Brenda, I am a new hair sheep (BB and Katahdin) owner this year with three ewes & one ram, now somewhat over 10 months old each. Since I began my farm with dairy goats, I feed hay appropriate to goats, which is coarse & rough with weeds, not the fine stuff you would expect to feed to horses, or even to cattle and wooly sheep. I still have a little pasture and all the hair sheep eat what they can and chow heartily down on the hay we have. I am not knowledgable about hay so I cannot tell you what type is better than what, but our favorite hay dealer has almost entirely Brohm grass (spelling?) with weeds throughout, and since I have one sheep who foams at the mouth when she's gotten hold of alfalfa pellets, we have been careful not to feed her or the other sheep alfalfa products...granted this is probably unique to that one sheep.
As for grain, we are pretty sloppy and feed the same stuff to everybody, which is "All Stock" or "All Grain" from whatever brand mill. This is a mixed bag of grains (millet, oats, corn, etc) with molasses--that our goats love. In the spring some of the goats don't want molasses and then we feed cracked corn & rolled oats. Aside from this, we feed loose sheep & goat minerals to which we might add rock salt in the warmer months. How can we feed this way? Well, we are raising the hair sheep mostly to feed our household and aren't really intending to supply anyone else--so we might sell at our local barn where they aren't too particular about paperwork, at least until we find it necessary to do the paperwork. Hope this helps. --Valorie Machin Bolivar, Missouri =============================================== This message is from the Barbados Blackbelly Sheep mailing list (http://www.awrittenword.com/listserv/index.html). To respond to this message, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe or change your membership options, go to http://lists.coyotenet.net/mailman/listinfo/blackbelly To search the archives, go to http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
