Foods That Sheep Eat

Diet is a key factor when you are raising any animal, particularly livestock, as there is a direct economic consequence of feeding your animals correctly or incorrectly. So, if you are raising sheep, you need to feed them right in order to keep them healthy and produce as much high quality meat or wool as possible.

  1. Pasture

    • Pasture includes grass, clover, weeds and everything else that grows in a field. This forms the staple of a sheep's diet, as this is where they spend most of their time. Rather than wait to be fed, sheep will forage on their own for edible plants, although they tend to prefer younger, smaller plants to taller, more mature plants.

    Hay

    • Hay is similar to pasture, but it has less variation than pasture does. This means it has a higher protein content than pasture, and is therefore often fed to lactating and pregnant ewes. Sheep can live off pasture, but when they need more protein than usual, hay is a quick, efficient way to deliver it.

    Grain

    • Grains, such as soybeans, corn and oats, play a role in a sheep's diet when its owner wants to encourage growth. These foods are much higher in protein than pasture, and are therefore fed to lambs, pregnant ewes and other sheep that need to quickly put on a large amount of body weight. They are not a strictly necessary part of the sheep's diet, but they are widely used in specific circumstances.

    Cud

    • Cud is an important feature of the sheep's diet because it shows the differences between a sheep and human digestive system. It is essentially whatever the sheep last ate, regurgitated into its mouth. The reason this happens is because grass and plants require a great deal of digestion to break them down into their raw carbohydrates. So, food goes into the sheep's first stomach, is partially digested, then regurgitated and chewed again. This lets the stomach break it down more effectively.