Introducing Ewes to Legume Pastures

I let the ewes and lambs have access to a pasture with a patch of alfalfa in it for a few hours today. Several have bulging left sides where their rumen is located.  The bacteria that have been digesting grass and alfalfa hay are finding it easier to digest the alfalfa and are therefore making more gas. Hopefully the bloat preventing supplement is keeping the gas levels to a manageable level. One ewe had me very worried as she was panting with her mouth open-a possible sign that her large rumen was making it hard for her to breath. She had stopped panting when I stopped watching and came to the house.  Hopefully she'll be okay.

I'll let them eat some more tomorrow in an effort to get their rumen bacteria adjusted to such a digestible feed source.  I saw that I need to buy some more bloat block tomorrow too-they've eaten good portions of the 10 blocks I put out ($200 worth).  Hopefully the store in town has more and I won't have to go out of town to buy more.

In a few days they should be able to eat in the alfalfa grass mixture pasture without too many problems, though we will keep them on the bloat preventing supplement blocks just to be sure.  If we get a late season frost which would damage the cell walls making the alfalfa even more digestible, any animals grazing the alfalfa could be at risk (risk is minimized by the bloat preventing blocks we put out).

This is a stressful period for us.  We have lost ewes and lambs to bloat in the past and so try to learn from those experiences and safeguard our flock from futher losses.  Keeping the ewes on these alfalfa pastures is necessary because it lets the  pastures at the Meadow farm grow and be ready for the sheep in a few weeks.  It also keeps the young lambs away from the coyotes that live near the Meadow.  The ewes and lambs will also benefit from having such high quality feed-if we can keep it from killing them.