Hi Renee, Sheep are notorious for over eating and wasting hay. I really don't mind the over eating but cannot afford the wasting of my hay supply. So I practice limit feeding. Limit feeding is simply defined as not feeding more than what the sheep will eat in 24 hours. If there is hay left over in 24 hours then I over fed and it is typically wasted (unless it is alfalfa). This way of feeding is more labor intensive but I do not have an infinite supply of hay to work with.
I buy hay that the cattle and horse people refuse. Many people will not buy hay that is not virgin brome, alfalfa, timothy and such. My sheep seem to prefer multiculture hay. They seem to simply prefer variety in both their hay and pasture. I can buy 700# bales of hay from $9(weed) to $20(alfalfa mix) per bale. If I were to buy perfect brome hay it would start at $22.50 per bale and go up from there. Bluestem hay is supposed to be good hay but the sheep dislike it. It reminds me of brussel sprouts and my kids. I feed it when the weather is really nice and warm and unchallenging to the sheep. They pretty much refuse to eat it until they are hungry. My weed hay is the nastiest looking hay. It has a lot of rag weed, wild daisies, wild sunflower, and various grasses with fescue the most common. It has thick stems and the bales almost look black. The sheep absolutely attack these 700# bales! They root through all the stems to get the leaves. The stems are thoroughly worked through and the larger ones are left on the ground in approximately 3 inch pieces. What is left resembles a flat carpet of toothpicks. I feed these bales when the weather is not challenging. My grass hay is usually a mixture of blue grass, fescue, and brome. It will have a few weeds but they are minor. This is from my fertilized hay fields. I feed this hay when the weather is challenging. It is raining, snowing, sleeting, and cold outside. The crabgrass hay is harvested from dormant wheat fields. The fields were fertilized for the wheat and the crabgrass thrives after the wheat harvest. The crabgrass is baled into hay so that the wheat can be no till planted in the fall. This is excellent hay and is fed when the weather is getting really bad. Crabgrass is typically baled late in the season after all the good brome hay fields are finished. This just happens to be the peak time of the year to harvest crabgrass since it is a warm season grass! My alfalfa hay is from winter/frost killed alfalfa fields. The fields still produced some alfalfa but were not salvageable for the current season to be sold as horse hay. The farmer lets the weeds and grass come up bales it in the fall and then replants into alfalfa for the coming year. I feed this hay when the weather is at its worst especially when there is killing wind chills present. This is by far the favorite hay of my sheep. I have had trampling and crushing deaths from the sheep fighting to eat the hay. I hope this helps you Renee. Mark Wintermute Renee, I truly don't know but Mark does - he is the expert at our place. I will ask him to respond. He spends nearly all day with the sheep. He knows just by looking at them what they need. Its uncanny. We just finished our second go at re-arranging the ewes so the "cleanup" ram will catch the stragglers. Sharon Sharon, I'm guessing there's not a simple answer to this question...but when do you use each of the five varieties of hay? Thanks! Renee Bailey ---------------------------------------- Currently we have five different varieties that are > used based on the different times they are needed. Alfalfa hay, actual weed > hay (yes they do exist on weeds, and its extremely cheap), brome hay, > bluestem hay, and fescue hay. > > Depending on what each group needs, they get which ever they need. > > > Sharon Wintermute _______________________________________________ This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
