How to manage sheep in winter

In winter, the weather is cold, the forage grass is rough and nutrients are lost, and the sheep are faced with many difficulties in winter grazing, especially when the ewes are pregnant and need nutrition, the growth and development of the fetus need nutrition more, grazing alone can not meet their nutritional needs, the only measure is supplementary feeding.

Supplementary feeding.

There are a lot of hay and leaves in early winter, and the weather is not very cold. Grazing after the sun comes out of the mountain and continues to graze at noon until late. The sheep can still eat and keep their fat. Deep winter snow, shady slope often need to be difficult to melt, lack of forage grass, to graze in the sunny slope or leeward and high dry grassland. You can graze on the edge of the valley in windy and snowy days. You can't go out for grazing in a snowy day, so you must replenish it in time. If you replenish it too late, you will lose weight quickly. Generally from the first ten days of November to May of the following year is the supplementary feeding period or shed feeding period. It is generally replenished twice a day, once before early grazing, and once after returning to grazing late. The method of supplementary feeding is grass before feed, followed by succulent feed and silage. Minerals can be added to the forage. According to the body weight and the number of sheep, the number of forage in one day and night can be calculated, and then minus the amount of grass obtained by grazing is the amount of feed that should be fed.

The transition from grazing to supplementary feeding or whole-day house feeding requires a day-to-day adaptation stage, usually about 10 days. The practice is to shorten the grazing time day by day, increase the number of supplementary feeding in the morning and evening, and make the sheep gradually adapt and get used to house feeding. In the early stage of house feeding, high-quality hay should be fed, and then general hay should be fed after sheep are used to it, so as to prevent a sudden drop in nutrition. In doing so, the sheep will quickly adapt to house feeding, otherwise diseases such as indigestion will occur and incur economic losses. After feeding, attention should be paid to the hygiene, dryness and ventilation of the enclosure, and the sheep should keep the amount of exercise properly, so as to be beneficial to the health of sheep and the normal delivery of ewes.