Best Feeding Options

Hello, so since I joined an AG class in school I have to do a project involving Agriculture. I decided that my project would be Breeding Sheep and Researching every possible element for best survival rates. Now I am very nervous as this years breeding season has not turned out as planned, but I am hoping that next years will be better.
I was hoping maybe someone has some possible insight on how to switch our sheeps' diets. We have never really fed like we were supposed to and that may have contributed to our ram getting overweight and our ewes getting a bit pudgy. They are better because they got lots of exercise over the summer but since we are going back into winter when they are in the stall most of the time I would like to ask what is the best option for feeding.
There current diet (and I know this is not ideal) is one scoop of sweet feed in the morning and one more at night. They also get treats such as stail bread and fruit. I now realize how bad there diet is and its time to change. Recently one of our ewes got bloated and as I did some research I read that "sheep are sensitive to sudden changes in diets." So this got me thinking on how we should gradually change their diet.
So they are not on a pasture because the fence is still being built, but hopefully it will be done before winter.



Anyways, I've read how most people feed hay throughout the winter, because the sheep don't get that large off of it as long as it is fed proportionately. Honestly I don't know where to start with switching there diets.
What do you think I should start with?

First find out how much your scoop holds, then adjsut according to the feed. Make sure it's a sheep feed. Forage of some kind needs to be available daily, it should be the majorit of the food. I only feed grain to flush, to weanling and nursing ewes. Of course my sheep are not typical. They get hay or pasture daily, 3% of their weight should be forage.

promiseacres said:

First find out how much your scoop holds, then adjsut according to the feed. Make sure it's a sheep feed. Forage of some kind needs to be available daily, it should be the majorit of the food. I only feed grain to flush, to weanling and nursing ewes. Of course my sheep are not typical. They get hay or pasture daily, 3% of their weight should be forage.

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Ok so since they cant get out into the pasture would hay be a good replacement/substitute for siliage?

Yes they need hay

Sheep need hay and bred ewes can have grain in the last month of pregnancy. Any time before that will lead to fat ewes who have trouble lambing and large lambs.

I would feed a grass hay, about 3-4 lbs for each sheep. (If your sheep are 150 lbs, they should have 3 lbs, or about 2%.) Then in the last month of pregnancy, I would feed a 13-15% protein SHEEP feed. A lot of places sell 16% sheep feed, but it is the protein in the feed that results in large lambs. You can cut it with corn to reduce protein in the grain. I used to feed 16% sheep feed but I would feed their ration and then my dad would give them MORE... essentially they were being overfed the high protein feed which didn't help any. So I created a lower protein feed so they can eat more should my dad feed them more and won't cause issues for the lambs size wise. All stock feed is usually about 12% protein which is okay, but it likely has too much copper.

Read my article called "Balancing Rations." Its very technical, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask

I worked at and followed the feeding protocal at UCD Animal Science that were formulated by animal science nutritionists. I always fed high quality alfalfa hay to my open ewes on good pasture about 2 weeks before I put in the ram to flush them to increase lambing percentage. I used a marking harness to know when the lambs would be due. If any ewe didn't settle after 2 breeding cycles , she was sent to auction, no exceptions when one follows proper animal husbandry and wants to make a profit . I also fed high quality alfalfa hay as well as cracked corn, rolled oats and barley about 6 weeks prior to giving birth in addition to pasture to my pregnant ewes with NO issues of too large lambs, with lambing percentages of 173- 180% for my commercial flock 0f 200 ewes.