Sheep provide not only milk, meat, but also wool. The specially dressed sheepskin skin deserves special praise. Such productivity of animals is supported by their special ration of feed: it contains 1.5-2 times more plant species than other herbivores. Monotonous food for sheep is highly undesirable, but good care and adequate feeding give very good results.
Instructions
Step 1
It is believed that sheep do not eat much feed. Its volumes are most often determined on the basis of every 100 kg of live weight. If it is dry feed with stall keeping, then the portion of feed in the specified proportion is on average from 2 to 3 kilograms. For summer feeding on pastures, the stake is on self-regulating consumption. The main thing here is the quality of natural and cultural reservations: the choice of steppe and dry pastures is preferable (wet and swampy meadows are the worst option).
Step 2
In the main diet of sheep: green grass, legumes (more valuable in the budding phase), cereals (more nutritious in the period of earing), hay, straw, silage, concentrated feed, vegetables, mineral supplements. The types of feed must be combined, and such a complex nutrition will fully satisfy the animals in all the necessary substances. Young green grass of pastures and fresh forage crops contain proteins, vitamins, sugar, proteins. With growth and aging, these plants lose their nutrients, gaining more fiber. It is more difficult for sheep to digest.
Step 3
Silage, including corn silage, is good for feeding sheep. It is enough 3-4 kg per day for one sheep. An excellent food for animals is hay with a varied composition of herbs collected at the time of flowering. The nutritional value of such hay is twice that of that which is dried from the grass stand in the phase of seed ripening. Alfalfa hay is considered the best, followed by clover hay, sainfoin hay and cereal hay. Sheep are also fed straw dried from legumes (the most valuable) and from spring crops (oats, barley, peas, millet). Concentrated feed is a grain of legumes and cereals, bran, cake, compound feed. The latter are quite expensive, but very nutritious, since, in addition to the traditional components of sheep feed, they contain starch and fats.
Step 4
It is useful to give the sheep succulent feed: potatoes (raw or boiled), carrots, fodder beets, melons - pumpkin, zucchini, watermelons. For the daily ration of adult sheep, 2-3 kg of chopped root crops are enough, for young animals 1 kg is enough.
Step 5
Meal (sunflower, cotton, soybean meal) is also rich in protein and mineral salts. It is used sparingly as a supplement: up to 150 grams per head per day. Sheep need calcium and phosphorus: their deficiency is compensated by the inclusion in the diet of bone meal, chalk, defluorinated and tricalcium phosphate, simple phosphate. The annual requirement is from 1.5 to 2 kg of bone meal and chalk per sheep.
Step 6
Feeding technique is important in the organization of sheep feeding. During the day, they should receive two or three varieties of roughage (hay, straw), and separately and at different times. Succulent feed is consumed before drinking and before roughage. Concentrated ones are given after a watering hole (it is organized once a day in winter, 2-3 times in summer). Salt in the feeders must be present at all times. Obligatory giving of salt - 10-15 g per day.
Step 7
Stable feeding is longer than pasture feeding - on average, 210 days a year. This point should also be taken into account. With the seasonal depletion of the nutritional value of the grass stand on pastures, it is necessary to supplement the sheep with dry feed before pasture - up to half a kilogram per head per day. If necessary, an additional portion is also given in the evening after the animals return to the stall.
