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Sheep Production

Raising sheep can be a profitable activity for small-to-medium farms in the Philippines. Sheep convert roughages into meat, wool, and skin, contributing to food, jobs, and the economy. While Filipinos don't usually eat lamb, there is growing demand and potential for export. Effective lamb fattening requires selecting male lambs aged 10-12 months weighing 20kg in good health, feeding them a diet of 3.1% of their body weight daily consisting of fodder, concentrates, and water, and housing them in a clean, separate, well-ventilated shelter to protect health and control disease.

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390 views2 pages

Sheep Production

Raising sheep can be a profitable activity for small-to-medium farms in the Philippines. Sheep convert roughages into meat, wool, and skin, contributing to food, jobs, and the economy. While Filipinos don't usually eat lamb, there is growing demand and potential for export. Effective lamb fattening requires selecting male lambs aged 10-12 months weighing 20kg in good health, feeding them a diet of 3.1% of their body weight daily consisting of fodder, concentrates, and water, and housing them in a clean, separate, well-ventilated shelter to protect health and control disease.

Uploaded by

vendetta021199
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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SHEEP PRODUCTION

Raising sheep in the Philippines can be as profitable as raising goats in local


farms. Sheep contributes to food production, rural employment and gross national product
by converting roughages into meat, wool and skin. Although Filipinos do not generally eat
meat lambs, there is a growing demand for mutton and scope for export of meat.

Raising Sheep: Lamb Fattening


 This technology is best suited to small or medium sized farms.
o Small-scale farmers carry out lamb fattening to increase their family
income, while medium-scale farmers do it to gain more benefit from their
ranch.
Advantages of Lamb (a young domestic sheep) Fattening
 Lamb is a meat animal. Fattening lambs has the following advantages.
o Lambs can adapt to a range of environments;
o There is a relatively small investment;
o The lambs ofter a form of savings in case of emergency needs;
o Manure production;
o Protein supply.

1. Lamb Selection
In lamb fattening, it is lamb selection which determines the success of the fattening. The
selection of the lamb should be based on the following criteria:
 Male lambs aged 10-12 months;
 Weight of the lamb about 20 kgs.;
 Good health, lean, good posture, and without handicaps.
 Local lamb, can be fat- or thin-tailed breed.

2. Feed
 It is important to consider which feeds are to be given during fattening, because
these are 70% of the production cost.
o The feed should consist of water and dry materials.
o Dry materials consist of organic and inorganic materials, including fodder
and concentrates.
o Fodder can include green leaves, cut grass, legumes, etc., while
concentrates can be made from tubers (cassava, sweet potato, or potato),
grains (corn, sorghum, soybean, peanut, etc.) and animal protein (fish
flour, blood flour, skim milk, and meat flour, etc.)
 The daily feed consumption of a lamb should be 3.1% of its body weight.
o Concentrates can be given to a level of about 2.5% of body weight daily.
o Clean drinking water should be available at all times.

3. Rearing House
The rearing house is to protect the lamb and stop it from wandering. It also enables
farmers to inspect the lambs and control any diseases. The rearing house should be:
 Separate from the farm house, and in a quiet place;
 Large enough to meet the space needs of the lambs
 Free of damp and puddles, it should receive enough sunshine but not be too hot;
 It should be protected from wind blowing directly inside, particularly at night;
 It should be clean, to keep the incidence of disease to a minimum.

The rearing house should be constructed as follows:

 It should be divided into several rooms. The size of each room should be large
enough to allow 0.4 x 1.2 m for each lamb.
 Fodder concentrates and water should be made available outside the room.
 The floor of the rearing house should have slats at intervals of 2-3 cm, so that the
dung falls directly to the ground.

4. Diseases and Their Control


To protect the lambs from diseases, the following program should be followed.
 Quarantine new lambs for 1-2 days, to ensure that no new lamb is infected with
disease.
 Provide the new lambs with worm control medicine.
 Isolate any diseased lambs from healthy ones, and give them appropriate
medication.
 Keep the rearing house clean.

Common diseases of lambs which need to be kept in mind include diarrhea, scabies,
bloat, pink-eye and worms.

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