Barb Lee
Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:52:41 -0800
Ya know Cecil, I received some startling advice on raising these sheep that came from a non-sheep person. He said that when I obtained exotic animals (and whether we like it or not, we are dealing with an exotic animal), it became my responsibility to know more about them than anybody on the planet. Otherwise they would die, and it would be my fault - felony ignorance. He had a clarity of insight that amazed me. Without knowing much about the sheep, he summed it up...They are out of their natural environment, they are offered feed they may not be adapted to, they are not acclimatized (very few of my remaining sheep come from this area), they are a combination of opposing reproductive characteristics. He told me I had to know more about them than the vet...I had to know more about them than anyone else in the area...because if I was going to raise them successfully, **I** was going to have to adapt to **them** in order to work through the process of adapting my particular flock to my circumstances. As we - or I - wade through the challenges of understanding what I can do with them and what I cannot, we have to keep in mind that Industry is pushing Livestock producers to absorb the waste products of ethanol production. They do this by publishing a nutritional analysis and letting us find out for ourselves if the physical body can utilize foodlike substances not found in nature. You can just look into any feedlot and see the sickness that alternative feeds with apparently high nutritional profiles wreak on the animals there. Ag has always been a dumping ground for industrial waste. My farrier raises pigs and he says that distillers grains and corn gluten meal, et al are not successful for raising pigs. Why??? It has the nutrition, but for some reason, the pigs can't use that nutrition. It's like me finding out the "fatal flaw" in beet pulp...first of all I propose that the animals do not have the gut capacity for large quantities of forage...and then I attempt to feed them beet pulp, which has nearly the same nutritive value as corn, but is enormously bulky. The feed value may be the same, but the way the body handles it is what defines whether it will be a successful feed. As an interesting side note, beet pulp is so expensive these days because it's being used in pet foods. Dogs are not adapted to beet pulp, but it has high nutritional value...see where I'm going with this?? What kind of food allergies are going to crop up in the next generation of pets? Better market for steroids. Another interesting side note is that the Chinese have tried putting some nordic flounder genes in beet pulp to get them to grow in colder climates. I don't mind if the dog eats flounder, but I'm not too keen about feeding a flounder-sugar beet bastard to my sheep. And I have no idea where my beet pulp originates. You seem to be experiencing the same discouraging results with an "alternative" feed - the blackbellies refuse to adapt to it. So...??? The bottom line is do you have the financial means to absorb the experiments, while you continue to adapt your sheep, or do you just sensibly dispose of the poor doers and build your flock according to what makes the most economic sense. I have the luxury of not expecting any serious income from the sheep, but I AM getting tired of absorbing the losses. I desperately wanted to be a 100% grass farmer, but now I see that dream slipping away. My problem is, I am too stubborn to give up the notion that I can adapt my registered flock to meet my expectation (I have a few that never disappoint me). It's getting to be an expensive hobby though. I love the lamb so much, I do not want to risk outcrossing. I have even been thinking about infusing some polled blood into the flock (these would never be registered as AB), to see if I could improve reproductive performance without going outside the blackbelly. Actually my best performing lamb this year is a ram lamb with tiny little horn buds - he's almost smooth headed. Where did that come from in a flock with very good horns!! What's the connection? The ewe, a registered AB, milked like a cow and has a pedigree of horns. My dilemma is now, whether several more years of selection for a higher plane of performance within my AB flock will be repaid in value added to the sale of proven breeding stock, or if I should just stick to meat production. There is little point in continuing to register animals if the goal isn't to improve them. It's a big problem, because I would like to some day make exceptional quality breeding stock available to other producers, but not for $45 a lamb...more like $450 a lamb. If I give up on that, I lose half my interest in my work. But in order to improve them, I need to understand down to the molecular level, what makes them tick. White or lighter coloring might come from an infusion of domestic blood that could carry more fertility than the Mouflon ancestry. We should ask the Painted Desert people...if Anita Garza's history of the Corsican is accurate - and I believe it is - the P.D. and the Texas Dall are actually the ones with the Rambouillet blood, not so much the AB. If that is so, then the P.D. is going to be the Corsican type that is probably more adapted to domestic circumstances. Interesting thought... And of course, I don't know how it is for everybody else...maybe I'm the only one who's not satisfied. So, I have animals that are on probation because they don't contribute. Two absolutely gorgeous three year old big ewes have produced exactly one lamb between them. That is six collective years of feeding them. They are twins, and one required tubing...their mother's lambs require assistance every time. She is a big, gorgeous animal too. But now that I have eliminated virtually all possibility of environmental and feeding errors, the three of them together are out of here if I have to step in at any point in July's lambing. Anyway, I am rambling and just philosophizing. There's no harm in just letting the sheep "be," and there's nothing "elitist" or "snobbish" or anything about wanting to improve one's flock...it makes financial sense and it is what farmers have been doing for centuries; adapting their animals to their conditions. I do think in the end, that an "adapted" flock of AB's is going to fall outside the phenotype of the native Carribean sheep. "Genetic drift" has to occur in an isolated population of animals in order for them to thrive. I have yet to feel the pulse of the registry about this, but the breed standards do include objectives for breed improvement, and they are virtually all in keeping with improving performance in the domestic setting and in some cases will produce a more domestic-looking ewe. Regards, Barb Lee ----- Original Message ----- From: "Cecil Bearden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <blackbelly@lists.blackbellysheep.info> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 9:40 PM Subject: Re: [Blackbelly] The Beet Pulp Experiment >I have been feeding dried Corn glutens to my sheep to supplement the >hay > I am feeding. I feed about a pound a day to the nursing mothers. I > have 3 in the sick pen right now. 2 have twins about 1 week old > nursing > and the other has a 4 week old lamb. They came down with diarrhea > yesterday afternoon and have not been doing well for the past week. > It > appears they have a chronic case of enterotoxemia. I cannot determine > if they were vaccinated for overeating disease or not. However, my > light colored ewes have not had any trouble and have an udder the size > of a small cow. The ones that conform to the AB breed standard are > having trouble maintaining weight and milk. I got rid of 10 of the > light colored ewes this summer in an attempt to conform to breed > standard!!! My Standards have certainly changed!! > Cecil in OKla > > Barb Lee wrote: >> On the plus side, this little challenge casts a different light on my >> flock dynamics. Some of the lambs did better than others. And the >> good >> doers weren't necessarily the ones that started out that way. From >> the >> perspective of trying to adapt the flock to a high-forage-capacity >> flock, the "keepers" jump right off the page. It also alters the >> perception about their mothers, and notes are going to go into the >> ewes' >> breeding history. >> >> I'm not sure how I'm going to use the information, but a trend is >> already forming, and the ewes that are making a "reputation" in the >> flock are beginning to galvanize their place in the breeding program. >> >> I'm excited about having several robust new, young, unproven ewes in >> the >> flock. We are flushing the ewes at the moment for breeding beginning >> 2/1. (July lambing works for us.) This is going to be a year to >> look >> forward to. >> >> Regards, >> Barb Lee >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list >> Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info >> > _______________________________________________ > This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list > Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info > > _______________________________________________ This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info