Rick, What we are milking mainly is a combination of East Friesian, Lacaune and Dorset. We also milk dairy breeds crossed with hair breeds. We have a flock of hair breed ewes, St. Croix, Katahdin, Dorper cross and quite a few Barbs. We do not necessarily milk the hair ewes unless one should lose her lambs or something like that. Our total flock numbers close to 400 ewes right now and we will only milk about 230 this season.
Because of the success of our milk replacer system, we never leave more than two lambs with any ewe raising her lambs. The "extra" lambs are raised on milk replacer. This would include Barb, Barb cross and hair lambs. We do not alter the system for any lambs. They are all raised the same. Lambs raised on their dams are weaned at 60 days and put in the same post weaning groups as the milk replacer raised lambs. As far as the concentration directions on your container, I would not alter this any. The amount that smaller lambs will consume is less than bigger lambs. Our lambs get milk replacer free choice, especially those on the mixing machines as they never run out. Sometimes the lambar boxes can be out for as much as an hour before we get new milk mixed and refilled. Just a comment on lamb size, we are working with the Booroola gene and some of our wooled ewes have a percentage Finn and/or Romanov so we get quite a few multiple births, trips, quads, quints. Most of these lambs will be smaller birth weight than the hair/barb lambs. Larry Meisegeier River Ridge Stock Farm Bruce, WI 715-868-2285 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.sheepmilk.biz > Larry, > The bottle info you gave today is very helpful. Thanks. I do have one > question, however. What breed of sheep are you raising? I ask because the > milk-replacer I use leads me to believe that their amounts and numbers on > the container are for the bigger, wooly breeds. And the Barbado breed lamb > I'm feeding surely doesn't follow those guidelines. Are you raising hair or > wooly sheep for milk? > > Rick Krach > Auburn CA 95602 > (530) 889-1488 > > > >From: "Larry & Emily Meisegeier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Subject: Re: [blackbelly] RE: bottle-feeding > >Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 21:54:23 -0600 > >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > >I will give you my perspective since we raise a few hundred lambs a year on > >milk replacer... > > >Larry Meisegeier > >River Ridge Stock Farm > >Bruce, WI > >715-868-2285 > >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >www.sheepmilk.biz > > > ... > > _________________________________________________________________ > Store more e-mails with MSN Hotmail Extra Storage – 4 plans to choose from! > http://click.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200362ave/direct/01/ > > =============================================== > 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]/ > =============================================== 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]/
