Sheep housed on good silage only?

[irish dom]

Planning to house flock next year. Never done it before but weather and tack prices have forced my hand.
Was just thinking would it be possible to house ewes and feed good quality bales silage and vit/mins through mollasses in ball feeders to maintain them until turned out a fortnight before lambing. Obviously trips and weak ewes would need meal and would probably be turned out earlier.
It would simplify house design by simply putting bales in rings every 3 or 4 days and no need for troughs or walk throughs.
Anybody tried it and got away with It?
Just got my meal bill and it was frightening. If I could cut down drastically with better forage it would suit. Any thoughts or am I raving?

 

[Green farmer]

I find sheep and silage work well together over winter. Anything scanned twins, would need the .5kg of meal a day on top of silage, but only for the final few weeks. Singles would be fine. Ensure enough spaces around feeder as well. I usually have 1 feeder per 50 and feed outside.

 

[Derrick Hughes]

You be better putting the molasses on the silage

 

[irish dom]

You must have a dry place for them. Outside is gone completely for my area. It turns to soup. What I meant was turn them out to good grass before I would need to feed meal.

 

[Green farmer]

You must have a dry place for them. Outside is gone completely for my area. It turns to soup. What I meant was turn them out to good grass before I would need to feed meal.

Ya, I’ve some land that sits on top of gravel. Not great grass , but bone dry in winter. Just kept moving the ring feeders around

 

[Bones]

Planning to house flock next year. Never done it before but weather and tack prices have forced my hand.
Was just thinking would it be possible to house ewes and feed good quality bales silage and vit/mins through mollasses in ball feeders to maintain them until turned out a fortnight before lambing. Obviously trips and weak ewes would need meal and would probably be turned out earlier.
It would simplify house design by simply putting bales in rings every 3 or 4 days and no need for troughs or walk throughs.
Anybody tried it and got away with It?
Just got my meal bill and it was frightening. If I could cut down drastically with better forage it would suit. Any thoughts or am I raving?

Any sugar beet grown beside you ?

 

[irish dom]

In the West of Ireland so no beet nearby. Fed fodder beet before but that was from 80 mile away. Found it good but was quite expensive and wasn't really set up to feed it. Contractor spread it out with muck spreader but the landowner wasn't best pleased with the mess. Had to throw a few bags of grass seed out to keep the peace. Wish I hadn't he put it on open market following autumn( after promising it to me when I scanned his cows) and it went sky high. Bloody landlords!

 

[Bear101]

I feed silage and liquid feed outside, there isn't much goodness in the grass over winter, sometimes there's nothing to graze at all. So why wouldn't it work indoors? Never tried it though.

 

[ns_sheep]

We feed good silage only all winter, right through lambing. Nothing gets concentrates until after they lamb and then it's just ewe lambs and triplets. Most silage tested at 30%dm, 16-17% protein, 12+ MJ/kg. Lambing now and may have fed a little too well, pulling some big lambs.

 

[irish dom]

That's what you call silage! I take it's young leafy 1st cut stuff. Have they access to much grazing over winter? What type of ewes are you running?

 

[ns_sheep]

That's what you call silage! I take it's young leafy 1st cut stuff. Have they access to much grazing over winter? What type of ewes are you running?

No winter grazing here unfortunately, only graze until December if we are lucky and don't get too much snow. That is early first cut. Have a couple sheep farmer neighbours from Scotland who told me our grass here typically does have higher energy in the spring than in the UK due to slightly different weather. Running 650 Cheviot and Cheviot mules mostly but have some other breeds.

 

[Paul86]

Planning to house flock next year. Never done it before but weather and tack prices have forced my hand.
Was just thinking would it be possible to house ewes and feed good quality bales silage and vit/mins through mollasses in ball feeders to maintain them until turned out a fortnight before lambing. Obviously trips and weak ewes would need meal and would probably be turned out earlier.
It would simplify house design by simply putting bales in rings every 3 or 4 days and no need for troughs or walk throughs.
Anybody tried it and got away with It?
Just got my meal bill and it was frightening. If I could cut down drastically with better forage it would suit. Any thoughts or am I raving?

First post here. I'm in the West of Ireland myself and I house sheep generally from mid December on and lamb all inside. I find you really need exceptional silage if you want getting away without meal although you've mentioned mollases and I've no experience of that. This year i fed a half pound of meal along with the silage which tested 69 dmd. Hopefully have better silage again this year and I can cut the meal back a bit more. One thing though..will they be on straw or slats? I find if your feeding leafy soft high dmd grass they tend to be that bit dirtier so will go through more straw bit I suppose ya can't have it every way!

 

[surprisefarmer]

I am in the North West of Northern Ireland here. We kept sheep in a few years ago on sheep slats. Turned into a bit of a disaster as we were feeding round bale silage and they kept pulling it out of the feeders and then it jammed the slats, I presume there wouldn't be this problem with pit silage but? Also the same year we kept about 60 sheep in a bedded shed, we were tortured with bad feet.

Going forward i will try the slats thing again and feed pit silage. I was interested to know if anybody in here has kept ewes and lambs on slats after lambing? I am starting a dairy at home so will be pushing for 3 cuts of silage off my lower ground so means I don't really want to be letting the white lawnmowers onto it. I was thinking about 6 weeks on slats post lambing, until my higher ground is ready for sheep?

 

[Andyt880]

I am in the North West of Northern Ireland here. We kept sheep in a few years ago on sheep slats. Turned into a bit of a disaster as we were feeding round bale silage and they kept pulling it out of the feeders and then it jammed the slats, I presume there wouldn't be this problem with pit silage but? Also the same year we kept about 60 sheep in a bedded shed, we were tortured with bad feet.

Going forward i will try the slats thing again and feed pit silage. I was interested to know if anybody in here has kept ewes and lambs on slats after lambing? I am starting a dairy at home so will be pushing for 3 cuts of silage off my lower ground so means I don't really want to be letting the white lawnmowers onto it. I was thinking about 6 weeks on slats post lambing, until my higher ground is ready for sheep?

I modified my feeders to stop the ewes pulling the hay or silage in onto the wire floors. I added 3 inch mesh to the feeders which sat on top of the silage and tgecewes had to pull the silage through it.

 

[surprisefarmer]

If you have any pictures @Andyt880 I would love to see them

 

[Andyt880]

 

[surprisefarmer]

Nice hay.

 

[Andyt880]

 

[Andyt880]

Yes I was one of the lucky ones that got hay in NI last year, it was just grazing grass that got ahead of the sheep. I moved onto bale silage and pit silage later on in the winter.

I can pin the wire sections up to clean out and fill the feeders and then drop them down onto the new feed. I also fed meal in those feeders. Just levelled the silage out with the fork, poured the meal out and dropped the wire onto it.
The first photo in the second group of photos shows the ewes eating their meal.

 

[Poorbuthappy]

Anyone tried a concrete scrape passage next to the feed barrier with sheep and slats to lie on?
Sorry op if ot.