Effects of different vegetation on bovine/sheep feces?

[casalunga]

Hi... URGENT....! Calling anyone who knows about cattle or sheep. Clearly, some plants are poisonous, some are good. MY question though is: are there any specific plants which, when ingested, do NOT poison the animal BUT make the feces PARTICULARLY vile-smelling? If anyone can help, I'd be MOST grateful!!!
Many thanks.

[sara3]

surely a question for a trained vet?

[Clanad]

Living on a cattle ranch, as I do in the western U.S., I always respond to questions about the odor our cows produce by saying "Smells like money to me"...

Having said that, both the example in your question are ruminants. Cows and sheep (as well as other animals) have a four compartmented stomach (not four stomachs as often thought). After hurriedly gobbling the food available, they lie down and regurgitate the food and chew the "cud", only to swallow it again and further process it. Different grasses and browse can produce a variety of nearly undectable manure odors. Problem is, with the sheep, the manure is very dry as compared to the "plop-plop" cow pies), and therefore isn't as odiferous.

So... Ok, here's the deal with the possible change in odors. Cows and sheep do not process grains very well due to the starch content. In fact, if left to thier own devices in an unlimited amount of grain they will literally eat themselves to death. Grains can be introduced in small amounts (they both really like the taste of the grains). The gases produced by the starch content cannot be burped up and they will die.

We usually grain feed two or three 2 year old steers to butcher for our own and families use. The nature of the odor from their manure is noticeably (at least to this stockman) different from that of the range fed (grasses and browse only) cows. Some of that is probably due to the semi-confinement. We only have cows, but some neighbors (still friends) run several thousand head of sheep. They report the same phenomena...