Detailed Explanation of Key Management Techniques for High-Quality Meat Sheep Farming

1. Moderate-scale farming As with any other industry, sheep farming should also pursue economies of scale. The moderate scale of meat goat farming depends on many factors such as the farmer's investment capacity, market prices, pasture area, feeding and management conditions, and the ratio of males to females. Under natural mating conditions for goats, the ratio of breeding rams to breeding ewes is generally 1:25, and the moderate scale should be 40 to 50 head.

2. Rational grouping and feeding

Apart from breeding and producing breeding sheep, the traditional method of meat sheep production is self-breeding and self-raising. Since breeding sheep and lambs have different production purposes, breeding sheep and weaned lambs should be raised in separate groups or by separate households. The feeding and management of breeding sheep are more extensive than those of lambs; the focus is on maintaining breeding body condition, timely mating, preventing missed mating and abortion, and providing sufficient nutrition during the mating and gestation periods; while the focus of lamb feeding and management is to provide nutritionally rich forage and feed throughout, and to pay attention to cold protection, warmth, and disease prevention.

3. Building elevated sheep sheds

Elevated sheep sheds have the advantages of being dry, well-ventilated, and easy to clean manure, and have been widely promoted and applied in the Jiangnan region with abundant rain and high humidity. However, attention should be paid to cold protection and warmth in elevated sheep sheds in winter, so as not to affect the growth and development of lambs and cause a large loss of body condition in meat sheep.

4. Planting high-quality forage grass

Forage grass is the main food of goats. Providing goats with nutritionally rich, highly palatable, high-quality forage grass is the key to high-quality and efficient goat farming. Goat farmers in our city can use mountain bend fields, winter fallow fields, hillside land, and economic forests to rotate or interplant high-quality, high-yield forage grasses such as ryegrass, forage corn, and king grass, plus other agricultural by-products such as soybean straw, peanut vines, and sweet potato vines, which can basically solve the source of green feed for goat farming throughout the year, thereby reducing feeding costs and increasing goat farming benefits.

5. House-fed fattening of lambs

The goal of lamb fattening is to increase daily weight gain and feed utilization. Traditional grazing fattening causes lambs to consume a large amount of physical energy, leading to reduced feed utilization, lower daily weight gain, and a prolonged fattening period, resulting in increased farming costs. Therefore, advocating house-fed fattening of lambs is one of the important measures for efficient goat farming. House-fed fattening requires supplementing minerals and concentrate feed while ensuring sufficient green feed or hay. Farmers can purchase goat mineral lick bricks and hang them in the pen for the goats to lick freely. Concentrate feed can be self-formulated using raw materials such as corn and soybean cake. House-fed fattening of goats shortens the fattening period by 1 to 2 months compared with grazing fattening.&

6. Marketing at suitable body weight

The suitable body weight for marketing meat goats should be comprehensively assessed based on production performance indicators such as daily weight gain, feed utilization, and dressing percentage, as well as market demand. If the marketing weight is too low, the goat's growth potential is not fully utilized, and the meat yield is also low; if the marketing weight is too high, although the meat yield increases, feed utilization declines. The suitable marketing age for goats of different breeds or crossbred combinations is generally 6 to 8 months.

7. Timely deworming and immunization

The prevention and treatment of goat diseases has always been a weak link in goat production and must be highly valued by farmers. In terms of management, in addition to doing a good job in cleanliness and hygiene and cold protection and warmth, regular disinfection, immunization injections, and the removal of internal and external parasites are the three major technical measures for preventing goat diseases, reducing mortality, and improving farming benefits. Farmers need to thoroughly disinfect the sheep pens and exercise yards once a month. Disinfectants can be selected from high-efficiency iodine, Baidusha, or caustic soda; it is best to alternate different disinfectants to increase the disinfection effect. Injecting sheep with the triple vaccine and four-way vaccine in spring and autumn can prevent sheep braxy, sudden death, lamb dysentery, and enterotoxemia; each spring, sheep pox vaccine is injected at the tail root and goat contagious pleuropneumonia vaccine is injected intramuscularly in large and small sheep respectively, which can prevent goat pox and goat contagious pleuropneumonia. Goats should be dewormed once each in spring and autumn for internal and external parasites.

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