Sheep Frequently Asked Questions

EasyOne

EasyOne is an easy and cost effective feeding solution to finish lambs. Because it provides a complete ration and does not cause acidosis, it is very simple to finish lambs on EasyOne. The technology used to produce EasyOne makes the stored nutrients more readily available for lamb growth and modifies rumen acidity, ensuring lambs grow faster without the stress from eating traditional full grain rations.

Before the lambs go into the feedlot, they need to have a drench for internal parasites and be given a 5 in 1 vaccination 10 days before entry to feedlot. Any change in diet predisposes lambs to enterotoxemia so you need to control the disease by vaccinating. You may also need to shear them. Lambs will finish quicker with less wool - recommended wool length on entry to be less than 25mm.

There is no need to feed anything other than EasyOne as it’s a complete feed and totally safe, so that you don’t have to adapt their rumen. However, as lambs are neophobic (fear of new things), we suggest that you feed out a small amount of EasyOne when the lambs are in the paddock, so that they know what it is before you put them into a feeding yard.

The most effective way to finish lambs is to put them in a small paddock, less than 4ha, with self-feeders and a water source. The number of self-feeders required depends on the number of lambs. The current recommendations for space allocation at self-feeders are 3 to 5 cm per lamb. That means that for 300 lambs you need 9 to 15 metres of trough space. Please consult your feeder manufacturer to confirm recommended number of lambs per feeder.

If the lambs don’t drink enough water they won’t eat to their full appetite. You need to maximize their water intake to maximize their feed intake. The more they eat, the more weight they will put on.

Lambs will generally eat between 3 and 4% of their liveweight. If you have a 100 lambs on feed and their average weight is 40 kg then they will eat approximately (40 x 3.5% = 1.4 kg) 140 kg per day, or 980kg a week.

You should budget on 300 g/day liveweight gain, though producers using EasyOne often report that their lambs gain up to 400g/d.

For budgeting purposes we suggest you use a figure of 6 kg of EasyOne to 1 kg liveweight gain. We have achieved 4.5 to 1 in trials but for budgeting purposes its better to be conservative.

Using EasyOne ensures that you optimize the growth of your lambs without any of the stress of acidosis and associated mortalities. It seems that no matter how careful you are with grain feeding, some lambs will either die with acidosis or get sick. In either case you lose money as a dead lamb is worthless and a sick one will take longer to get to finishing weight. With EasyOne, if you happen to forget to fill up the feeder you can just fill it up again and the lambs will be okay. There is no need to reintroduce the lambs to feed by going back to the start of your feeding program.

EasyOne Pellets or EasyLick Pellets

EasyOne is a nutritionally balanced feed for ewes that provides the benefits of a grain-based diet without the risk of acidosis. The technology used to produce EasyOne makes the stored nutrients more readily available for ewe development and modifies rumen acidity, ensuring ewes improve condition without the stress from eating traditional full grain rations.

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EasyLick Pellets are a new nutritionally balanced feed for ewes, designed to be used in adjustable lick feeders. EasyLick Pellet provides the benefits of feeding a grain-based diet to ewes, without the risk of acidosis. The technology used to produce EasyLick makes the stored nutrients more readily available for ewe development and modifies rumen acidity, ensuring ewes improve condition without the stress from eating traditional full grain rations.

Click here for more information on EasyLick

Easyone Pellets or EasyLick Pellets

EasyOne is a nutritionally balanced feed for ewes that provides the benefits of feeding a grain-based diet, without the risk of acidosis. The technology used to produce EasyOne makes the stored nutrients more readily available for ewe development and modifies rumen acidity, ensuring ewes improve condition without the stress from eating traditional full grain rations.

Click here to learn more about EasyOne

EasyLick Pellets are a new nutritionally balanced feed for ewes, designed to be fed in adjustable lick feeders. EasyLick Pellets provide the benefits of feeding a grain-based diet to ewes, without the risk of acidosis. The technology used to produce EasyLick Pellets makes the stored nutrients more readily available for ewe development and modifies rumen acidity, ensuring ewes improve condition without the stress from eating traditional full grain rations.

Click here for more information on EasyLick

It will depend on the pasture conditions etc. Because EasyOne and EasyLick pellets keeps the rumen balanced, the ewes are able to eat their supplement of EasyOne and EasyLick pellets without affecting their ability to utilize pasture. The best answer on how much to feed your ewes is to make sure the ewes remain in condition score three.

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An exciting recent development is the availability of lick feeders that restrict the amount of EasyLick pellet that is available to ewes. This means that the time required to trail feed is saved and that you can use that time for other things. This is especially important when you have lambing ewes – when you trail feed at lambing, ewes will often leave their lambs to chase the feed truck. Many times this results in mis-mothering. With the use of lick feeders you can be assured that ewes will concentrate on their lambs and not on the feed truck. The benefit is that you can go around your lambing ewes without the mob following you.

Historically lupins were used, as they were the safest feed for a paddock situation. Feeding wheat or barley at the levels that lupins were used would often result in many sheep deaths. However lupins, having such a high protein level, may actually be unbalanced and necessitate the animal use energy in order to excrete the extra nitrogen. EasyOne and EasyLick pellets have the advantage of being balanced for protein, energy, vitamins and minerals so that the pellet is a complete meal. The nutrients in EasyOne and EasyLick pellets stimulate bacterial growth so that the animal gets more value out of the paddock feed. With EasyOne and EasyLick pellets, you are guaranteed that you will not be introducing weed seeds into your cropping/pasture paddocks.

EasyOne & EasyWay Hay Replacer

EasyOne is a nutritionally balanced feed for rams that provides the benefits of grain diets, without the risk of acidosis. The technology used to product EasyOne makes the stored nutrients more readily available for ram growth and modifies rumen acidity, ensuring rams grow faster without the stress from eating traditional full grain rations. Top breeders choose EasyOne because they know it is safe to feed to their valuable rams.

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EasyWay Hay Replacer is a new, easy-to-use maintenance feed that provides the nutritional benefits of cereal hay. EasyWay is a palatable, cost effective 9mm pellet, designed to be fed to sheep in place of cereal hay. It is a high fibre ration, which will maintain rams.

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EasyOne & EasyWay Hay Replacer

EasyOne is a high performance complete feed for sheep that provides the benefits of feeding a grain-based diet, without the risk of acidosis. The technology used to product EasyOne makes the stored nutrients more readily available for sheep growth and modifies rumen acidity, ensuring sheep grow faster and reach target sales weight without the stress from eating traditional full grain rations.

Click here to learn more about EasyOne

EasyWay Hay Replacer is a new, easy-to-use maintenance feed that provides the nutritional benefits of cereal hay. EasyWay is a palatable, cost effective 9mm pellet, designed to be fed to sheep in place of cereal hay. It is a high fibre ration, which will maintain hoggets and whethers.

Click here to learn more about EasyWay

Strategic feeding of EasyOne or EasyLick pellets (e.g. at break of the season or during periods of zero pasture growth) will prevent wool breaks by ensuring adequate nutrition at the times of need. Feeding EasyLick pellets in sheep lick feeders will allow you to control how much you want to feed your sheep.

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Click here for more information about EasyLick