| If you buy one of our Icelandic sheep: Please remember that our sheep have usually never been given any additional feed/corn other than an occasional SMALL treat. Our flock is grown on pasture alone and hay in the winter. Many people are concerned that Icelandic sheep will not gain adequately if not grained, but they are forgetting that Icelandic sheep are unique in their ability to thrive on grass and grass hay alone. We have decided that we will avoid many undue complications to the sheep and lambs, in addition to saving money, by never adding grain/feeds to our sheep's diets. If, however, you choose to feed additional grain, there are several things you might want to consider before you do. First, do not attempt to add corn or other grain to their diet quickly. The most one ewe should be given to start out with is about 1/4 cup per day for about a week, and SLOWLY add more after that. Any more to begin with will probably cause real problems as the rumen is not prepared with the necessary bacteria needed to digest the grain and they can develop diarrhea, or worse, acidosis, and die from either of these situations. This is very important! It takes time for the good bacteria in their stomach to grow in numbers sufficient to digest grain. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER grain any sheep who has been given antibiotic unless specifically told to by a vet. and with the combined use of yogurt/Probios. The antibiotic will kill the good bacteria in the sheep's rumen, reducing to numbers necessary to digest the grain. Acidosis will likely result, and you will almost certainly lose the sheep. In order to regain the number of necessary good bacteria, live culture yogurt or Probios can be given to the sheep. Then reintroduce the grain slowly as you continue to use the yogurt/Probios. Remember that each dose of antibiotic will mess up the good bacteria numbers again so you must continue with the yogurt/probios for the length of the treatment. I would avoid using the grain all together and, in the process, side-step all sorts of problems. We try to buy hay that has very little alfalfa/clover as Icelandic sheep tend to gain weight quickly and this causes lambing problems. It is our wish for your experience with Icelandics to be a pleasant experience, as it generally has been for us. Icelandic sheep have a reputation for easy lambing and small lambs. One reason for this is their natural diet which consists of vegetation. When they are grained, much of the excess weight goes to the lamb, causing it to grow within the ewe to an unnaturally large size. Lambs born weighing 9-12 lbs may seem like a lot of fun in theory, but it makes it horribly hard on the ewe whose body is not designed to carry so much weight. When you consider that they often have twins and even triplets, multiply it using 10 lb lambs as an example, and you can easily have a ewe carrying over 20 lbs of lamb when she was made to only carry up to around 10-14 lbs. Very large lambs can make a real mess; ewes who can not deliver unassisted, difficult to impossible pulling of lambs, expensive vet visits, and lost/ruined ewes. So much of this can be avoided by simply feeding the pregnant ewe good quality grass/orchard grass hay and making sure she gets plenty of exercise grazing the field while she is pregnant. It breaks my heart when a customer calls or emails us with a horror story of a lamb that weighed an impressive amount, but that was lost due to its unnatural size. It's even worse when the ewe is lost or permanently damaged because of this. Healthy weight will be attained by feeding ONLY grass hay in the winter and leaving them on pasture in the summer. Try to trust me on this. We have been successfully raising Icelandic sheep since March of 2003 without the addition of grain, other than a small handful for bribes and occasional treats. It's far better to have fast growing lambs after birth than monsters at lambing time! Please don't blame the breed if you choose to grain an Icelandic sheep or feed them hay rich in alfalfa, and then have problems due to overweight ewes and lambs. They were not designed to live on such a rich diet. Another thing to think about before graining a new mother: Please do not grain the ewe before her true milk comes in as it can cause mastitis. This may be several days, depending on the ewe. Corn will cause the ewe to produce great quantities of milk, but this can lead to problems. Most Icelandic ewes will have more than enough milk to feed their lambs without any graining or additional feed. This includes rich alfalfa hay. If the ewe is given good quality grass/orchard grass hay or pasture grass and plenty of clean water, she will almost certainly produce enough milk to feed her lambs. In the case of triplets, you might consider giving all 3 lambs a bottle of colostrum within the first few hours after birth, in order to make sure they all get a good dose of this extremely important first milk within the first few hours of life. Sometimes the larger lambs will consume all the colostrum before the smallest lamb gets enough to help it develop the immunities to disease it needs to survive. Adding grain at this time will not prevent this problem. I am, for the most part, opposed to graining Icelandic sheep. Although there are times that our pasture is pretty bare, we generally don't give corn or feed of any type other than grass hay. I consider this one of the benefits of raising Icelandic sheep. We have very few complications due to large lambs (in fact, we have never had to pull a lamb because it was too large), and most of our ewes lamb in the field completely unassisted. They consistently have healthy, lively lambs that require very little to no assistance in any way. This is one of the reasons we chose Icelandics in the first place. I would hope that, before you buy any corn or feed for your Icelandic sheep, you take a little while to weigh the pros and cons of unnecessary graining. Not only will it add to your feed store bill, but it may cost you a lot of senseless pain due to lost lambs and ewes. Feel free to email us with any questions you have concerning anything on our website or something you have thought of that we haven't added that you'd like to know! We may not have an answer, but we welcome questions and love to 'talk sheep'! |
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