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Water

Let’s talk about water then first of all today. From the standpoint of water, probably, as it relates to sheep, quality is more important in sheep than any other species. Sheep are very particular about their water and so it becomes very important then that we have a good clean supply of water available. Probably if you want to compare sheep to goats, goats are even more particular about water. Goats are real particular about water and yet from a species they’re one of the worst from the standpoint of defecating and urinating in their water, so it kind of complicates the issue. You’ve have to provide clean water then you’ve always have to be cleaning out the water trough because of how they contaminate it.

Intake, in sheep, is going to be affected by type of food consumed or type of feed consumed. It’s also going to be affected by the environmental temperature. Production stage, lactation, of course, has a higher requirement for water and we make allowances for this. And conditions, if there is rain or dew or snowfall that is going to have an effect on water requirement for sheep. If we look at general recommendations for water, we generally say 1 gallon of water for 4 lbs of a 90% dry matter consumed. We’ll talk about dry matter consumption. But, as a rule of thumb, about a gallon for every 4 lbs will take care of the water requirements. It might be less or more depending upon wetness of the feed, stage of production, hot, high moisture feed, whatever it might be. Of course if you look at some comparisons, sheep have less fecal water loss than cattle or the water level of their fecal material is about 13-24% depending upon the type of feed they’re consuming versus 30-32% for cattle. Pregnant ewes, in fact, in many range operations snow alone will be adequate to provide for the water requirements of ewes. In a lot of range operations where you have the snowfall, in range areas, they can get by on snow alone. It’s not the best but they can handle it and do quite well. In those situations, they don’t have to haul water at that time of the year, provided there is snow available. If you have high moisture plants, 60-70% moisture, they’re going to consume very little water. Here in the Willamette valley right now, we’ve have sheep out on these grass seed fields, that grass seed, annual ryegrass, that is coming up there is probably going to be 70+% moisture, those sheep aren’t going to be consuming very much water. Let alone the water that stands out in the fields so you’re not going to have to be providing much water. But even if you did provide, with the high moisture, they’re not going to be consuming very much because most of that annual ryegrass that is out there now is probably about 75% moisture at the present time.

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