Untersuchungen zur Aufzucht von Schaf- und Ziegenlämmern mit arteigener und artfremder Milch

Summary

During the last years, the number of dairy goats and sheep in Germany steadily in-creased, and at least ten percent of these animals are kept under conditions of or-ganic farming. A few months of the year milk is unavailable due to the seasonal repro-duction of sheep and goats. In organic farming, this gap is increased by the demand of lamb rearing with milk of the mother animal. A main part of the whole milk production has to be used for lamb feeding instead of processing cheese. This financial loss might be reduced if organic milk of cows is available. However, the milk composition of cows, sheep and goats is different and this might lead to health problems of the lambs when cow’s milk is used as a substitute. The study aimed for an answer on this ques-tion. In 2005 all lambs of the sheep and goat herd owned by the Institute of organic farming were used for the experiment. The lambs were kept with their mothers for five days after lambing. Afterwards the lambs were dived in two groups (species-specific – SSM - and non-species-specific milk - NSSM). Lambs got 450 ml milk (cow or sheep) three times per day by bucket. Kids were reared by an automated feeding device and got 2500 ml milk per day at maximum. Water and hay were offered ad libitum. Con-centrate feed (80 g per animal) was divided into three portions per day. The animals were weighed every day and during the first ten days of the experiment the body temperature was measured daily. Data of 42 lambs (SSM: 23, NSSM: 19) and 78 kids (SSM: 41, NSSM: 37) were evaluated. No differences could be observed between kids fed with SSM and NSSM concerning the live weight gain until the 45th day after birth, the body temperature and the health. At the 41st day after birth the female lambs fed with sheep milk weighed 2.2 kg more than the lambs fed with cow milk. Male lambs differed by 2.0 kg. 18 of the 19 lambs in the NSSM-group showed symptoms of diar-rhoea at least once during the investigation, and the mean body temperature for this group was 0.2 K lower than for the SSM-group (p < 0.05). However, no lamb had to be culled during the experiment. The reason for the revealed differences has to be the milk composition because the herd management of the groups was excellent and did not vary. Ewe’s milk has a high fat and protein content. The milk used in this study contained 5.4% fat, 4.8% protein and 5.06% lactose, the cow milk 3.78%, 2.73% and 4.7%, respectively. As a consequence, the energy content of the sheep milk was approximately 30% higher compared with the milk of cows (3,811 vs. 2,748 kJ per l). Thus, sheep milk should be substituted by cow milk only under very good conditions of animal husbandry. In organic dairy goat farms cow milk might be used for feeding the kids and to reduce the economic loss for the farmer, assumed the milk of organic dairy cows is available.