Test Forages to Ensure Sheep or Goat Performance
When producers consider sheep or goat performance, their first thought likely focuses on selection practices that focus on genetics to produce lambs and kids that perform well. However, producers must also develop a nutritional program to feed pregnant and nursing females to ensure their lambs or kids perform well. This nutritional program begins with understanding the nutritional value of the forage that those ewes and does consume.
This year's weather created a considerable challenge for producers in harvesting high-quality hay. It rained, and it rained, and it rained some more last spring. By the time the rain showers slowed, the forage had matured, and quality had declined. This leads me to emphasize the importance of balancing late gestation and lactation diets using a forage analysis report.
For example, estimating your forage quality at a higher protein level than the forage contains can result in decreased milk production, leading to lower weaning weights. Let’s consider a small flock of 25 ewes or does that produce 35 lambs or kids to sell, and those lambs or kids wean at an average of 5 pounds lighter than you expect. This scenario would result in a total of 175 pounds less when marketed and equate to a loss of $437.50 when sold at $2.50 per pound. You can run many forage sample analyses for $437.50! Now, look at your flock or herd and consider what you might be losing in total weaning weight when selling your lambs or kids.
You may also want to consider the impact of nutrition on lambing and kidding percentages. Suppose you feed stored forages during breeding or early gestation, and the forage quality does not meet nutritional requirements. In that case, you can expect fewer lambs and kids born on your operation that year because nutrition affects both ovulation and embryonic survival. Therefore, forage testing and balancing diets using the test results becomes even more critical to your operation's profitability.
Accurate results on the forage analysis report begin with properly sampling forages. Hay quality can vary significantly from one field to the next, and from one cutting to the next. Therefore, it is essential to sample correctly to achieve accurate results that will be used to balance diets. Penn State's publication "Forage Quality Testing: Why, How and Where" recommends sampling each field and cutting separately using a bale corer. Sample at least 20 bales dispersed throughout the lot. Mix the samples in a clean bucket and place a subsample into a clean plastic bag. Be sure to label the bag with your name, address, forage description, cutting, and the date it was harvested. The sample should be stored in a cool area until it is submitted to an accredited laboratory for analysis.
The National Forage Testing Association certifies laboratories for near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) testing and wet chemistry. You can find a testing laboratory in your location by searching the National Forage Testing Association website or contacting your local Penn State Extension office. These laboratories pass performance standards to ensure the accuracy of forage testing analysis procedures and results. Standard nutritional components listed on a forage analysis report include dry matter, crude protein, total digestible nutrients (energy), fiber, and minerals.
Diets should be balanced using these nutritional components, particularly during late gestation and lactation, when sheep and goats are likely to consume stored forages. Balancing the diet can ensure that the females perform to their genetic potential and that the lambs and kids perform well from birth to weaning. Diets lacking sufficient protein, energy, or essential minerals will likely result in lower performance and could impact the vigor of lambs and kids at birth.
A research study by Ahmed et.al, "Effect of pre- and post-partum dietary crude protein level on the performance of ewes and their lambs," noted that increasing the dietary protein level increased milk production. The study also indicated that higher dietary protein levels "cause an increase in the amount of protein leaving the rumen and thus alter the amounts and proportions of amino acids available for absorption in the plasma, which improve udder development and milk production." Their study showed a 31.3% increase in milk yield for medium protein levels and a 52.6% increase for high protein levels compared to low protein levels. The study also noted that ewes fed medium and high levels of protein pre- and post-partum weaned heavier lambs.
What producer wouldn't want more lambs or kids that weigh more at weaning? Now is a great time to collect forage samples and send them to a laboratory for analysis. Use that information to balance diets, ensuring the health of your pregnant ewes or does and promoting higher milk production that leads to heavier lambs or kids at weaning.
This article first appeared in Lancaster Farming.
