Cecil now brings out another question that I've been having about general nutrition that I've been pondering.
My understanding is that during the rapid growth of the weaned lambs they need a high protein diet to help encourage rapid and complete growth. One of the ingredients I've seen in that kind of show-feed tends to be a lot of corn, even though corn is not a great source of protein itself. And I've mixed my feeds with corn in the past as well as an energy source because of all of the starch -- (You can buy cracked corn which is very inexpensively as well scratch grains that have a high corn content in them - I was blending my own feed for a time). Long story short, a friend of mine is trying to tell me that "corn" based products (or those high protein feeds that are high in corn content) are not good for animals in general because of something called acidosis (http://www.livestocktrail.uiuc.edu/dairynet/paperDisplay.cfm?ContentID=215) but when he and I are talking about this problem he's mainly talking about cattle (such as the article I'm giving here) but is inferring the same thing for sheep. I realize this is a VERY complicated topic and depends on what stage of life the animal is in, but for the sake of simplicity let's just say we're talking about a normal 2-year old ewe or ram who's not pregnant - simply maintenance. Do sheep have certain nutritional needs, what are they, and do corn-based products cause a shorter or less healthy life? Can anyone refer me to a site where I can read up on this? Cecil's price is really very very good. I've even seen some really low protein All-stock (8-10% protein) running at about $7.60/ bag. If high protein isn't needed, will we get the same growth out of these less expensive feeds? That could make a huge difference in profit. --David _______________________________________________ This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
