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Power pack for prolific sheep production.UFAC press release: December, 2006Every means should be adopted to ensure the highest efficiency in lamb production is achieved, leading to high profitability, by means of feeding sheep with very high quality nutrients. By Francis Palmer - Technical Manager UFAC UK Plenty of good healthy lambs need to be born, easily, and the ewe needs to produce large quantities of quality milk. In looking at these needs of the sheep industry, UFAC UK Ltd has identified that there is a high requirement for Omega 3 fatty acids in sheep diets of all ages, a steady supply of glucose as a supplementary energy source and a source of quality protein. Other oils, such as palm oil, have a part to play in providing a complementary source of energy with its synergistic ability to enhance total dietary energy. High levels of vitamin E and selenium are recommended. The Omega 3 fatty acids in oils, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) have been established to have a major role in embryo production, its survival and the quality of the unborn lambs. Besides many other functions, they have major roles to play in brain and eye development, the auto immune response and quality growth leading to vigorous, alert and disease resistant lambs. In the ewe, their role as anti-inflammatory agents means that lambing is less painful, speedier, safer, ewes recover quickly and milk yields are higher as well as less prone to disease and metabolic disturbances. Trials and field observations have shown that feeding EPA and DHA two months prior to lambing produced lambs of more even size, quicker to get up, quicker to suckle off a ewe that recovered quicker and produced as much quality milk as the early lambs required. The ewes had larger appetites and were happy to allow lambs to suckle for longer periods. They kept their condition for longer, the end results were that there was a greater survival rate and lambs grew quicker to meet target markets easily, and were of better growth/meat quality. When EPA and DHA are fed at tupping time to both ewes and rams, conceptions rates are higher and ewes take to the ram more willing and there are less barren ewes. Other fatty acids are involved in the reproductive cycle such as stearic acid that forms cholesterol used for the building of cell walls that is rapidly occurring in the young foetus and also in milk production. There is a demand for oil in that foetus that can be come off the ewe's back but it is preferable to feed it in the diet. Such oils need to be complementary to produce a maximum synergistic effect on increasing total diet ME by as much as five per cent for free! However, feeding oils to ruminants has to be done with caution to avoid rumen upsets. Protected fats have been used in the past but a recent development by UFAC UK Ltd allows them to be released on a slow time - release basis. This ensures a slow steady stream of oil to the rumen that does not cause metabolic disturbance and is safe.
The research also found that ewes respond to a quantity of un-degradable protein. UFAC UK Ltd developed a protective system, based on encapsulation vegetable protein with selected oils and glucose syrup that renders it largely insoluble in the rumen but highly available in the intestine.
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