What types of feed additives are there for sheep? Keep these points in mind during the adding process

Feed additives for sheep have multiple functions such as supplementing or balancing feed nutrition, preventing disease, promoting sheep growth, ensuring feed quality, and increasing sheep product output. Scientific use of feed additives can effectively increase sheep product output, improve feed utilization, save feed, reduce costs, and achieve the goal of increasing production and income. Feed additives for sheep can be divided into the following categories:

1. Additives for improving feed quality

Mainly include antioxidants, anti-mold and anti-corrosion agents, silage additives, roughage conditioning additives, and flavoring agents, etc. They are used to protect and improve feed quality, enhance appetite, and increase feed digestion and utilization, etc.

2. Anti-stress additives

Include minerals, fats, vitamins, and sedatives, etc. They are mainly used for the body's anti-stress response and to enhance adaptability to environmental changes.

3. Nutritional additives

Mainly include non-protein nitrogen additives, amino acid agents, mineral trace element additives, and vitamin additives, etc. They mainly supplement or balance essential nutrients and maintain normal physiological activities, etc.

4. Non-nutritional additives

These additives themselves do not have nutritional value, but they can improve body health, promote body metabolism and growth and development; or participate in digestion and neural regulation; or improve feed and product quality; or increase product output, etc.

5. Health-care and growth-promoting additives

Mainly include antibacterial growth-promoting additives, deworming additives, Chinese herbal medicine additives, enzyme preparations, and microbial preparations, etc.

6. Physiological regulation additives

Include rumen metabolism control agents, buffers, and organic acid additives, etc.

Attachment: The following problems exist in the production and use of feed additives.

1. Abuse of antibiotics and hormones in feed additives. In the early production of feed additives, some people used low doses of antibiotics or sulfonamide drugs to prevent disease or diarrhea in livestock and poultry. Such low doses of antibiotics can disrupt the ecological balance among microorganisms (including pathogenic microorganisms) in the natural environment; residues in food will seriously affect the treatment of human diseases and human heredity.

2. Excessive or insufficient amounts of certain trace elements. The trace elements commonly used in feed additives include iron, copper, manganese, zinc, iodine, selenium, etc. After these elements enter the body, they exist in the form of ions, molecules, or structurally complex compounds, and the biochemical effects they exert differ under different states. Too little will cause deficiency diseases, while too much will cause poisoning or imbalance. Therefore, the content must be appropriate and mixed evenly, otherwise it will have the opposite effect.

3. Exaggerating the role of feed additives. Feed additives definitely have effects on balancing rations and promoting livestock and poultry production and growth. Generally, they can increase production by 5%-25% compared with a control group that does not use additives. However, some products exaggerate their effects excessively in advertising, and such unrealistic publicity should arouse vigilance.