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Wool

The next product that I’d like to talk about as far as nutrition and any special considerations because I said earlier at the start of the lecture that we do have to be concerned with wool production. And when we look at wool from the standpoint of the fiber and the mineral composition or its chemical composition, is we see that wool contains a high proportion of the sulfur amino acid cystine. Does this mean that we have to be concerned with amino acids when we feed sheep? Well not really, because we just need to ensure that the diet contains adequate sulfur for microbial synthesis of sulfur amino acids. And in most cases, we never really have to worry about this because most feedstuffs contain adequate sulfur and we don’t need to provide any supplemental sulfur and there is adequate microbial synthesis and so protein, amino acids and sulfur aren’t a real problem. Energy probably will have the greatest influence on wool production. If we have restricted nutrition from the standpoint of energy, as shown on this slide, we see that we have decreased fiber diameter, the wool fiber, the fiber is shorter in length and there is just less of it. And if we have sufficient nutritional stress, we can also lead to weaknesses or actual break in the wool fiber. Probably from the standpoint of nutrients as it relates to protein, if we are feeding at 80% of the recommended requirements, we are never going to have an effect on wool production. If we get below this, wool production is going to be affected as would a lot of other factors that relate to production. When we get below that pregnancy is going to suffer and so on and so forth. Wool is pretty much going to go on and grow if we are going to provide for the other stages of production adequately.

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