[Jake Nixon]

Hello,

I am a young farmer who has grown up in mostly arable farming and I have recently been offered some pet lambs by a local farmer who doesn't have time to care for them due to the size of their flock as it is.

I really want to take them as I feel this could be a good way to get going on my own but I do know from a number of friends they they can be quite a headache. Is there any advice that someone could give me or anything in particular to pay attention to or be wary of?

[SallyintNorth]

Ideally, you only want ones that have had sufficient colostrum in the first 6 hours of life.  You'll get some losses anyway, but moreso if there are lambs with dubious early histories.

For safety's sake, it's probably a good idea to vaccinate (Heptavec-P or similar) all bottle lambs at about 3 weeks old. 

You'll find gazillions of threads on here about feeding, and not overfeeding, and causing/avoiding/curing bloat in, bottle lambs.

Basically, if they're bog standard commercial white lambs, start by following the instructions on the lamb milk packet.  Introduce hay or straw to chew on within the first 7 days for optimal rumen development.  Offer fresh creep (or just small lamb pellets, not specifically a creep feed) from around three weeks, just small quantities, and remove after a few hours or if soiled.

There's no reason a bottle-reared female can't be a good mum; they can be prone to being overfat, which is bad for conception and worse for lambing, but if you manage them by condition scoring, there's no reason they need to be fat. 

The lambs I bottle rear here go on to fetch the same at the mart, and grade as well as the others if sent deadweight - so there's no reason you can't produce good fat lambs starting with caddies.  Might take a wee while longer - don't try to rush it, that's what causes the problems

And the other problem, which makes farmers irritated with the pet lambs, is how tame they are - they run up to you, climb on the quad bike, into the trailer, won't run away / be driven.  If you start your flock with tame lambs, you can just call them and they'll come running - how easy is that?!   

[Jake Nixon]

Thank you Sally

After how long could the be put out to graze, condition dependent? Would it be fine to bed them down with barley straw or would they be tempted to chew through that rather than feed provided and finally, As we produce a surplus of haylage for stables off tempary grassland would it be possible to feed more of this than use pellets/creep or would that affect their growth?

[SallyintNorth]

My lambs start to get some grass time, if the weather is nice, at about 4 weeks.  Just an hour or two at first, gradually increasing as they get used to it.  By 6 weeks they'll be on poor grass full time.  I wean at between 6 and 8 weeks; if earlier than 8 weeks and they go backwards, I put them back on milk for another week.  Once they're fully weaned, they can go to better pasture - but again, introduce good grass slowly, an hour or two at first, building up.

I bed mine on barley straw.  I wouldn't mind if they ate it, but they mostly don't, much.  They will mouth on at hay if it's at nose height, so I give them a bit of that all the time.

Re: grass and forage instead of concentrate... the 'way we do things these days' is to use cake to replace the protein in the milk, so we want them on cake before we wean, so they'll get their protein from the cake and not go backwards.

The problem with less cake is they can only process what they've room for in their rumen, which will limit growth.  Some of the continental types are bred for a diet higher in protein, giving faster growth and excellent conformation.  If this is the type of lamb you get, and you don't feed cake, they may never make very good specimens.  Depending on grass/haylage quality, of course - we're on severely disadvantaged Cumbrian upland here; if you're in an arable area, your grass is probably rocket fuel compared to ours!

I'd be interested to hear from other people who do a no-cake or less-cake regime.  I've been hearing about people using grass pellets and alfalfa pellets to feed dairy cattle, and do wonder if this might be a good regime for bottle lambs (and calves, too.)  But don't take that as a recommendation - I've not done it and don't know how it would work.

[sabrina]

The first thing you need to ask yourself is do I have enough time to take on these lambs. Making feeds, cleaning bottles, keeping everything clean is vital for their well being. They need protection from foxes. Its not an easy job and they can become such pests. On saying that I have always loved bringing on orphan lambs.

[Jake Nixon]

Our grass is due to get its second crop this year so it's good stuff but I suppose I can try it out slowly and if they start getting smaller then I'll put them back onto pellets.

 Has anyone used an ad-lib system like the ewe 2 from volac and have they found this better than bottle feeding or not. Is it hard to regulate the intake without allowing a greedy lamb to take another's share of the milk?