Since mid-October, our 21 castrated male Texel sheep have returned to the sheepfold, fed hay and barley.

How is the digestibility workshop
set up?

A feeding transition based on grass silage was carried out on our sheep from 24th November onwards, in order to accustom them to this forage. At the beginning of December, we weighed the 12 largest sheep to be used for digestibility.

For 4 days, we accustomed these 12 sheep to the individual boxes. On Friday 10 December, the sheep were moved into their boxes and we could start the measurement protocol. An adaptation of the ration was carried out over 6 days, with the aim of getting them used to eating only grass silage and being ad libitum. On Thursday 16 December, the measurements started:

Measuring ingestibility

• Quantities of feed offered for each sheep
• Quantities of the previous day's rejects for each sheep
• Dry matter of offered and rejected feed (average sample)

Measuring digestibility

• Amount of faeces produced per sheep
• Dry matter of faeces produced per sheep

This grass silage digestibility workshop lasted 7 days; the sheep will be down tomorrow morning to join their mates at the sheepfold.

Le deuxième atelier de digestibilité aura lieu en janvier, sur de l’ensilage de méteil : nos moutons commencent donc leur seconde transition alimentaire sur l’ensilage de méteil la semaine prochaine !