Hi.Can anybody give information on feeding wholecrop baled barley to sheep?

thanks

Is this for in-lamb ewes or for fattening stores?  I wouldn't think it would be ideal for either.  Chopped would be better than not as they would waste alot as WnW says.  But how many kg/head?  Having said that we fed barley straw and sugarbeet to our ewes way back in a wet summer in the 80s after burning 3000 small bales of black mould.  (bagged silage the following year!)  If it is for ewes get used to condition scoring as some will love it and others hate it.

Farmwr, I fed whole crop barley (big bale wrapped) to sheep one year and they loved it. The only drawback was that I found it extremely difficult to stop the rats chewing the bags so have not repeated the exercise. The sheep did very well on it but had a few cases of listeria due to deterioration of the silage due to air incursion, what little waste was due to the rats.

thank you very much for the information very helpful. I will be feeding chopped big bale wholecrop to in-lamb ewes.

 We tried baling some wholecrop barley years ago & the rats loved it. On some of the bales they completely ate the wrap off the end of the bale where there were many layers of it. The bales that they didn't touch were good stuff but due to the coarseness of it i think sheep would probably waste quite a bit