How and when to start weaning lambs

[Kimberley]

We have two lambs we are bottle feeding. One is 4 weeks the other is almost 6 weeks. They drink water out of a bucket and nibble at grass but they still really like their bottles. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

 

[Latestarter]

I expect they are much the same as goats and you can start weaning them around 8 weeks. I wouldn't take away the bottle completely till I was sure they were eating good with hay and maybe some feed pellets. Lots of Sheeple here and I'll tag a couple for you. They might not see it here as you posted in the goat section. I'll also ask staff to move the thread to the proper place for you.

@Sheepshape @secuono @Roving Jacobs @Baymule @misfitmorgan @mysunwolf @farmerjan And there are more... We DO have some good folks here

Edited as post got moved.

 

[secuono]

I don't fully remember what I did with Lolla, but I think it was around 7-8wks I started to feed her less formula and leave her outside longer. I did Not dilute the formula. Gave it to her less often and also decreased how much milk she got each day.

 

[mysunwolf]

Wean at 30lbs or 4-6 weeks, it's whatever you are comfortable with. We usually start giving 1 bottle a day at 4 weeks, then taper down the amount until they have no bottles by 6 weeks and offer good hay (in addition to any pasture), water, and a creep ration.

 

[Baymule]

I haven't bottle fed any lambs. Not saying that I might someday, but so far, that has not been necessary. I leave my lambs with their mommas until they are three months old. Sometimes 4 months old.....

 

[Sheepshape]

This is what I do. I aim to wean them from the bottle between 6 and 8 weeks. By 4 weeks they will be on 4 bottles a day. Ensuring they are eating grass/silage and lamb creep and have accessible water I then omit the midday bottle. I then leave out the evening bottle by 6 weeks and slowly reduce the morning bottle in volume and then stop.

If there is a particularly small or weak lamb, then I carry on for a while longer. I only stop the milk when they are clearly gaining in weight without it.

 

[misfitmorgan]

We leave our dam raised stock with mom until 12 weeks old. We find they grow better and faster if left on mom the extra 4 weeks, if the ewe was in poor condition we would remove them at 6-8 weeks. Bottle kids/lambs we wean at 5 weeks 5 days, we typically find them to be smaller then our dam raised kids/lambs. So long as they are eating well and drinking well we wean. Day one they get 1/4 bottle less, then day two 1/2 bottle less, etc which takes 16 days to get down to zero bottles...assuming your starting with 4 bottles/day. If they look like they are getting skinny we will step back a day or two because that means they were not ready to fully wean yet.

 

[mysunwolf]

Oh, as an added note we never wean dam raised stock. We feed the ewes more and will butcher lambs right off a ewe at 8-12 months (but they have usually weaned the babies themselves by this point). We also will wean bottle babies fed real milk much later. But bottle lambs fed replacer should really be weaned by 8 weeks or you risk bloat.

 

[Sheepshape]

Like mysunwolf, the lambs with mum wean themselves naturally. Some wean at about 4 months, some take sucks of about 2 seconds going on for 6 months or more. Ram lambs are removed from mum when they start showing signs of interest in the ewes.