The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: devonlad on March 19, 2017, 04:17:48 pm
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Hi all- apologies if this is going over old ground but despite scouring previous posts on the subject I cant find the precise answer to my question.
we have ended up for the first time, with twin lamb orphans. We'd been supplementing them (both ewe lambs)since birth as it was clear that mum wasn't up to the job of feeding them both. Gradually, what milk she had dried up and earlier this week it became clear that they were almost totally reliant on the bottle. a couple of days ago we took the decision to have mum put to sleep. Mastitis and strong suggestion of TLD, left us little choice
The girls are 3 weeks old today, currently thriving and are now on 4 feeds a day, totalling about 1400 mls- they are out in the field with the rest of the flock by day and we bring them in to the shed every night.
not sure they are doing much other than investigating grass and hay, but I have read that beginning to offer creep can be done quite early and this can reduce the time spent on the bottle. We will be keeping them here, as we have promised our neighbour's little lad who does much of the bottle feeding that we would do that. so growing quick isn't especially important. all we need to know is whats the healthiest thing for them
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The reason that creep and forage is feed from an early age is to develop the rumen at an early age so that they can be weaned at 6wks old plus suffer less weaning check as you keep creep feeding, if they were suckling mum and nibbling grass they would not develop a rumen until 8-10 wks of age and would keep suckling until 10-12 or 16wks of age . So depends how long you wish to bottle feed and you could give a bit of creep when inside overnight
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I agree with shep53. Creep being available may help them grow at a steadier rate as they'll be able to pick at it through the day, rather than get their protein in four milk feeds.
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Milk can cause bloat in older lambs hence why the recommendation is to wean at 6 weeks- keep them on milk much longer and you run the risk of bloat/red gut. It's sudden and normally the first thing you know is the lamb is dead. So in order to wean the lambs by 6 weeks they should have creep introduced from 7 days of age. They will start nibbling by a couple of weeks and by 4 weeks should be eating a fair amount- then you can cut the milk down gradually to wean at 6 weeks. That's how I've always done it over the years and the only lamb we lost to bloat was the day before I was due to cut their milk down. When they are completely weaned I introduce grass slowly, they don't normally go out to the garden until 8 weeks of age and then go to the field a few weeks after that. It seems to work well. This is the first year I've not had any pet lambs (yet!) as we are breeding for the first time but have reared 15-20 pet lambs a year for the last 4 or 5 years up to now.