for that reason.
Generally the tups will be fed from a few weeks (should be 6, really) before tupping, to ensure maximum sperm production, through tupping and for at least 6 weeks after to put the condition back on them.
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7 rams 4 ram lambs texel working , 10 cheviots out to hill end of month , min 55 ewes max 80 ewes each grass only before and during tupping , silage after ,should be min C S 2 when finished working . I only buy privately from 3 different places all grass reared rams , haven't bought at auction for years and KELSO for 20 yrs . When i used Blue Faced Leicesters they had to be fed all the time to keep them alive , rams fed hard almost from birth of any breed ( even B F ) have to be fed or they will fail . :raining:
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Interesting.... :thinking:
Mind, we're wanting to breed lambs that'll fatten fast to get them to supermarket requirements at an early age - for which a little cake is needed. We don't feed 'em hard, but they don't get the top grades without a bit of cake to put the muscle on.
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Part of the reason for poor fat /store lamb prices is the cost of cereal based feeds ( my winter feed contract has jumped £50 per tonne ) and it's not going to get any better next year ,since the arable farmers are struggling to sow crops , so sheep and cattle are going to need to finish /live on a more forage based diet (the New Zealanders are way ahead of us ) . E B V's are also being re thought by some in that very lean rams offspring can be slow to finish off forage at export weights
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Part of the reason for poor fat /store lamb prices is the cost of cereal based feeds ( my winter feed contract has jumped £50 per tonne ) and it's not going to get any better next year ,since the arable farmers are struggling to sow crops , so sheep and cattle are going to need to finish /live on a more forage based diet (the New Zealanders are way ahead of us ) . E B V's are also being re thought by some in that very lean rams offspring can be slow to finish off forage at export weights
I buy my rams using EBVs - in that I will pick 5 or so off the sheet and then go look at them in the flesh. I aim to finish all my lambs off grass, being that I don't get a subsidy, so my margins can't take feed purchasing. The trick I find is to pick one with a more positive figure for fat than you might think, don't look at the overall score, use it as a guide, pick for traits you actually want.
The Kiwis are way ahead preciseley because they stopped all subsidy in the 1960s and suddenly the pressure was on - anything that cost labour or feed was out, and they have some harder terrain than we do. We can skip all the heartache that they had by using their genetics - easyrams use NZ suffolks and texels, you can buy NZ Romneys (although the boys on the marsh will tell you that they kept the best genetics in this country), Highlanders, Primeras etc. There are breeders in this country using performance recording here and producing terminal sires that are arguably good - Peter Babbers Suffolks and Texels look a world away from the lardy buggers in the show ring - I have heard his Suffolks look like one used to look in the 60s. You can use Meatinc....
Theres a no-feed system for most terrains - I know of folk in the dales using NZ roms, outdoor lambing at 150% no cake, shearing twice a year. There is mr "chevease" who breeds shedding easycare x cheviots way up in scotland who work on the same system no cake, lamb at 170% or so.
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Interesting Steve.
I lamb in June, outside on grass. The ewes are just fed hay, they never taste grain. However the hay is usually better quality than that which you could make in Britain, it is a grass alfalfa mix. I also bale oats into a greenfeed. June lambing is the key, and I speak as someone who has lambed sheep in just about every month in the past in 3 different countries.
The ewes go out in mid April onto stockpiled grass. They then get 6 weeks of the best feed in the world for sheep, or dairy cows for that matter, May grass. They get exercise, which helps with distocia, and they lamb in prime condition, full of milk, in good warm weather. You are not fighting the elements, trying to keep lambs alive. They have lambed at 190% for the past 4 years.
I keep the ram wether lambs until the following January, separating and weaning them early in September when I sell the ewe lambs for breeding stock. The wethers are around 85-100lbs by the New Year, again just on grass and hay.
This works out here due to the low cost of land, though this is changing as the world gets hungrier and commodity prices rise.
I can do nothing about lamb prices, all I can control is my cost of production. It would be hard to get them any lower. The sheep are not pushed and live a natural life too, which is important to me.
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Interesting Steve.
I lamb in June, outside on grass. The ewes are just fed hay, they never taste grain. However the hay is usually better quality than that which you could make in Britain, it is a grass alfalfa mix. I also bale oats into a greenfeed. June lambing is the key, and I speak as someone who has lambed sheep in just about every month in the past in 3 different countries.
The ewes go out in mid April onto stockpiled grass. They then get 6 weeks of the best feed in the world for sheep, or dairy cows for that matter, May grass. They get exercise, which helps with distocia, and they lamb in prime condition, full of milk, in good warm weather. You are not fighting the elements, trying to keep lambs alive. They have lambed at 190% for the past 4 years.
I lamb in April, just as the grass growth really kicks in. They need to be good converters of grass or they wont last on my system - I have no scope to improve the productvity of the land, so I improve the sheep. I lamb more or less at 180-190% With cereals soon to become prohibitiveley expensive, and the mooting of the removal/cutting/restructure of farm payments, then grass only will be the only way to make a profit.
Plus, of course, it frees up cereals etc that would have gone into sheep for other purposes, ergo is good for the environment. Small ruminants are key to protein production globally and there improvement will be a vitally important tool as populations continue to expand/westernise.
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Oh dear. This is in danger of turning into a mutual admiration society! :D :(
I completely agree with you Steve. I have had this argument with sheep keepers here many times who finish lambs on bought in grain. North America has a tradition of feedlots for cattle and sheep. In the past with poor grain prices the way to sell your grain profitably often was to convert it into beef or lamb.
But as things are now in the world, that grain should be for people. One of the best things about sheep is that they can take low value agricultural land, often just scenery, and turn it into protein that we can enjoy.
They do much better too living in a natural way rather than being forced on grains.
As you say, sheep are ruminants!