Yes, sheep can live without grass by eating other forages like hay, silage, legumes (clover), and grains, or by being managed in "dry lots" with alternative feeds, but as ruminants, they need a roughage-based diet and their health is best supported by a significant amount of plant material, often grass or hay, plus minerals. While grass is ideal and natural, especially for growth and wool quality, they can adapt to other feeds when pasture isn't available, but a complete diet is essential.
Sheep and goats can survive on grass and leaves because they're both ruminants. Their stomachs have four compartments that allow them to digest greens. A sheep/goat swallows her food without chewing and it goes into the first stomach, called the rumen.
Supplementary feed: Can include hay, silage, sheep pellets, grains, and mineral licks. Should be introduced gradually and in small amounts only, as sheep take time to learn to accept novel feed.
A sheared sheep regrows its wool after grazing. Therefore, if no grass is available, a sheep cannot regrow its wool after being sheared.
By 10 weeks lambs weigh about 25 kg and their intake of grass will be adding to pasture requirements significantly. Typically they eat around 4% of liveweight per day which is around 1 kg of grass dry matter, increasing by 0.1 kg /week due to weight gain.
Sheep prefer fine, leafy hay and will not eat coarse hay. Immature grass hay or leafy alfalfa is usually the best feed for sheep. Mature sheep can eat good-quality grass hay, but lambs do better with a legume that has been harvested while growing, allowing for finer stems.
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Grass clippings can be used as a feed source for sheep, says research from Colorado State University's Cooperative Extension. When used as a supplement with grain, fresh clippings resulted in acceptable daily weight gains and carcass traits at less cost per pound of gain than conventional diets.
What should you not feed sheep? You should not overfeed sheep grains, alfalfa, and other fibrous plant materials. Sheep can easily get gaseous and bloated, which can be fatal. Sheep are herbivores and should not be fed meat or animal products like eggs, dog food, or cat food.
Baking Soda - sheep will eat this if they feel an upset stomach coming on. It is BEST to purchase a “mineral feeder” and keep one side filled with baking soda and loose salt, and the other side filled with the sheep minerals.
During the first and second periods feed sheep daily, then introduce intermittent feeding. By the fifth or sixth period, put the feed out once every 3–4 days.
Sheep need salt. However, offering salt as the only mineral available to your flock won't meet all their needs. It's not uncommon in some pastures to see sheep only receiving a salt block. That won't get the job done when you want to push for higher weaning rates and breeding percentages.
Hay – The Primary Winter Feed
Hay is the foundation of a sheep's winter diet. Good-quality grass hay or mixed legume hay provides fiber and energy. Ideally, hay should be: Green and leafy, not dusty or moldy.
You can tell a sheep's age by looking at its teeth. In most smallholding situations, a sheep will live naturally to around 9 to 12 years, but some live longer. The condition of a sheep's teeth is a major determinant of its longevity if it is otherwise healthy.
One-quarter inch of ice on top of snow, or a wet snow followed by a deep freeze, can stop grazing overnight even if the snow is only a few inches deep. But a light fluffy snow, or wet snow in warm weather, can accumulate to considerable depths (over a foot) before the sheep are stymied.
(Final Note: If you shear your sheep, it will only give you the color of wool that the sheep was originally.)
Can sheep live on grass alone? Absolutely. Sheep are herbivores and are designed to not only live solely on grass but to thrive on it. As long as the grass is of high quality and full of all their nutritional needs.
In less ideal conditions, the process may take three months or longer. Many new to composting may be surprised that composting grass clippings take this long. But all those microbes have to do a lot of work to break down your grass clippings and other compost materials.
Sheep behaviour and needs
Feeding – sheep spend most of the day alternating between periods of grazing (eating grasses and low-growing vegetation) and resting/ruminating (chewing the cud). Sheep only sleep for around four hours a day.
During the day the ewes can see their lambs but as night falls they can't see each other so well, and they need to talk with each other by baaing continuously to check that all is well, or to help the lambs locate their mothers.
Ewes should only be wormed once a year at lambing time; this will reduce the number of eggs on the pasture so that there are less for lambs to pick up. Lambs have little resistance to worms in their first grazing season but this develops with time.
An average quality grass hay is usually more than adequate for ewes during maintenance and in early to mid-gestation. Grass hay almost always meets the needs of mature rams and wethers.