Fattening lambs

[sherg]

Right I've bought some store lambs in this year normally i'd just be putting them on turnips after Christmas but I'll have to many lambs for the turnips but I will have some spare grassland at home for them, they can have silage as well but I'm wondering with the price of stockfeed potatoes where it is have many of you fed potatoes to lambs and if you have how did they do?

 

[devonshire farmer]

We have stock feed potatoes but our sheep wont eat them, parsnips on the other hand they love, some say they will eat them!

 

[PFH]

What if you put 4 parts potato to 1 part sugar beet pulp through a mixer wagon and then clamp it. Apparently 3 weeks later it's great feed and the sugar beet would sweeten the potatoes which would come out of the clamp cooked. @ridger would know far more than me.....

 

[sherg]

What if you put 4 parts potato to 1 part sugar beet pulp through a mixer wagon and then clamp it. Apparently 3 weeks later it's great feed and the sugar beet would sweeten the potatoes which would come out of the clamp cooked. @ridger would know far more than me.....

It sounds a good mix but I haven't got access to a diet feeder though , really I was just thinking that spuds are cheaper than fodder beet and have a bit more power in them I've heard of loads of people fattening cattle on them but nobody using them for lambs. Just wonder why that is?

 

[ridger]

You've just reminded me, I was to take picture of a clamp of potatoes and stuff il do it in mornin

 

[Jerry]

We have stock feed potatoes but our sheep wont eat them, parsnips on the other hand they love, some say they will eat them!

Interested in this, not tried lambs on parsnips before but have a few acres of snips that have been lifted and as usual a fair crop left behind on the surface or close to. (approx 25 acres all told) Some areas not lifted so the crown of the snips is all that is at surface level.

Thinking about running some stores on them, with a run back on the grass margins supplemented with good haylage.

Will they take to the snips easy enough?

 

[devonshire farmer]

Not sure if they will if still in the ground, we put ours out on grass or should I say snow fields with straw chopper, just cuts up odd ones a bit and they go made for them once they have the taste of em. If there is some on the surface to give them a taster they may pick them over!

 

[PFH]

You've just reminded me, I was to take picture of a clamp of potatoes and stuff il do it in mornin

Any photos taken today @ridger?

 

[gatepost]

Might be worth looking at fodder beet, not dear this year and could be cheaper p/mj than spuds and lambs would take them better.

 

[sherg]

Might be worth looking at fodder beet, not dear this year and could be cheaper p/mj than spuds and lambs would take them better.

I'm thinking it will have to be fodder beet just thought there would be a bit more protein in spuds and it might save a bit on corn

 

[gatepost]

you might be right on the protein, just depends if the lambs take to spuds, lower D value and to get them finished will depend on intake, fed spuds to yarded cattle , captive audience but they did lay wet