# Katahdin lamb growth rate



## Blackbird

We got some Katahdin lambs last spring from a neighbor and some of them are gettng close to their first birthday by now, but they seem small to me. How big would a typical grass-fed Katahdin lamb be expected to get by the end of its first year? They were mostly pastured up until the winter, then fed grass hay with a little bit of grain since the winter began. Also, how long will they continue to grow before topping out?

Blackbird


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## thequeensblessing

Ours weigh about 100 lbs at a year old, and are about 3/4 the size of an adult. These are also grass fed in summer and hay/grain fed in winter. Late pregnancy and lactation (especially multiples) gets about 1 lb of grain a day along with all the mixed grass/legume hay they want.


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## Blackbird

thequeensblessing said:


> Ours weigh about 100 lbs at a year old


Wow. Ours aren't even close, say, 70-80 pounds. We suspect that the neighbors weaned them too soon. Would that make this much of a difference? And can they catch up, or will they always be undersized?


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## thequeensblessing

A lot depends on what you are feeding them Blackbird. We feed our lambs free choice creep feed, hay and grass (if available) along with nursing from mama until mama weans them (usually at about 3 months of age). Then, until they are about 4 months old, they continue to get hay and creep feed and grass if available. After 4 months of age, they get hay/grass only, with minimal grain daily, (1/4 lb daily per lamb) to keep them coming to the barn on a regular basis. (We want our sheep to come to us, not vice versa!) If one or two lambs seem to lag behind the rest, we supplement them with more grain.
We also use FAMACHA to check our lambs for worms before turning them out to pasture in the spring. Lambs with heavy worm load will be thin and unthrifty. 
Also, twins and triplets usually weigh less than singletons at birth, however, by 3 months of age, our multiples have usually caught up with their singleton counterparts in size. 
At 9 months of age our lambs generally weigh in at about 80 lbs or more.


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## thequeensblessing

These are some examples of our Katahdin lambs. These are 2 1/2 month old twins. They weighed about 45 lbs. each at the time. 


This is one of the same twins (same day at 2 1/2 months old) standing behind (and sniffing) his mother. You can see his size, relative to his mother.


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## quailkeeper

Are yours bred? I had a 12 month old ewe who surprised us with a baby. The fact that she was not full grown when bred, made it stunt her growth. We are now going to start separating our ewe lambs out at 6 months to prevent early breeding. 100 lbs at 1 year old sounds about right for me too (normally). Early weaning does stunt growth also, but they usually grow out of it with good feed and grass/hay.


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## thequeensblessing

We always breed our ewe lambs to lamb at 12 to 13 months. It has never stunted their growth. If given adequate feed, they'll achieve their full potential. If they are growing a lamb at the expense of their own condition, then yes, they may suffer for it. We grain 1/2 lb a day during early pregnancy and increase our grain feeding to 1 lb a day for the last month of pregnancy through lactation.


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## quailkeeper

Mine are also grain fed, but I do know people who feed theirs grass and hay only. My ewes have always run with a ram, and this is the first time I've had one breed so young. It was hard on her and the lamb, which is why I will begin to separate now. Typically my ram didn't breed them until they were around 12 months old.


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## Blackbird

Thanks for the info. Since none of the males were castrated and past the age we've seen recommended for banding, we put them all out on pasture and then separated the females from the males when they were about 5 or so months old. So we know that the females haven't been bred. Since that time, we kept the males out on pasture up until the winter, offering them only occasional grain to get them to come to us. The females we kept in the barn on hay and about 1/4 pound of grain. Once the snow came we brought the males into the barn and they have gotten only hay with just occasional grain.

Right now both groups are about the same weight (in spite of their different diets) and not even close to 100 pounds. If we up their grain ration, will they "catch up" (a bit) or is it too late to get much more growth out of them? They don't seem thin or sickly, just small. As I said, we think that they were weaned too soon. Also, the former owner said he fed only hay (in addition to their mothers' milk). He probably offered even less grain than we did. 

Any further thoughts?


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## Shygal

Blackbird said:


> we put them all out on pasture and then separated the females from the males when they were about 5 or so months old. So we know that the females haven't been bred.


Ummm........


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## PNP Katahdins

I agree with Shygal. Let us know the outcome. The ewe lambs are pretty young to settle - maybe - but I'll bet the boys have been practicing on them. We had two wool ewe lambs get bred successfully at five months. There was a stealth uncut boy in the flock, probably from a broken band. At least we realized what was going on and were prepared. He also settled 12 adult ewes. 

With the Katahdins, we have been careful to separate any ram lambs before they are four months old, based on prior experience. It's such a hassle feeding in our system to keep them apart that we're just going to band all the boys this year, even the good registerable ones. One less group to feed.

Peg


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## Blackbird

Shygal said:


> Ummm........


We separated the boys from the girls when we saw some of the boys start to look "interested."

But that was 6-7 months ago, so I'm reasonably :whistlin: sure they're not in the family way.

We intend to band any ram lambs we get, at least until we improve the stock a lot more. As I said a couple posts ago, we thought the boys were a bit old for banding when we got them so we're now raising two separate flocks. Don't want to do that permanently. 

We've bought a real nice ram lamb for a sire, but he's just hanging out with the guys until we can get our girls to grow a bit more. We'll see if boosting their grain ration helps.


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## PA Katahdins

Jim, I believe you are on the right track by upping the grain a bit to see some more growth. I think you will see a good spurt in growth from them come spring once the grass greens up from what I have experienced so you might have a good chance at getting them bred at that time for possible fall lambs if they will breed out of season.


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## Bearfootfarm

> We'll see if boosting their grain ration helps.


If you really want to put weight on them, get them up to about 1 lb per day


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