Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
GRAIN MIXTURES
There are lots of possible combinations of grains to use as
supplemental feed for sheep, but the following recipes are gener-
ally suitable.
■
Mix 50 pounds (23 kg) of shelled corn, 20 pounds (9 kg) of
oats, 20 pounds of wheat bran, and 10 pounds (4.5 kg) of
linseed meal.
■
Mix 75 pounds (34 kg) of shelled corn, 10 pounds (4.5 kg)
of cottonseed hulls, 14 pounds (7 kg) of soybean meal, and
1 pound (0.5 kg) of molasses.
The infl ammation traps debris and dust, causing a vicious cycle of further
infl ammation.
Pasture
A well-managed pasture is the very best source of feed for your sheep. It is
economical and provides them with the food nature intended them to eat:
fresh grass, legumes, and a few forbs thrown in (generally, in a pasture these
are weeds and woody species). It also allows them the chance to behave like
sheep: to run, and jump, and lie comfortably chewing their cud as the grass
bends around them in the breeze.
Managing pastures is part art, part science. The goal is to keep plants
in the pasture growing fast, and this is accomplished by clipping or grazing
them before they reach maturity (that is, set seed) but not clipping or grazing
them so close to the ground that they will lose a great deal of energy and fail
to thrive. To achieve this, practice managed grazing (sometimes called rota-
tional grazing, management-intensive grazing, or pulsed grazing).
In managed grazing, the pasture is subdivided (usually with electric fence)
into smaller paddocks, and the animals are moved among these pastures. A
good way to start out with managed grazing is to subdivide the pasture into
at least eight paddocks. When you put your fl ock into a paddock, you want to
make a visual estimate of how tall the average plants are and graze them to
about half that height. Then move the fl ock to the next pasture.
There are a number of good topics on the subject listed in the Resources
section (including my
Small-Scale Livestock Farming: A Grass-based Approach
for Health, Sustainability, and Profi t)
. On the Internet, my favorite place is
