Feelin' a bit sheepish...

[Baymule]

I always offer my sheep baking soda when I let them at the clover. They lick it up like candy, your boys probably will too. As the clover grows and blooms, they aren’t so interested in it.

 

[Mini Horses]

Low quality hay or straw before going out on pasture? With baking soda! Any willow leaves? Aspirin like for comfort.

 

[Beekissed]

Low quality hay or straw before going out on pasture? With baking soda! Any willow leaves? Aspirin like for comfort.

They live on pasture, so no "going out" for these guys. Alas, no willow leaves! We are going to give them some nasty old hay in that paddock...they seem to LOVE that stuff and it does help even out their guts.

 

[Beekissed]

I always offer my sheep baking soda when I let them at the clover. They lick it up like candy, your boys probably will too. As the clover grows and blooms, they aren’t so interested in it.

I put some out for them and will see how much they've sampled it in the morning. I'll get an old manky bale of hay in there too, clearing off the outside shell and letting them have the middle that isn't so nasty. They should sample it enough to balance their rumen. The gals down in the big field are still sampling round bales in this manner.

 

[Baymule]

My ewe lambs are so dumb. They are in the side pasture that includes the backyard, where Paris can watch over them. She is happy to have work to do, besides a chicken tractor of poopy Cornish Cross chickens. LOL The granddaughters playhouse is in the side pasture. Do the ewe lambs go in it to get out of the rain? No! They stay as close to the sheep barn as they can get, out in the pounding rain. They are looking white and pretty from all the showers they are getting. But the dummies yell at me to come rescue them and they are unhappy at being out in the storms. Yesterday I moved their feed pan in the playhouse. They scarfed it down and skeedaddled out of there! Dummies. Before we took ram lambs to auction, they were in the side pasture and they happily took shelter in the playhouse.

 

[Mini Horses]

Poor hay seems to attract....stuff we would not buy with intent to feed!!! I scrounged 7 large bales from a clean the barn deal last fall. Brought home and dropped over fence into garden area. It was for mulch this year. Darned mini mares were in there to eat any weeds, now I have almost no mulch! Not like they don't get good hay.....I was floored when I noticed it. Even sometimes leaving the good stuff. It wasn't moldy or such. Had to close that area back off.

 

[Beekissed]

Poor hay seems to attract....stuff we would not buy with intent to feed!!! I scrounged 7 large bales from a clean the barn deal last fall. Brought home and dropped over fence into garden area. It was for mulch this year. Darned mini mares were in there to eat any weeds, now I have almost no mulch! Not like they don't get good hay.....I was floored when I noticed it. Even sometimes leaving the good stuff. It wasn't moldy or such. Had to close that area back off.

I found this out many years ago about the sheep and the neighbor's cattle. Bought the most beautiful hay ever for those sheep that year...it was a GREAT year for haying. They ignored it, trampled it, wasted it. Then I found they had been eating up under a tarp of stacked hay and the neighbor's cows had also broken down our fence to get to that stack of square bales......those bales were 40 YEARS OLD and were meant for my garden in the spring. We had cleaned out an old barn for an old farmer and those bales were~in my eyes~ absolutely void of any nutrition whatsoever and so moldy, dusty that I sneezed all throughout the loading and unloading of them.

This year I bought beautiful round bales for $30 a bale, horse quality hay. They never touched them while in the paddock with the $5 mulch round bales, rained on for 2 seasons and moldering into sodden lumps of ferment. Ate those mulch bales like candy and got hugely fat on them!

What I'm learning is that they actually prefer the moldy, nasty hay to the "good stuff" and I'm a fool for buying the good stuff. And all those people adamantly asserting that moldy hay will KILL YOUR SHEEP. Guess my sheep, your mini-horses and the neighbor's cows are some kind of superanimal beings, then.

 

[farmerjan]

Many animals prefer the fermenting hay that we deem unpalatable. We often feed 2-3 yr old hay that they scoff down. The trick is for them to "HAVE A CHOICE". The animals will make the different hay/feed/crap balance out. It is feeding them ONLY the bad stuff that they cannot balance out that we get into trouble.

Our cows will stand and eat the chicken litter when it gets delivered to our pastures before we get it spread.... like CANDY..... YUCK..... but it supplies something that they seem to crave. We will get the litter delivered into the one "catch lot" and shut the cattle out of there so they don't eat and walk all over the pile. It gets brought in on trailers with a "walking floor" .... so it gets unloaded in piles that back up to each other as the trailer pulls forward as it unloads. THE COWS will eat and walk it down if we do not keep them out.

 

[Kusanar]

Many animals prefer the fermenting hay that we deem unpalatable. We often feed 2-3 yr old hay that they scoff down. The trick is for them to "HAVE A CHOICE". The animals will make the different hay/feed/crap balance out. It is feeding them ONLY the bad stuff that they cannot balance out that we get into trouble.

Our cows will stand and eat the chicken litter when it gets delivered to our pastures before we get it spread.... like CANDY..... YUCK..... but it supplies something that they seem to crave. We will get the litter delivered into the one "catch lot" and shut the cattle out of there so they don't eat and walk all over the pile. It gets brought in on trailers with a "walking floor" .... so it gets unloaded in piles that back up to each other as the trailer pulls forward as it unloads. THE COWS will eat and walk it down if we do not keep them out.

When I was in Hippology (the study of the horse) in 4-H, we had to look at different feedstuffs and learn to visually ID the different hays and grains, one of the things we were supposed to look at and learn was "broiler litter" which is what your cows are eating. Apparently it is high in protein and minerals that may be lacking in their normal feed.

 

[Beekissed]

The boys hit the baking soda hard last night and this morning Rocket isn't limping, though the big boy still is. I'm going to move them off that clover, to the back of the paddock that's mostly brush, then I'm going to mow down that clover and put an old hay bale in there before letting them back in.

Rocket came and accepted a biscuit right out of my hand....a first! I'm telling you, folks, those peanut butter biscuits will drive them mad! I'm petting ewes now that never let me touch them or even get near them before they finally got a biscuit....now they are climbing on the 4 wheeler, letting me pet their heads and necks, stealing the 4 wheeler keys(Gimpy...got to watch that one like a hawk!), etc.

All year long they never got a biscuit because the older gals would crowd them out, but we made a point of making sure most could get one early this spring and now the only one who can't be touched is the only one who still hasn't gotten curious enough to crowd in and claim a biscuit~Ugly Betty.

Now, to win over Betty and the new ram lamb, Otis....if I can just get them near enough to eat a biscuit, they will join the crowd who go bonkers for biscuits! >insert evil laugh here<