Hello,
              I have recently adopted  a two year old shetland sheep and her two, two wek old babies.

I am feeding them orchard grass hay and all breed grain, but I am so nervous that I am feeing to much or too little.

Can someone please tell me, in general, how much hay and how much grain to feed her ? I dont know her weight so I cannot base it on that.

I read that to much grain can kill her. How much is to much ? She is not grazing at this point but is in the stall for a few weeks while we get to know each other and I get an area fenced.

How much hay should I give her ? Can she eat to much ?

~ Pixie

Could you possibly find out how much the previous owners were feeding her? If you give her much more grain than they were giving her, she will get really sickly. I reccomend alfalfa hay rather than grass hay, to give her more calcium, to produce milk. There is NOT enough calcium in grain, or orchard grass hay to produce milk for her lambs. All of the calcium will get sucked out of her bones, and will make her so much weaker, therefore more prone to sickness. Alfalfa, or alfalfa pellets, are what we feed our lactating ewes. If you were feeding alfalfa, I would say two pounds in the morning, and two pounds at night (evening). Is she getting two feedings a day? Yes, she CAN eat too much. We give our ewes, when their lambs are around two weeks 1 and a half or two pounds of grain BUT I would NOT feed a shetland that much. I would give her around 1 pound of grain a day.
So here (aproximately): 4 pound of ALFALFA hay a day, and maybe a pound of grain. This all depends on if your judgement. Do you have a picture you could possibly put of your ewe on here? Maybe a picture from above, to show how skinny she is? That would be very helpful. If she is more on the skinny side, and if the alfalfa hay has a lot of leaf on it, then maybe 4-5 pound of alfalfa. If she is more on the skinny side, maybe 1.5 pounds of grain (MAYBE). If she is more on the big side or normal, 3-4 pounds of alfalfa hay (if it has lots of leaf), and 1 pound a day. I would split all of the feeding up into two feedings a day since she isn't grazing.
Just switch her over to alfalfa hay instead of grass hay. She isn't getting enough calcium if all you are feeding her is grass hay and grain. How much grain are you giving her? How much grass hay? Is she getting ANYTHING else other than those two? You need to be very careful with a lactating (nursing) ewe's diet.
Pictures of alfalfa hay, pellets, grain, the lambs and the ewe would be VERY helpful. Make sure you either buy some alfalfa pellets or hay, or a calcium supplement.
Need more information, really.
                          Madilyn

ok..i will  try to get a picture.

Am I supposed to weight the hay ? How do I know how many pounds it is ? I have been giving her a flake of hay in the Am, along with a small cup of grain ( aprox 10 oz in AM) and then again in PM.

I will switch to alfalfa a.s.a.p.


Can you tell me in terms of flakes of hay rather than pounds..

Sorry, I wouldn't be able to tell you flakes in terms of pounds. It just depends on the size of the flake. Besides, if you were feeding alflalfa, you wouldn't be able to measure in flakes easily. Do you have a scale or something? Any kind of scale will work as long as it is accurate. You can just pour the grain into a dish, (making sure you weigh the dish and even it out) and put the dish on the scale. You can get any type of scale (a foot scale, meat scale, kitchen scale, barn scale [specially made for barn use]).

This is really an impossible question to answer fully without more detail. Most times when working out 'how much to feed of what' what really matters most is not the quantity but the nutritional quality of what you're feeding.

Right now your ewe's nutritional requirements will be the highest they'll ever be at any stage in her life as she not only has to take in sufficient nutrients to maintain herself but she also needs enough to produce sufficient, good quality milk to support both her lambs. It is when the lambs reach 6 weeks of age that the ewe's nutritional needs peak; after that, the lambs will increasingly wean themselves and no longer rely on her for milk to sustain them.  

Personally we feed our ewes with twins 0.5 kilo (1lb) of concentrates* in the morning and a further 0.5 kilo (1lb) of concentrates in the afternoon, plus ad lib hay. Our sheep are mainly Southdowns but they too are a smaller sheep just like your Shetland.

(*0.5 kilo of a decent quality concentrate , ie a mix where the % total of fibre and ash does not exceed 20%)  

The basic formula we use is that you feed 0.5 kilo (or 1 lb) of concentrates, per day, per lamb; so, any ewe that's raising twins would get 1 kilo (2 lb) per day. You should not feed more than 0.5 kilo (1 lb) at one time though.

We fill the racks with hay and just allow the ewes to eat whatever they want of it, whenever they want. They might also eat bits of their straw bedding, if its clean! Personally we don't weigh out an individual ration of concentrates. We have a container that holds roughly 0.5 kilo so just use that to dish out their individual serves. Also we floor feed all of their concentrates rather than putting it in a dish etc, for no better reason than Dad reckons it keeps them interested for longer ('enrichment'), stops the sheep from squabbling and bullying (not a problem if you've only one ewe!) and stops them wolfing the whole lot down in a matter of moments; they have to pick the pellets out of the straw bedding and that takes time.

(Can be funny when you're feeding a whole group of ewes though: because they mob you when you go into the pen with the bucket of concentrates, much of their ration ends up, not on the floor, but in the wool on their backs. They then spend half the morning gently nibbling at each others' wool in order to get at the concentrates, lol!)

You'd think they would get worms quite often; feeding them off of the ground. From their waste, the dirt, and fly eggs and gross stuff like that, right?

I think, for one ewe, Pixie should do a bit less rough estimating than that, though. It would be healthier for the ewe to have a balanced feeding.

That's a good point about feeding on the ground...parasites. I have a powerful microscope left over from my days as a professional wildlife rehabber and will do a fecal float on them just to see what I can see.

I found a small digital scale and weighed out two lbs of orchard grass and gave that to her along with a lb of grain, this am. Her two babies are now eating a bit as well. I plan to give her two more lbs of hay again in PM.

Since I do not know her weight that is the best I can do. I will have a pic posted this evening and will have some alfalfa hay by days end.

I really appreciate all the help here. Although they have only been with me a week I really love these three and want to do the best I can for them.

I am so glad to find a forum like this about sheep ! Most of what I found out there is viewing them as other than pets and part of the family.If there is any other advice, info tips on care and feeding..please advise !

I agree, I loved this forum as soon as I got on!

Well, we only floor feed whilst they are indoors in lambing or mothering pens...and muck out, disinfect and lime the pens between occupants. Once they go outside, we feed creep to the lambs (from behind a ewe-proof barrier!) but the ewes get no supplementary feed, just the grass. Anyway it's called 'floor feeding' but the concentrates don't actually come into contact with the floor itself, just the straw, and they get topped up with clean straw 2 X daily, in addition to all the straw and hay they scatter over the floor for themselves.

Reckon they've got more chance of getting worms from normal grazing, esp. if the land happens to be 'sheep sick'.  In fact I've only ever heard of one person here in the UK who's ever routinely fed concentrates to ewes from troughs. People here feed creep to lambs from troughs, but would not generally bother when feeding ewes. One of our neighbours lays out a line of concentrates on the ground for his sheep to follow and eat whenever he wants to move them from A to B. Grown sheep are grazers and so their guts are designed to eat from the ground anyway. They naturally won't eat anything that has been on areas of the ground where they've defecated - that's instinctive in sheep; and just one of the reasons some people run sheep and cows together.

Still maybe this is one of those 'different problems in different places' things (like you said caseous lymphadenitis is an issue for you guys whereas it's unheard of in sheep over here. Here the 'bogeyman' of sheep diseases is Bluetongue (esp. Serotype 8 BTV) which I don't believe is much of a worry to you in America!). Over here, the biggest 'problem' with disease and health issues arises not from floor feeding but from those molasses based bucket licks - having them out in the presence of ewes and lambs is an excellent way to spread mastitis through your entire flock!  

Fly eggs are only an issue for us when they are *on* the sheep, not *in* the sheep. I doubt very much that they'd be able to survive in the sheep's guts long enough to cause any harm!

Not even sure we feed the same stuff: I would not describe what we feed to ewes in the UK as 'grain' (unless it was maybe some sort of a home produced mix). The proprietary feeds we have here come in the shape of solid pellets, very similar to pony nuts. Some people here do refer to the feed as 'sheep nuts'.

I've never heard of anyone in England weighing hay or seen it recommended that we should in any of the UK sheepkeeping books/websites etc. That has to be an American practice, *grin*. Similarly, we tend to rely much more on Condition Scoring than the animal's weight when assessing our sheep.

Weird. I mean, of course it would be all weird to me, as I had no idea how different you do things in the United Kingdom! So "concentrates" are similar to what we call "grain" here? Weighing, here in America (or at least in the NorthWestern region of the US), is a very common thing. I don't know of anyone here that goes by the weight of the animal, except to give medications to, and things like that. We do go by the condition of the animal, separate for each sheep. Too bad we don't have the space to separate the over-weight pig sheep from the underweight dainty sheep. All well. You sure do things different from where we do it here. I guess it is important for the member asking questions, to tell where they are from, to be sure they are fully understanding us! LOL...