First, your sheep need more nutritious groceries. Congratulations though on recognizing of their condition scores! Many first timers don't realize how important that is. You are also up on their worming - another plus for you.
Now that you know you have a feeding problem you can easily correct it. Since you will need time to improve your pastures ( a couple of years) I suggest you continue working on pasture improvement
but for now you need improve the protein level of the feed you are giving them.
they need more groceries if they are truly at the body score you say. Poor pasture offers little nutrition, just busy work. Grass hay -- that can be less than optimal unless tested and you know how good it is. It should be available 24/7 right now. One cup of alfalfa is not much....especially consider some will eat more, others get nothing.
Grass hay is lower in protein than alfalfa and most of the clovers. Most grass hay averages between 8% to 14% protein with most of it in the low area. Good alfalfa averages 17-21% protein depending on quality. The clovers come in around 14-17%. Total TDN averages the same among most grasses and legumes. This is a large gap in protein level (nutrition) which must be made up in supplemental feed. Alfalfa pellets are not going to keep the rumens working so I would not increase that amount but instead feed alfalfa hay. The 1 cup of pellets can be used to bring them into the night fold or barn but is not enough to do much for body condition.
Can you obtain good alfalfa in your area? I suggest you switch to alfalfa first before investing in more costly supplemental grain feeds. That will bring their protein intake up. First cuttings have the highest protein but dairies usually have the first cutting under contract. Second cutting is almost as high and we used to contract several fields of second cutting when we had our dairy goat herd. We used to have a very large herd of dairy milkers and were on milk test so DH has become something of a perfectionist when it comes to hay quality.
If you cannot get good alfalfa, then I suggest you buy a bagged feed made specially for sheep. A "grower ration" will put on condition in conjunction with the grass hay for rumen activity. Just make sure you feed enough per ewe. With 18 ewes, I would use several feeding areas spaced out to make sure each one gets enough.
We are in so California and have arid clay soil - NO grass pasture. We have had drought for years until last winter when we got constant rain (like the whole country) and beautiful forage. Note that I say
forage because we do not get grass pasture, just weeds and wild mustard. We do get beautiful alfalfa and have never fed anything else for 30 years.
We do not have Katahdins so I am not sure of their nutritional requirements. We have Dorpers (advertised by South African breeders to live on rocks and cactus) and they thrived on our forage this year. We had only 3 of 5 ewes lamb because we were transitioning from Dorsets (wooled)) to Dorpers. Since then we added another 8 Dorper ewes and a third ram. They have all done well on the forage plus about 1 lb rolled oats and corn at night. We didn't feed any hay for 6 months! Unheard of for us. The Dorsets needed a higher level of supplement to finish their lambs and I used a creep. However, the new Dorpers are much easier keepers and require less overall feed and supplements. I replaced the expensive bagged "grower ration" sheep feed with rolled barleycorn and they have done very well.
I do not use oats at all in my feeding program to increase condition. When the kids were in 4-H, and had a market animal gain too much too soon, we cut their feed with oats to halt weight gain. Oats put on hard flesh but not as much of it so don't use oats to increase condition in your ewes. Corn will fatten an animal, but you don't want to just put fat on. You want to put on flesh that will sustain a pregnancy and continue the ewe through her lactation.
Dairy animals that "put it all in the pail" are fed a grain ration with minerals pound for pound for the milk they give. Dairy animals also have different physical structures than meat animals with flat rib bones, and more pronounced hip bones, etc. A good dairy animal can look half starved and be in excellent condition! An experienced dairy person can pick out the unproductive animals in a dairy herd at a glance. Good meat producers are also identifiable through their structure.
Our ewes weaned at 4 months. Their lambs weighed about 100 lbs. The ewes' condition scores were about 3.0. I flushed them another month before putting in the ram. Now we are starting to feed alfalfa again as the forage has been eaten down. We don't use grass hay since it is more expensive here than alfalfa, and the alfalfa has higher protein needing less supplements. Our west coast hay is high in selenium so no need to supplement that mineral. I use a salt blck and have minerals that need to be cut with straight salt. Be careful of too much copper. Some minerals are advertised as "goat and sheep" minerals. Goats need a much higher level of copper than sheep can handle.
Continue to improve your pastures, but know the protein level of the hay you are using since some hay has very little nutritional value. You will need to understand the protein level in your hay and use supplements that will bring the total nutrient level of the combined feed to what your ewes need to keep their condition scores up.
Good luck with improving your pastures - it is never ending but will yield good results in the long run and be worth the effort.
The grass may be green, but that does not mean it is nutritious enough to support a producing/lactating ewe. Improving your feeding plan will do it for you.
Yep, I have dandelion, plantain and such in the fields. Various shrubs and vines...the goats keep them under control but, pasture rotation keeps them available.
didn't need it and the area become better grass later. Once established and regularly cut, grass becomes unreal.
