[Helencg1]

Hi, I am after some feeding advice. I have 6 pet lambs, 3 wethers, 3 ewe lambs around 7 months old. No intention of breeding just lawn mowers. They are on 4 acres of reasonable grass with ad-lib hay. I have been feeding a mix of creep and universal nuts as they were quite set back by weaning but now they are a healthy bunch weighing 38 - 44 kg. I think I should be cutting down so they don't put on too much weight and am also concious of bladder stone risks with the wethers. They are getting around 0.75kg hard feed each a day. The universal nuts have 30% barley, 10% wheat feed and includes a sodium chloride additive. Would this be safe to continue with, at lower levels for the wethers? Have also been looking at sugar beet shreds and grass nuts. Seen conflicting information on if they should be soaked or not. Manufacturer says yes, but lots of people say not necessary. Again what is your opinion? Not sure if the lambs will eat wet food so could it be soaked and left to dry? Only feeding because they are used to it now, it's nice to do and makes them easier to handle.

[twizzel]

You could just get a lamb finisher nut, but anything with ammonium chloride should be fine. But to be fair, a handful of nuts once a week should keep them tame, they shouldn’t need much hard feed even in winter.

[Anke]

If you want to keep them longterm as lawn mowers then I would reduce the hard feed now to a small amount once a week or so to keep them tame and only feed hay - you really do not want them to go fat, which they will do on continued concentrate rations, esp the wethers.


Grassnuts are quite good (if they eat them that is...), and you do not have to soak them for sheep (the advice to soak both grass nuts and sugar beet shreds/nuts is for horses and they are not ruminants).


I would move them all over to grass nuts for an occasional treat. They really do not need concentrate feed.