Pet lambs on cows milk

[HasthorpeGrange]

Hi everyone, just wondered if you can rear pet lambs on waste cow milk until weaning? Thanks

 

[Northeastfarmer]

No

 

[Agrivator]

Yes. But get them into a good quality creep ASAP.

Not having to buy and mix artificial lamb milk is a tremendous benefit. And if the lambs die early of malnutrition, that's an added bonus.

 

[neilo]

Hi everyone, just wondered if you can rear pet lambs on waste cow milk until weaning? Thanks

Yes, but badly.

Cows milk has around half the solids of ewes milk, and it’s only the solids they grow on. You will not be able to get enough volume into them with cow’s milk in order to maximise growth.

It will rear them, but nowhere near as well as ewes milk/replacer. Jersey cows milk would be higher solids, so a halfway house.

 

[Tim G]

We did it last year, the lambs did no better or worse than in previous years with powder. But that was Jersey milk at 10%+ solids.

 

[HasthorpeGrange]

Ok thanks for the replies

 

[Dyffryn]

Yes. But get them into a good quality creep ASAP.

Not having to buy and mix artificial lamb milk is a tremendous benefit. And if the lambs die early of malnutrition, that's an added bonus.

What a stupid thing to say!

 

[cheviot53]

Friend does it every year with jersey milk & the lambs do very well

 

[Bald n Grumpy]

If you have waste milk its a no brainer in my opinion
The quality of the person rearing the lambs is most important
Have reared plenty of good lambs on cows milk and seen plenty of runty little s***s reared on expensive powder
Get them eating creep asap

 

[neilo]

If you have waste milk, and no calves to feed it to, then mixing (1/2 rate?) lamb milk powder with it will increase the solids to a more reasonable level, if your concern is trying to cheapen the rearing.

It should be mentioned perhaps that some people’s idea of doing lambs well will be different to others? I expect them to come off a machine as a good ewe would have reared it to 5 weeks. Anything less means I’ve not got something right.

 

[Agrivator]

If you have waste milk, and no calves to feed it to, then mixing (1/2 rate?) lamb milk powder with it will increase the solids to a more reasonable level, if your concern is trying to cheapen the rearing.

It should be mentioned perhaps that some people’s idea of doing lambs well will be different to others? I expect them to come off a machine as a good ewe would have reared it to 5 weeks. Anything less means I’ve not got something right.

Pet lambs that didn't thrive early on are now worth a fortune.

It seems to happen most years. But there is an opportunity for someone to device an additive to mix with cows' milk to make it more suitable for lambs.

 

[Chasingmytail]

Yes I have did it on raw jersey so that is high fat. I also mixed in some live yogurt and the odd scoop of colostrum worked well. What you could do is mix some lambs milk as mixed with water with 50% top up of cows milk that way youll be saving 50% on lambs powdered milk, If low fat milk I would consider doing it this way. Saving 50% on lambs milk as it costs about £40 - £50 to feed a lamb so that saving would be a good benefit. I also found keeping pet lambs separate raised them better also having creep available with licks etc. Last year was the best bunch of pet lambs ever. Its a pain keeping them separate but this way they dont shrink if you introduce them to the main flock. Lost too many pet lambs but weaning and chucking them in. We dont have a lot of pet lambs as I do try to wet adopt but ended up with 5 last year but we only had less than 200 ewes.

 

[neilo]

Yes I have did it on raw jersey so that is high fat. I also mixed in some live yogurt and the odd scoop of colostrum worked well. What you could do is mix some lambs milk as mixed with water with 50% top up of cows milk that way youll be saving 50% on lambs powdered milk, If low fat milk I would consider doing it this way. Saving 50% on lambs milk as it costs about £40 - £50 to feed a lamb so that saving would be a good benefit. I also found keeping pet lambs separate raised them better also having creep available with licks etc. Last year was the best bunch of pet lambs ever. Its a pain keeping them separate but this way they dont shrink if you introduce them to the main flock. Lost too many pet lambs but weaning and chucking them in. We dont have a lot of pet lambs as I do try to wet adopt but ended up with 5 last year but we only had less than 200 ewes.

I rear my cades on a machine, giving ad-Lib to weaning at 8 weeks. I reckon on about half a bag a lamb in milk powder, so just over £20/lamb.

If the cows milk is kept out of the sale tank, I don’t suppose there’s much of a saving really.

 

[neilo]

Pet lambs that didn't thrive early on are now worth a fortune.

It seems to happen most years. But there is an opportunity for someone to device an additive to mix with cows' milk to make it more suitable for lambs.

Just mix lamb milk powder with the cow’s milk to fortify it, it’s as simple as that.

My Milkmade 2000 machine has a peristaltic pump built in, which can be used to add waste milk to the mixing bowl if wanted. I’ve never used it, but easy to attach a pipe into a bucket of waste milk and flick a switch.

 

[SLA]

Mix whole raw cows milk with half rate lamb milk powder - halves your powder costs. This is how we did it whilst we had a house cow, do better than on the sheep! It was a Redpoll cow so not sure what milk solids etc but they flew on it and is my preferred rearing method.