Nutritional management alternatives to improve survival of newborn lambs

Abstract

Starvation has been identified as the most important cause of neonatal death of lambs in Uruguay as well as in other countries where sheep production is one of its main items. Starvation can be a consequence of a number of factors that may or may not interact with each other. Among them is the lack of vigor of the newborn lamb, failure of the mother-child relationship, maternal misbehavior with the abandonment of the lamb by sheep or lambs with laborious and prolonged deliveries and lack of colostrum at the time of delivery. Almost all of these factors are due to inadequate nutrition of the sheep during the prepartum period. In this, the mother has very high requirements for fetal development and the mammary gland and for colostrum synthesis. However, despite the increase in the demand for nutrients, the voluntary consumption of the sheep, especially forage, generally decreases during the last week of gestation, aggravating the energy deficit. This is even more serious in extensive grazing conditions such as those found in the sheep countries of the southern hemisphere. Strategic supplementation of short duration before calving allows to reverse the problem since sheep supplemented with energy concentrates in the last days of gestation double and even triple colostrum production, have better maternal behavior at calving, calving can be faster and consequently, their lambs have a greater survival compared to sheep fed only with forage.