# What do YOU feed your club lambs?



## lynnabyrd (Oct 15, 2007)

My son and daughter have done market lambs for 4H for a few years now. We've always gone by what the 4H leader suggests as far as feeding, and I want to say up front that our market lambs do pretty well on it. I didn't grow up with animals, so this has been a learning experience for me as well as them! 

I'm just curious if this is the "usual" when it comes to feeding or if it varies from place to place. Our county fair is mid-July, and we have 3 1/2 month old lambs. They're getting a small amount of alfalfa 2x daily and about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds (I'll have to check my daughter's record to know exactly) of grain, also 2x daily. 

Godd quality alfalfa is hard to find around here, and I had someone recommend pellets to me, but my understanding is that they need the roughage in the baled version. 

What we are doing *does* work. :baby04: I'm simply wondering what other folks do.


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## beoircaile (May 2, 2006)

What you are doing "works" for club lambs but not "normal" farm lambs. The high concentrate changes the pH of the rumen to the point that they can't digest roughage as much. It's not desirable to have them eating a lot of hay as it increases the rumen size and they don't have that sleek look (they have "hay belly").

We fed our club lambs very differently from other people- more grass/pasture based with enough concentrate to help them grow. It's not as easy to do as the club lamb program- but it is possible.

The reason it doesn't work for typical farm lambs is you end up spending more in concentrate than you should per lamb. My current lambs are getting free choice high quality hay, pasture a couple hours/day (to avoid bloat) and a concentrate/pellet mix to make up any deficiencies. They are wool breeds primarily and their fleeces are growing tremendously as they physically grow.


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## lambs.are.cute (Aug 15, 2010)

I showed for 7 years in 4H. The first year I went the grain/hay way. I was in shock when I totalled up what I had spent/fed at the end of the project (record books were required at the end of project). I was feeding 25 lbs of grain a week for two lambs. It just seemed like too much. I had a terrible time keeping them the proper fatness on the approved program. 

The next year I put my pasture to use. I worked the lambs onto pasture over 2 weeks. Once they were on the pasture they got free choice pasture and hay. I grained for training and just for the coxie meds (often I had to walk them to keep the weight down so the grain was just about 1/4 lb a day per lamb). All told for two lambs I went through 50 lbs of grain from purchase to fair. The lambs had to gain .6 lbs/day (adverage daily gain) for the carcus contest and I only once had less than .75 or more (the summer had 2 weeks of 100+ weather). Oh and free choice sheep salt/mineral. 

You can easily get rid of the grass belly. About two weeks before fair work them off the pasture and on to hay (or pellets which are easier and cleaner to feed at fair). Their grass belly will disappear and nobody will believe that they were on grass. People will comment on how nicely muscled your lambs are and want to know your feeding program.


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## RoyalValley (Apr 29, 2009)

Agh....we have a 2nd week of August fair and this is our first club lamb. I have no idea if what I'm feeding is right, and I don't have a scale to see if he is gaining as he should be. He's already a big lamb, so I don't feel I have to push him, but I want to do it right. 

I think what I have found says a handful of good hay 2x per day and 1.5 lbs of grain per day. 

Don't wanna mess this up.


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## lambs.are.cute (Aug 15, 2010)

I've used a truck scale in a pinch. Weight the truck, trailer, and lamb then weight just the truck and trailer. You will have to pay but the scales are accurate and the people who were at the scale I used were really nice and helped me figure what I needed to do. I think that it cost me about $5.


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## lynnabyrd (Oct 15, 2007)

I've wanted to try less grain and more pasture... the way the poor things are SUPPOSED to eat, right from the beginning... but I also don't want to "mess up" my childrens' projects. They're required to keep record books also, and yeah, seeing the amount of grain we push at them is  

We haven't had any problem keeping weight on them excpet for the first year, which I'm sure was mostly just our inexperience. And their lambs have done fairly well each year. I just feel like there's got to be a better way to do this, both for us and for the lambs. 

We have a few other sheep... last year's and this year's bottle babies... that seem to grow just as well and look just as good on just pasture (our pasture is about half grass/ half brushy) and hay, a little alfalfa thrown in once in a while as a treat, salt/minerals. But I'm still developing that "eye" for a good animal, and I don't trust my own judgement yet. They aren't bred to be club lambs anyway, so they don't have the same build. 

Wish I had one of you guys nearby to pick your brains. I love our 4H leader, but she's in the "has to be done this way" mindset, and thinks that changing the way it's always been done will ruin the children's projects. Sigh. I'm tempted to get an extra lamb and do it "my" way... and see what happens.


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## lambs.are.cute (Aug 15, 2010)

My leader was that way too. She was sure that I would come to fair with a skin and bones raggy looking lamb and did her best to talk me out of trying pasture. I started out with pastureing the fair lambs with the mind set that it was an experiment and if they showed signs of loosing condition then I would go back to the grain. If you do it early on in your lamb project you shouldn't ruin the project if the pasturing doesn't work out. 

If you are feeding fair lambs on pasture they need more lbs of food than if they were just on grain, but that food is cheeper and better for them. They also put on muscle better because they are running and playing insead of laying around. 

Mine had as much pasture as they could eat when ever they wanted it. They also had alfalfa - again as much as they would eat- waiting for them in the shade. Grain was usually fed late evening so they didn't get too hot while digesting it (another reason not to feed grain with 100+ temperatures).


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## RoyalValley (Apr 29, 2009)

See--this is all good info! We are in 4-h but we don't even have a sheep leader. The 4-h leader expects us to learn as we go or find someone of our own to teach us. It's just a technicality so that we can sell at fair that we are even in a club.


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## houndlover (Feb 20, 2009)

Auction market lambs (or steers, pigs, or goats) aren't supposed to be on pasture in Oregon, I don't know what the rules are in other states. We don't feed any hay. We use a good quality show lamb feed, there are many brands. We start at about 1.5 lbs a day and gradually work up to about 5-6 lbs per lamb by fair, pulling them off of the medicated variety about 3 weeks before the actual fair date. In addition we use a regulated exercise program to put on muscle. These are animals that are going to be slaughtered the week after fair and I'm always surprised when an unauctioned lamb survives and recovers after fair, ha ha. Honestly, we do this to win, I wouldn't eat a market lamb raised on show lamb feed. I stay completely away from alfalfa hay or pellets, these lambs are already susceptible to calcium stones and I just want them to be in good condition for fair - can't show a dead lamb. I don't enjoy raising lambs this way and I'm glad my own kids have outgrown the program - although they were big winners every year at county and state. My other lambs, the ones not destined for show, but for market in Sept/Oct, are usually the exact same size at 3 months as the show lambs, however, turned out on pasture alone, are a good 20 lbs lighter at fair time. They catch up by Sept, and the unauctioned lambs brought home from fair rarely gain any more weight on pasture. In the end, all of them average out to about 150 in September, obviously the pastured ones are way cheaper to raise, and happier.


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