Re: [Blackbelly] Update on bottle lamb
I prefer a minimum of 8 weeks of full milk for a bottle baby before weaning. And even then the bottle baby must weigh at least 25 pounds or I will continue to bottle feed. At weaning the bottle baby must be eating grass and grain with gusto. I typically do batches of bottle babies so when the last one meets all the requirements for weaning they all get weaned. I abruptly pull all milk and wean them cold turkey. They are very unhappy for a few days and then are fine. I have had several lambs weaned at 30 days due to the deaths of their mothers. Obviously milk was abruptly cut off in these situations. The lambs have survived but need perfect creep feed and pasture conditions. Mark Wintermute Subject: [Blackbelly] Update on bottle lamb Thought I would share some experiences with the bottle lamb since I last posted (6/23). We successfully reintroduced the lamb to the herd at 7 days old. We would go down to the barn every 4 hours and feed, but otherwise we were hands-off. She adapted well and appears to be only slightly smaller than her sister. We went through a couple of bouts with scours (cut milk concentration ~50% and pepto then slowly increased milk concentration) and survived. The lamb will be 7 weeks old on 8/5. She currently gets a bottle of full strength replacer milk every 8 hours and drinks about 15 ounces in 3 minutes flat. She eats grain, hay and grass with the other 9 lambs and acts like a sheep - except that she actually comes when we call her and is not afraid of the family dog (the dog normally licks the excess milk from the lamb's face). Its getting close to time to wean and we are thinking of trying to reduce the feedings to every 12 hours for about a week and then go to once a day for about a week before stopping the bottle. Any suggestions? John Carlton Double J Farms Spanish Fort, Alabama 251-625-2519 doublejfa...@wildblue.net ___ This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
Re: [Blackbelly] Update on bottle lamb
I use a combo of Mark Wintermutes' Cold turkey and his weight requirements (8 weeks and at least 25 lbs) and tapering, but I taper by cutting out say, the afternoon meal first, then the nightly, and then the morning meal. I don't dilute, but their last bottle will go down from 16 oz to 8 oz in the last 3-4 days or so. When they would come in for the nightly, I would notice their bellies were already VERY full from grazing. so I knew it was OK. Since I wanted tame lambs, I raised three February bottle babies in a nursery of sorts, in a 10x20' horse paddock. They were allowed to graze after a couple of weeks -- once I was sure they would come back in on demand. Though grazing, they still get called in and locked up to sleep at night, even now--mainly due to their size--easy prey. By the time my one May ram lamb was born, they were already weaned and out with the adults in the pasture all day. Since the solitary May ram lamb had no companions his age, I was not about to try to leave him alone all day in a cage (he tried to self-destruct by bouncing off the walls and cage door), so I pulled the 3 weaned lambs in with him, and they raised him, for a week, which was noisy and a pain, because I had to bring them food as well and they let me know when it was time to eat. But it allowed him to bond, and herd, and once I opened up the cage for daytime grazing, he had bonded with the lambs and was part of a flock, and would come when called. He got weaned all by himself, and was at least 25 lbs and 8-9 weeks old. Same routine, his breakfast was his last bottle. _MWS ___ This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
