Falklands : Winter Protein Supplementation for Sheep in the Falklands
Submitted by Falkland Islands News Network (Juanita Brock) 13.07.2007 (Article Archived on 27.07.2007)
Peter Johnson gave a presentation about Winter Protein Supplementation at Tuesday’s Farmers Week seminar.
WINTER PROTEIN SUPPLEMENTATION
By Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson gave a presentation about Winter Protein Supplementation at Tuesday’s Farmers Week seminar. This article in June’s Wool Press outlines in detail the points Mr. Johnson made at the seminar.
Animals require two main things in their diet, energy and protein. Sure, they also need other nutrients like calcium, and various micro-nutrients such as selenium and cobalt, whose deficiencies can affect animal performance, but without energy and protein, the animal can not survive and be productive. The other thing to remember is that animals that are ruminants, like sheep and cattle, have bacteria in the rumen that actually use what goes into their system, not the animals themselves. lt is these bugs that then overflow and are digested later on down the digestive tract.
So what does this mean? Well it is the bacteria that you are feeding your precious grass to! We need to make sure that the bacteria are doing the most productive job they can based on what the animal selects from the camp to feed them.
During the beginning of winter, the bacteria aren't doing too badly. The animal is selecting enough green feed from the camp, all that fine grass hiding close down to the ground underneath the dead material we see from above. But, this doesn't last forever. Eventually the green grass, which contains the vast majority of the available protein in a camp, runs out. All that is left is the rank, dead material that has a high energy content, but a low to non-existent protein content. The animals eat the rank material, but it just sits in the rumen, not doing too much. This is because the rumen bacteria do not have the protein that they require in balance with the energy to effectively digest it all. That is where protein supplementation comes in.
lf we can give the rumen bacteria a hit of protein every few days, they will function much more effectively, speed up the digestion process of the rank grass in the rumen, and increase the animals feed intake, as the whole process is going through the animal at a much faster rate. Research shows that the rumen bacteria can go for about 72 hours without a 'protein hit' before they lose their effectiveness. So if we as animal managers can provide that hit every 3 days, they will be much more productive.
How do we do this? One way is to use a high protein supplement! The DoA has recently acquired high protein, whole lupins for the purpose of trialling the supplementation during winter. Trials are planned where groups of ewes and hoggets will be feed a small quantity of lupins every three days, or longer depending on circumstances. At this stage, the cost is f2.10 per animal for 90 days worth of feed.
The sheep only require about 8Og/head/day of the lupins (or2409 every 3 days) to have a significant effect on the overall diet protein levels. Lupins are about 32o/o protein, while dead, weathered native camp can be as low as 4% protein. Depending exactly where an animal is in its growth or reproduction cycle, it can require between 6% and 12% of its diet as protein, and this addition of lupins can raise the overall diet protein percentage to this productive level. Lupins, 809 at 32% Protein Sheep getting 7% protein in total diet
The DoA still has trial positions available for interested farms, to see if this form of supplementation works and is cost effective in your conditions. We are after mobs of approximately 500 ewes and/ or 500 hoggets, as well as a control mob, to monitor differences in live weight, reproductive performance and wool quantity and quality. Feeding will start in early July with an introductory period and then move on to the lupins every 3 days for the following three months.
We are flexible with how we will be feeding the lupins out. I would certainly value anyone's ideas or suggestions as to how to feed large numbers of animals in the wet, cold conditions of the middle of a Falklands winter. These recommendations and what we learn from all of the different trial sites, learning whatdoes and doesn't work, will be another important output for the trial.
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