Barb: Just a thought: How do our blackbellies compare to deer? I am sure there some figures on deer feed consumption somewhere, just finding them. My opinion is that blackbellies forage much like deer, and their systems seem to resemble deer more than goats or wooled sheep. Deer are extremely thrifty. Perhaps the original Barbados sheep were domesticated Barbados deer?? We have an ice storm here in OK right now, and I am just waiting for the power to go out and prospective buyers to call about generators. We have had 11 new ones born in the last 5 days. One during the freezing rain/fog last night. I spent yesterday afternoon putting hay in the shelters for them and came back last night to find one new one nursing mama with about 15 head that were bedded down in the straw I put under a low shelter. I just left it there did not want to disturb them. It was fine this morning.
Cecil in OKla Barb Lee wrote: > Now that I've got all smart (haha!) and learned how to balance rations, > I've been making some interesting observations. The NRC charts for > sheep nutritional requirements show that 44 pound lambs need a total Dry > Matter (food after the water's been removed) intake of 2.2 pounds per > day. That's about 2.45 pounds of hay. > > I have nine lambs that average 45 pounds, and they can't clean up about > 1.5 pounds each of 3rd cutting leafy alfalfa per day. That's a pound a > day less than a wooly lamb???? Wow. There's a little low quality grass > in their yard, but I doubt it's contributing to their intake that much. > Maybe this is where we are taking our description of the breed as > "thrifty" from. It's a two-edged sword. If you're trying to get the > best quality out of the lamb, you wouldn't be feeding as much to a > blackbelly lamb as to a wooly, but you'd want to maximize the small > intake with highest quality feed of the right kind. Wonder if this has > anything to do with slow growing blackbellies? Makes sense that > "industrialized" breeds are selected on feed lot tests, so they're > probably selected in large part to be able to shovel in large quantities > of feed. > > My ewe lamb mother, nursing twins is only able to consume about 60% of > the chart recommendations. She's in her 4th week of lactation and > hasn't lost a scrap of condition. Her lambs are beginning to help her > eat her hay now so it looks like consumption will go up a bit in the > next few weeks. > > Some cattle breeders are selecting bulls based on forage performance now > for the grassfed market. Seems to me this presents a sort of back-door > opportunity for blackbelly breeders...If we understand more about their > digestion (after all their metabolism of fat is different from woolies, > so it stands to reason their digestion is different.) we should be able > to fashion our breed into an excellent breed for the burgeoning grassfed > market. > > Regards, > Barb Lee > Blacklocust Farm > Registered American Blackbelly Sheep > http://www.blacklocustfarm.net > > > _______________________________________________ > 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
