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| Sugar Beet and Lactation |
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One of the first pearls of
wisdom I learned from Jenny Cobb back in the early days of my alpaca
breeding (1989) was that Sugar Beet aids milk production. I therefore
always fed sugar beet to our lactating females in the Winter. Recently
a group of visiting females with cria at foot arrived for mating to our
studs. Both the females and their crias were thin, and so we offered
the crias bottles, which they gulped down eagerly - a sure sign that
they were hungry. We also started feeding the dams our highly
nutritious home-grown haylage, along with alfalfa nuts and fluffed-up
sugar beet. The females improved and the crias started putting on
weight. Then, one weekend, the duty stockperson forgot to give this
group their sugar beet. (she now no longer works for us!) Lo and belold
the cria weights dropped just over the weekend. So I now feel confident
to say Sugar Beet aids lactation .
P.S. Lactating females need
to keep up their liquid intake, so if it gets very cold in Winter,
consider giving them warm water to drink - it really aids milk
production.
P.P.S. We waited until the females had gained on their
body condition scores before we mated them, and they re all doing fine
now.
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