ANN 121: Applied Animal Nutrition-I (2+1)

Flushing or feeding of breeding ewes and feeding of sheep for wool and meat

FLUSHING OR FEEDING OF BREEDING EWES, FEEDING OF SHEEP FOR WOOL AND MEAT

Flushing or feeding of breeding ewes

• Flushing is the special nutritional care for improving nutritional status of ewes 3-4 weeks before mating by providing additional concentrate mixture.
• It is very much important to have better nutrition and body condition before ewe is allowed to mate with ram.
• The effect of flushing is more evident in ewes that were underfed.
• Thus with flushing ewes have better body condition and will increase fertility by way of increased incidence of oestrus and increased ovulation rate.
• The majority of sheep in arid and semi-arid regions are bred 2-3 weeks after the onset of rains as grazing conditions are improved by this time.
• To obtain increased lambing rate, breeding ewes should be given 250 g concentrate mixture or 500 g of good quality hay/head/day 3-4 weeks before breeding is addition to usual hours of grazing.

Feeding of sheep for wool and meat

• Sheep are reared mostly on grazing and poor pastures where good cropping is not possible either due to fertility of soil or due to inadequate irrigation facility and also low rain fall, resulting in  unable to sustain the rainfed crops.
• In cultivated areas, sheep flocks are grazed on fallow land and stubbles left after harvesting of main crops.
• Sheep are able to collect their feeds by close clipping and often they follow cattle and buffaloes on the pasture with good herbage cover.
• Young tender grass blades are liked by sheep, which they sort out avoiding coarse and ripen parts of the plants.
• Sheep grow at a much higher rate on the feeding of energy rich high concentrate diet than the grazing alone.
• Supplementation with concentrates after grazing is more economical than intensive fattening.
• Sheep have tremendous feeding capacity and voluntary DM intake range from 2-5% of body weight.
• Inadequate feeding and unbalanced feeding are the chronic limitations of sheep rearing in most of the tropical countries.