How Do You Wean An Orphan Sheep From A Milk Replacer?
Orphaned or abandoned lambs occur every year for a wide variety of reasons. Many ewes will give birth to triplets or quadruplets and simply not have enough milk so they will abandon the baby or the lamb will not thrive. Lambs can be successfully hand-reared using artificial milk replacer. Weaning from the artificial milk replacer begins when the lamb reaches four weeks of age. Some people prefer to wait until the lamb is eight weeks of age before beginning the weaning process, because they feel the added growth allows the lamb to remain healthy. Provide the lamb with creep feed, also called lamb starter, from the moment you begin to feed milk replacer at approximately five days of age. The lamb will probably not eat the creep feed but will lick small amounts of it from the bottom of a feed trough. Lambs naturally lick things for taste. Ideally, the creep feed should contain 20 percent protein, according to Oregon State University. It is popular to use a creep feed that is 50 percent so
