When I first started my small flock of American Blackbellies, I had a noble dream of going straight grassfed. I set up an extensive system of electric fences on my small acreage so I could practice Management Intensive Grazing.
But it takes more than pretty green wild grass to make a quality grassfed product, and also to carry those mamas through pregnancy and lactation. We have grass aplenty for about 4 months out of the year, but the hard reality of deficiencies humbled me very quickly. With low, low copper and high, high moly, super high potassium and iron, and other elements grossly out of balance, my sheep did very poorly for awhile. It took analysis of all our feeds, and even liver metal toxicology tests to find out that they were literally starving for copper. Our ground is starving for calcium, and it is very expensive to replace it. Because of our conditions we cannot get legumes such as alfalfa and birdsfoot trefoil to strike. We grow a lot of fescue, but can't get high energy grasses (not high protein, high ENERGY) such as rye to strike. It is the high energy grasses in a pasture that replace the grain. It is not "just" grass, any old grass. It has to be the right kind of grass - many varieties in the same pasture. Sheep may not have been meant to eat grain, but neither were they meant to live in the confines of a farm, particularly if the soils are not intensely managed to replace all the nutrients that are taken out, or were perhaps never there in the first place. The pretty green grass you buy at the feedstore or from the local farmer may look good, but it may be so much trash, if an analysis is done. We tried supplementing with beet pulp, a popular feed which is acceptable as an energy feed in grassfed circles, that has skyrocketed in price, as an alternative to grain and that was a consummate failure. It produced a very poor quality lamb and the ewes did not do well on it. Grassfed/grass finished is a title that needs to be earned by a diligent grass farmer. Lamb products that are put on the market with little attention to the true art of grass finishing only give the budding market a black eye as far as I'm concerned. The product will be too variable in quality, and a bad tasting, dry, stringy lamb will not create a return customer. We try to feed a balanced diet to the sheep, because we have discovered that not to do so is failure. Blackbellies may be "tough" but they are not tough enough to survive a lack of the basic elements of life. And "tough" is what you get when you throw your livestock out on pasture without a plan to actually "finish" them correctly. That means that a noble idea, such as grass finished lamb, has to bend with the realities of living on "Boring Lava Weathered to Clay" soil, which is what our little farm is on. We are NOT on Class I agricultural soils. Grain is the universal bandaid for livestock being raised on soils that are continually being degraded. It is cheaper to feed grain than to feed the soil. I have found that out the hard way, but we are still working in that direction. Perhaps in 10 years or so, our soil will be able to sustain the abundance of life that creates the high energy pasture that will eliminate grain from the sheeps' diet. Regards, Barb Lee _______________________________________________ This message is from the blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
