1 Principles that should be followed when fattening mutton sheep
1.1 Reasonable supply of feed According to the feeding standards and combined with the growth and development characteristics of the fattening sheep, determine the feed composition and dietary supply of the mutton sheep Or supplementary feeding quota, and make timely adjustments based on the actual weight gain effect.
1.2 Highlight economic benefits and do not blindly pursue maximizing daily weight gain. Especially under the conditions of house-feeding and fattening, maximizing the weight gain of mutton sheep is often based on high-concentrate diets. Maximizing weight does not necessarily mean obtaining the best economic benefits. Therefore, when setting the expected fattening intensity, the best economic benefits must be the only criterion.
1.3 Organize production rationally and slaughter fattening sheep at the right time. Determine the length of the fattening period based on the growth and development stage of the fattening sheep at the beginning. If it is too short, the fattening effect will not be obvious; if it is too long, the feed return will be low and it will be uneconomical. Therefore, when meat sheep reach a certain weight after fattening for a certain period of time, they should be slaughtered or put on the market in time, instead of blindly pursuing the maximum weight of the sheep. Determine the scale of mutton sheep fattening according to local conditions, and seek the best economic benefits under local conditions and in accordance with the laws of market economy.
2 Preparation work before fattening of mutton sheep
2.1 Build sheep pens. To raise sheep, it is necessary to build pens and sufficient activity venues. Sheep pens should have the functions of preventing heatstroke and cold, and should be located in a higher, sunny, dry place with good ventilation and wind shelter, and easy drainage. Small in scale, it can be built in or near residential courtyards for easy management and care. When the scale is large, it is best to build a sheep-raising community far away from the village to facilitate epidemic prevention.
The area of ??the sheep house depends on the number of sheep raised. Usually, each sheep occupies an average area of ??0.8 to 1.2 square meters. Breeding rams and ewes should occupy a larger area, breeding sheep and lambs should be smaller, fine-wool sheep and semi-fine-wool sheep should be larger, and goats should be smaller. Generally, the height of a sheep house is 2.5 meters, the width of the door is not less than 1.5 meters, and the height of the windows from the ground is not less than 1.5 meters to ensure good lighting and ventilation effects. It is better to use wooden materials for doors and windows. The span is 7 to 8 meters. According to fire protection requirements, the length of each sheep house should not exceed 30 meters.
The pen house is a brick and wood structure, facing south and in a rectangular layout. In winter, a plastic greenhouse can be set up, and an exhaust hole should be left on the left and right sides of the top of the shed to prevent the humidity in the shed from being too high.
There should be a sports ground in front of the pen. The area of ??the sports ground is 2 to 4 times the area of ??the sheep house. A fixed sink or water basin should be placed in the middle of the sports ground for the sheep to drink. Fixed feeding troughs or mobile feeding troughs should be placed around or in the middle. Fixed feeding troughs are made of cement or bricks. The inside of the trough should be wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. The bottom of the trough should be round. Mobile feeding troughs are made of wood.
2.2 Prepare enough forage. Forage is the material basis for fattening mutton sheep. Fattening mutton sheep must be fed first, which can be solved through four ways: First, fully collect locally produced peanut seedlings, sweet potato seedlings, locust leaves, poplar leaves and other highly nutritious seedlings, vines and leaves. The second is to carry out silage and micro-storage. If it is wheat straw and dry corn straw, it can be stored slightly. After the autumn corn harvest, the green straw should be cut into short lengths for silage. The third is to utilize the by-products of grains and dregs, such as distiller’s grains, tofu dregs, flour dregs, etc. The fourth is to plant alfalfa, winter 70-rye, grain amaranth and other high-quality pastures.
2.3 Choosing good breeds to raise sheep should be based on local production realities and select excellent breeds that adapt to local ecological conditions, have high production performance, good product quality, short feeding cycles, and high economic benefits. There are many varieties of sheep and goats that are suitable for house feeding. From a pure perspective of house feeding, the effect of house feeding for meat sheep is more obvious. Goats are generally hybrids of Boer goats, Saanen dairy goats, and local goats; sheep should be Charolais, Tousset, Suffolk, German meat Merino, etc., and small-tail Han sheep or local sheep. hybrid offspring.
2.4 Selection and grouping of fattening sheep Generally speaking, young sheep gain weight faster than old sheep and have better fattening effects. Lambs between 1 and 8 months of age have the fastest growth rate and mainly grow muscle. Choose weaned lambs as fattening sheep to produce fat lambs with good meat quality and high efficiency. Therefore, after the lambs are weaned and identified as a whole group, the lambs that are not suitable for breeding are grouped into groups according to gender and weight and fattened in groups. Adult sheep are eliminated and fattened in separate groups according to age and weight.
2.5 Castration, disinfection and deworming Generally, male lambs are easy to manage after castration, and the meat is tender and has a light smell. Proper cleaning and disinfection of the pens and good sanitation during the fattening period can effectively prevent the sheep from getting sick during the fattening period. Eliminating internal and external parasites in mutton sheep and reducing the impact of parasitic diseases are important measures to ensure good fattening results. Anthelmintic drugs include niclofen, thiobisdiclofen, albendazole, etc. These drugs can effectively deworm when taken orally at 4 mg, 35-75 ml, and 2.5-3 mg per kilogram of body weight respectively. 2.6 The hoof deformity of trimmed sheep will cause inconvenience in walking and affect feed intake. Especially for grazing sheep, it will seriously affect their production performance. Therefore, the hoofs of sheep should be trimmed and trimmed before fattening.
3 Fattening methods
The advantage of indoor fattening is that it is rarely affected by natural conditions and mutton can be produced all year round. However, the investment scale is large and the technical level requirements are relatively high. higher.
3.1 Lamb all-concentrate fattening technology
3.1.1 Preparation before fattening: Lambs are weaned at 1.5 months old, and supplementary feeding is carried out in stalls for the first 15 days; or ewes and lambs are separated for a period of time in the morning and evening , let the lambs move around in a circle equipped with a feed trough and a drinking fountain, and the mother and child will stay together the rest of the time. The supplementary feed should be the same as the post-weaning fattening feed. The grains can be slightly crushed when supplementary feeding is started. After getting used to it, it is better to feed the grains whole and do not process them into powder. The ground where lambs move should be dry, rainproof, well ventilated, and can be covered with a little bedding. Common infectious diseases in lamb fattening include enterotoxemia and hemorrhagic sepsis. The enterotoxemia vaccine can be injected into ewes before lambing, or into lambs before weaning.
3.1.2 Preparing fattening diets Any kind of cereal feed can be used to fatten lambs, but the best results are high-energy feeds such as corn. Practice has proven that the fattening effect of whole pellets is better than that of broken grain feed, and the fattening effect of compound feed is better than that of feeding a certain grain feed alone, which is mainly reflected in high feed conversion rate and less gastrointestinal diseases. Optimal feed formula: 83% whole corn, 15% soybean cake, 1.4% limestone powder, 0.5% salt, 0.1% vitamins and trace elements. Among them, the added amounts of vitamins and trace elements are calculated per kilogram of feed: vitamins a, d, and e are 5000 international units, 1000 international units, and 200 mg respectively, cobalt sulfate 5 mg, and potassium iodate 1 mg. If soybean cake is not available, 18% peanut cake can be used instead, and the corn ratio is adjusted to 80%.
3.1.3 Feeding technology Lambs can eat and drink freely. It is best to use homemade simple automatic feeding troughs to feed feed to prevent lambs from stepping into the trough, causing feed contamination, reducing feed intake, and expanding the spread of coccidiosis and other pathogens. The height of the feeding trough should be increased as the lamb ages, so that the feed in the trough does not accumulate or overflow. If some lambs are found chewing on the pen, a salt trough should be added to the sports ground, and salt or salt plus an equal amount of limestone powder should be placed in the trough to allow the lambs to eat freely. Pay attention to the fact that in the early stages of lambs eating whole corn kernels, there are corn kernels spit out from the mouth. As the lamb ages, the phenomenon of corn kernels spitting out gradually disappears. Lambs ruminate less in the early stage and more in the later stage. These are normal phenomena and do not affect the fattening effect. Under normal circumstances, lamb feces are pellet-shaped and yellow, with no corn kernels in the pellet. However, lambs may have loose stools when the weather changes or on rainy days. The feed formula will not be changed during the whole fattening period.
3.1.4 The fattening period of lambs for slaughter is 50 days. However, the final fattening weight is related to the breed. The final fattening weight of large breed lambs at 3 months of age can reach more than 35 kilograms. According to research, the final fattening weight of fine-wool lambs and non-meat breeds is related to the weaning weight at 1.5 months of age. Generally, when the weaning weight is 13 to 15 kg, the weight can reach more than 30 kg after 50 days of fattening. 3.2 Rapid fattening technology for adult sheep
3.2.1 Choose fattening sheep that are larger, healthy and disease-free, and have good teeth. The typical diet formula for this fattening method is as follows:
Formula 1: 0.5 kg of grass hay, 4.0 kg of silage corn, and 0.5 kg of broken grains. This formula diet contains 40.60% dry matter, 4.12% crude protein, 0.24% calcium, 0.11% phosphorus, and 17.974 megajoules of metabolizable energy.
Recipe 2: 1 kg of grass hay, 0.5 kg of silage corn, and 0.7 kg of broken grains. This formula diet contains 84.55% dry matter, 7.59% crude protein, 0.6% calcium, 0.26% phosphorus, and 14.379 megajoules of metabolizable energy.
Recipe 3: 4 kilograms of silage corn, 0.5 kilograms of broken grains, 10 grams of urea, and 0.5 kilograms of straw. This formula diet contains 40.72% dry matter, 3.49% crude protein, 0.19% calcium, 0.09% phosphorus, and 17.263 megajoules of metabolizable energy.
Recipe 4: 0.5 kg of grass hay, 3 kg of silage corn, 0.4 kg of broken grains, and 0.8 kg of juicy feed. This formula diet contains 40.64% dry matter, 3.83% crude protein, 0.22% calcium, 0.1% phosphorus, and 15.884 megajoules of metabolizable energy.
3.2.2 Adult meat sheep or goats raised in areas with feed processing conditions can use pellet feed. In pellet feed, straw and hay powder can account for 55% to 60%, and concentrates can account for 35% to 40%. Two typical dietary formulas are recommended for reference: Formula 1: 35% grass meal, 44.5% straw, 20% concentrate, and 0.5% calcium hydrogen phosphate. This formula contains 86% dry matter, 7.2% crude protein, 0.48% calcium, 0.24% phosphorus, and 6.897 megajoules of metabolizable energy per kilogram of feed.
Formula 2: 30% grass powder, 44.5% straw, 25% concentrate, 0.5% calcium hydrogen phosphate. This formula contains 86% dry matter, 7.4% crude protein, 0.49% calcium, 0.25% phosphorus, and 7.106 megajoules of metabolizable energy per kilogram of feed. In order to improve fattening efficiency, natural pasture, straw, leaves, agricultural and sideline products and various scraps should be fully utilized to expand feed sources. Make rational use of urea and various additives. In the diet of adult sheep, the feeding amount of urea is 2 to 3 grams per 10 kilograms of body weight, and minerals and vitamins can account for 3% of the concentrate.
3.2.3 Arrange a reasonable feeding system.
The daily feeding amount of adult sheep diet varies according to different formulas, generally 2.5 to 2.7 kilograms. Feeding is done twice a day, and the distribution and adjustment of the daily feeding amount is based on the standard that there is basically no food left in the feeding trough. When feeding pellet feed, it is best to use an automatic feeding trough for feeding. It is not suitable to feed in an open pen on rainy days. Some green hay should be fed appropriately in the afternoon, 0.25 kg each, to facilitate rumination.
4 To do a good job in disease prevention and control, prevention should be the main focus on diseases caused by sheep raised in houses. Measures should be taken to treat diseases early, and feeding management should be combined with disease prevention and treatment.
It is necessary to do a good job in feeding hygiene and disinfection. The daily feed and drinking water must be kept clean. Do not feed moldy, spoiled, toxic or foreign matter-containing feed. Feeding utensils should always be kept clean. Sheep houses and sports grounds should be cleaned frequently and disinfected regularly. We must insist on self-breeding and self-support, and try not to purchase sheep from other places to prevent the spread of diseases. If they must be introduced from other places, the introduction quarantine system must be strict, and they must be isolated and observed for at least 10 to 15 hours, and can only be gregarious after being confirmed by a veterinarian to be disease-free. Regular preventive injections should be carried out, including foot-and-mouth disease, sheep pox, sheep four-prevention vaccines, etc. The injections should be taken seriously, counting each animal one by one, and checking for leaks and re-injecting. It is necessary to deworm regularly, and the sheep should be dewormed once a year in spring and autumn. After the sheep are fed in the house, the range of activities becomes smaller, which can easily lead to humidity and poor environment in the pen, which often leads to the occurrence of parasitic diseases. Therefore, attention should be paid to the environmental sanitation, ventilation and moisture-proofing of the sheep house, and prevention of parasites such as sheep mange. Disease prevention and treatment. Insist on health check-ups. In daily feeding and management, pay attention to the mental, appetite, movement, breathing, feces and other conditions of each sheep. If any abnormalities are found, check them in time. If there is any disease, treat it in time. When an infectious disease or suspected infectious disease occurs, they should be isolated immediately, observed and treated, and emergency measures such as blockade, isolation, and disinfection should be taken according to the epidemic situation and epidemic scope. The corpse should be properly disposed of, buried deeply, or burned to cut off the pathogen and control the epidemic. , extinguished in time.