Raising an lamb by bottle requires that you monitor the volumes of milk that the lamb consume. The volume of milk that a lamb consumes will determine whether the lamb thrive or stalls in it’s life. Since lambs cannot communicate with there human keepers the level of hunger that they feel, a feeding chart must be used to ensure that the lambs consume the correct amount of liquid.
A feeding chart that takes into account the weight of the lamb and its age will allow the owner to easy determine how much liquid the lambs requires to thrive. During the first eighteen hour after the lamb is born, it must consume colostrum. Colostrum is the thick first milk that contains antibodies that the lambs produce.
How to Bottle-Feed a Lamb
Lambs cannot produce these antibodies themselves, so a feeding chart is used to determine how much colostrum a lamb of a certain weight (small, medium, or heavy) should consume each day. Furthermore, the feeding chart indicate at what times of the day the colostrum should be provided to the lambs. Should a person miss a lamb during this time period, its immune system will become more weaker then it should of been.
After the period during which colostrum must be supplied to lambs, milk replacer must be used. The volume of milk that is supplied should increase with the strength of the lamb and its age. A feeding chart can be used to track the strength of the lambs and the increase in the amount of milk replacer that is required each week.
Despite the increase in the amount of milk that is supplied to lambs, the percentage of the weight of the lambs that consume the milk will be the same. For instance, lambs that weigh five pounds at the time of birth will consume approximately one quart and a half of milk replacer by the fifth week. Furthermore, the amount of milk that is supplied will represent the same percentage of the lambs weight.
Therefore, it is necessary to weigh the lambs and calculate the percentage of their weight to determine the amount of milk that should be supplied to each lamb. Some lambs will require more milk than others due to breed difference. For instance, a Suffolk lamb that weighs ten pounds at the time of birth will require more milk than a Merino lamb that weighs six pounds.
Furthermore, lambs of the same age may not have the same weight. Therefore, you should determine the weight of each lamb so that each lamb receive the amount of milk that is required by each individual animal. The method in which you mix the milk replacer is important for the health of the lambs.
You should check the temperature of the milk replacer with a thermometer to ensure that the milk is neither too hot nor too cold. Too cold of a milk replacer will slow the emptying of the lamb’s stomach of the milk, while too hot of a milk replacer could damage the proteins in the milk replacer. Furthermore, you should mix the milk replacer with a whisk to ensure that there are no lump in the milk replacer; lumps in the milk can lead to bloat in the lambs.
These factors should be ensured at the time of preparing the milk that is to be supplied to lambs that are raised by bottle. As the lambs reach the age where they are able to eat solid food, a weaning chart can be used to indicate at what point the lambs should transition from milk to solid food. Before removing the lambs from the bottle, it is important to ensure that the lambs are chewing their cud, drinking water, and gain weight from eating hay and grain.
These behaviors indicate that the lambs are ready to stop using the bottle. An observation of the lambs daily will allow the owners to understand the numbers that appear on the feeding chart. Lambs that have a gently rounded belly after drinking from the bottle indicate that they are receiving the correct amount of milk.
However, lambs that stand in a hunch over position or refuse to drink from the bottle may be ill or have been overfed. Thus, while the feeding chart provides numbers to the amount of milk that should be supplied to lambs, the observations of the behavior of those lambs provides context to those numbers. Furthermore, when the lambs are no longer drinking from the bottle and are growing using only the pasture and grain that is provided to them, the process of raising lambs by bottle is considered successful.