Assessing the condition of your sheep and goats heading into the breeding season, according to Dr. David Fernandez, is pretty simple — but you do have to lay your hands on them.
“A lot of people will look at sheep and goats and say, ‘That looks fine,’” said Fernandez, a University of Arkansas Extension animal scientist, “but goats store their fat on the inside, and it’s hard to tell how fat they are unless you actually reach over and feel along the spinal column between the ribs and the hips, to feel how much fat there is on there.”
Hair sheep will be slick in the summertime, but as fall approaches and they start to put on their woollier coat, it’s also hard to judge much body fat they’re carrying on sight alone.
Fernandez said low body condition usually points to a problem with the summer feeding program. If pastures are reduced, the ewes or does may need to receive supplementary feed. Sheep and goats in poor body condition usually need more energy and can be supplemented with corn. He said, “Sheep can eat whole corn, and they’ll digest it very easily. On the other hand, for goats you should crack it, flake it or steam it, so that they’ll get the most benefit out of it. Start them on that slowly, because too much at one time can cause acidosis.”
He recommends a quarter to a half pound, per head, per day to start, up to a maximum of 1 pound.
Flushing, the practice of providing a brief burst of nutrition prior to breeding season, is commonly used in sheep, but Fernandez said research is mixed over whether it’s effective in goats. He suggested providing a corn and perhaps a protein supplement 10 to 14 days before the start of the season; it helps ovulation and improves the likelihood of twinning. Flushing should stop when breeding season begins.
“Once the ewe becomes pregnant, that higher level of energy creates a less hospitable environment in the uterus for implantation to occur, so you tend to have higher rates of embryo losses if you continue to flush,” Fernandez explained.
David Copeland, a hair sheep breeder from Fulton, Mo., said he doesn’t flush.
He instead uses what he calls the “Ram Effect.” About 10 days before breeding, he puts a ram on the other side of the fence from the ewes.
“That will put them into a silent heat, and get everybody starting to cycle and ready to breed,” he said. “If you don’t do that, when you put the ram in some of them will be ready right away, others will take 10 days and some may take three weeks.”
About a third of the ewes will rebreed within a month of lambing. Copeland said that’s hard on the animals and raises overwintering costs, but it reduces predator and parasite problems.
He’ll start graining the ewes a month before lambing but has to be cautious of “Twin Lamb Disease,” where the combination of two or three fetuses and hay in the abdomen causes pregnancy toxemia.
“I combat that by molasses lick tubs – they’ve got plenty of sugar, and then I start graining them with a quarter pound of supplemental pellets per lamb, per day, and build it up till the time that they lamb to 1 pound per ewe per day,” he said. He also provides grain the first 30 days of lactation.
Parasite control can be a problem in the fall. Fernandez said producers should check their animals for the barberpole worm, a bloodsucking parasite that lives within the stomach of sheep and goats that can kill an animal in as little as 37 days. Animals can be monitored via FAMACHA scoring, which involves checking the conjunctiva surrounding the eye against a color chart for signs of anemia.”
