![]() ![]() This discussion board had me convinced to first try gates with low horizontals. I started with a four-foot pen and the grain silo centered in the middle. ![]() And there is a fine line between the requirements of the two! The challenge of designing a creep feeder is creating something that is inviting and easy for the lambs to enter and exit, but keeps ewes out. So I ended up with a bit of a Rube Goldberg device, attempting to scrap something together with lumber and a chicken feed silo. I was highly attracted to this galvanized, sled-style creep sold by DS Livestock (photo left), but not yet prepared to pay $450 plus shipping for the experiment. Searching on the web didn’t render a lot of ideas for such a thing, since most people creep feed lambs in a stationary feeder in a barn. I’m moving the sheep every two days right now, so the creep feeder has to be moveable as well. This decision necessitated a creep feeder I could use in the pasture. And, I’m keener on using a more natural product than the amped-up, processed soybean grain meant for growing lambs. I’m going to start with rolled corn-barley, because I have some left over. For now, I don’t plan to grain them all the way to finishing, but rather to use it to improve their feed conversion as they wean onto grass, from two to four months of age. I read an interesting study on calves which showed that grain feeding accelerated rumen development better than hay alone. ![]() And, I’d like to see if I can get growth that’s more competitive with Katahdin folks elsewhere in the country, almost all of whom creep feed. Since my orphan lambs live with the rest of the flock in the pasture, I might as well just let all the lambs creep-feed on grain during this timeframe. But, milk is expensive, so I’ve also decided they’ve got to go onto grain at that point and not nurse as long as the dam-reared lambs get to. So, they need something with denser calories and protein to have vigorous growth, until their rumens get big and developed enough to make good use of grass.įor the future, I’m going to try leaving orphans on milk up to eight weeks of age. It makes sense, they probably can’t take in enough volume yet. But I think I’m finding that weaning them onto grass, even if it’s very high protein grass (mine is 29% CP), their feed conversion on roughage is just not good enough at that young age. Typical advice is to wean bummer lambs at about one month of age. It seems almost everybody in the world weans lambs onto grain. One problem I’ve encountered is there doesn’t seem to be a lot of literature or advice for weaning lambs onto pasture. But after weaning them from milk, their growth stalls, and most of them end up as tiny tot adults. They do fine while they are drinking milk replacer, keeping up a decent pace compared with their contemporary dam-nursing lambs. I’ve been unhappy with the weight gain of my bottle lambs the past two years. ![]()
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