Sheep?

[Denny]

We've been toying with the idea of running a 100 ewe's .We feed corn silage on the ground in the winter. I was thinking ewes could pick up alot that the cows miss.We also have access to some fenced areas capable of holding sheep that would be free.Between that and the yardsites at both farms I figure we could run them as a by-product to the cows. The copper in the beef mineral has been a stumbleing block.My neighbor who's made a decent liveing say's it's a no no.

I would'nt mess with a dog though a pail of grain they will follow you most any place.I've had sheep off and on since I was a kid. My 10 year old son has some now and thats got me thinking about it again.

The grain pail is great when it works but it's the "most" any place where I have really appreciated my dogs.

I like dogs myself but a blue heeler would'nt be my choice a bit to aggressive for me.In a flock of 20 with alot of human contact the feed pail will be your best friend.

 

[Sandliserd]

If your talking a small flock then call around some one close has some sheep. My son has a flock of 14 or 15 and a heard of 10 cows. would you belive that he makes just as much off the sheep as the cows. I would say to buy young breed ews. Also we have feed bolth ways and a small flock it dosent mater. Do Not !! think that you can make verry much money bying bumm lambs by the time you figer in the milk and the death loss and the loss of sleep, as lambs need to be feed every 6 hours come hell or high watter. Also are good lawn mowers in the summer time but keep them off of alfafa growing in the feild. Causes blote. My son is building a good colage fund and realy dosent have much work in it. Have fun with it. As a wise man once said some times you got to pull your pants down and slide on the ice. :wink:

 

[jodywy]

bum lambs, I hate bum lambs, we use a grafting box that locks the ewe's head and the lambs can't get out. we use dog collars at tied ewes up, skinned lambs. But when we get bum lambs we after getting them started we switch them over to a cold milk lamb feeder . they eat less each time they suckle mut will suckle more times aday. They look more like lambs on thier moms not getting that bum pot gut.

 

[tta stockdogs]

I run about 40ewes and wouldnt be without my Aussies. They can put the sheep were I want all the time,every time... not most of the time, like a bucket of grain. A good stock dog trained right can work sheep and/or cattle ... no matter the breed.

 

[Grassfarmer]

Not much profit in bum lambs that's for sure. Good reason not to use breeds that frequently have in excess of 2 lambs.

We found ultrasounding the sheep for pregnancy and numbers revolutionised our sheep management. If you know what they are having you can target the feed better, combine this with condition scoring and you can get most lambing in appropriate condition for what they are carrying. At lambing time we penned the singles next to the triplets and found we could foster on the triplets real easy at the time the single was born, just cover them in the gunk and blood and the sheep very often took them as their own. We usually scanned about 10% triplets but finished up with very few rearing 3 and most of the rest went out as adopted halves of a pair.

 

[Dylan Biggs]

We've been toying with the idea of running a 100 ewe's .We feed corn silage on the ground in the winter. I was thinking ewes could pick up alot that the cows miss.We also have access to some fenced areas capable of holding sheep that would be free.Between that and the yardsites at both farms I figure we could run them as a by-product to the cows. The copper in the beef mineral has been a stumbleing block.My neighbor who's made a decent liveing say's it's a no no.

I would'nt mess with a dog though a pail of grain they will follow you most any place.I've had sheep off and on since I was a kid. My 10 year old son has some now and thats got me thinking about it again.

The grain pail is great when it works but it's the "most" any place where I have really appreciated my dogs.

I like dogs myself but a blue heeler would'nt be my choice a bit to aggressive for me.In a flock of 20 with alot of human contact the feed pail will be your best friend.

We had a good Heeler bench back in the late 80's. Since then we have only had Border Collies.

 

[Grassfarmer]

The grain pail is great when it works but it's the "most" any place where I have really appreciated my dogs.

I like dogs myself but a blue heeler would'nt be my choice a bit to aggressive for me.In a flock of 20 with alot of human contact the feed pail will be your best friend.

We had a good Heeler bench back in the late 80's. Since then we have only had Border Collies.

I have an older heeler x border collie and he tries - plenty of heart and plenty of force - but man....no brains. I'd never worked anything but border collies before and can't wait to get back to one. My current dog has too many bad habits so I don't want a pup around him, i'll just have to be patient I guess.

 

[Kato]

One of my donkey customers just calls the donkey when he wants the sheep to come, and the sheep follow her in. She also brings them home every night without fail, and without being called. 8)

A role model. 8) 8) 8) :wink:

 

[RSL]

I like dogs myself but a blue heeler would'nt be my choice a bit to aggressive for me.In a flock of 20 with alot of human contact the feed pail will be your best friend.

We had a good Heeler bench back in the late 80's. Since then we have only had Border Collies.

I have an older heeler x border collie and he tries - plenty of heart and plenty of force - but man....no brains. I'd never worked anything but border collies before and can't wait to get back to one. My current dog has too many bad habits so I don't want a pup around him, i'll just have to be patient I guess.

The challenges of a send away vs. bring toward type of cross.

We ran 150+ ewes at one point (actually my brother did - they mysteriously disappeared when he went to school). They made very good money in the local/underserved ethnic market.
One thing to consider is do you have anyone available who will do custom shearing? It is a good thing to learn, but we found when you had just a few you never got that good at it and when you had a lot the job was daunting/tiring and the cowboy help were never that enthusiastic.

 

[Grassfarmer]

We had a good Heeler bench back in the late 80's. Since then we have only had Border Collies.

I have an older heeler x border collie and he tries - plenty of heart and plenty of force - but man....no brains. I'd never worked anything but border collies before and can't wait to get back to one. My current dog has too many bad habits so I don't want a pup around him, i'll just have to be patient I guess.

The challenges of a send away vs. bring toward type of cross.

We ran 150+ ewes at one point (actually my brother did - they mysteriously disappeared when he went to school). They made very good money in the local/underserved ethnic market.
One thing to consider is do you have anyone available who will do custom shearing? It is a good thing to learn, but we found when you had just a few you never got that good at it and when you had a lot the job was daunting/tiring and the cowboy help were never that enthusiastic.

I'm trying to resist the temptation to earn some money custom shearing - I did enough that I can make a passable job but I'm more a 100 a day operator (on a big day) than a 300 a day operator. At least in Canada the custom rates are quite attractive - just about enough to tempt people to screw their backs up for life which it invariably does. If Canada ever gets a sizable sheep industry this will be a problem - the UK flock wouldn't get shorn if it wasn't for the kiwi custom shearers.

 

[Angus Cattle Shower]

Yeah, we have people around here that do custom shearing, I already looked into it.

Which of the breed(s) are most likely to have twins?

And when lambing is there any special needs i must attend to? Do I need seperate stalls for each ewe during lambing?

 

[JayH]

only animal born with a will to die. They are not for the inexperienced.

If they are sneezing that morning they will be dead that night.

That's a strange misconception about sheep that i've never understood. Anybody with a reasonable amount of sheep experience will tell you that they suffer a lot less illness than cattle, hogs or fowl. Look at the whole calf weaning in the fall debacle - all the precautions you take, all the vaccinations and babying calves so that they don't get "shipping fever"or pneumonia and it's still a huge problem for the industry. I've weaned thousands of lambs in the fall and never treated one or taken any kind of precaution against these type of problems. You can ship them straight to auction, to feedlots or keep them at home and they just get on with life. One thing about a sheep being really sick is that it might well die - but the instances of it are way less than in the other species and they are tough critters so they don't usually show much sign until they are really sick.

One of the biggest problems I see in Canada, and I don't know if it's general across North America, is the wrong selection of breeds.
There seems to be two kinds of sheep kept here - the terminals Suffolk, Texel, Charollais etc and the almost dairy types that have the multiple lambs. Nobody seems to work with the maternal breeds and cross them to terminal sire breeds. If we practiced the same breed selection in cattle and your herd was exotic bred exotic how good would you expect them to be at rearing calves? - how developed would their maternal traits be? The dairy types that have 4 or 5 lambs would equate to a holstein having 8 calves - how practical or manageable would that be? Sheep have 2 teats so anything more than 2 lambs is a pain in the @#$.

We have suffolk around here for the most part. Like you said dumb mothers.

Do you know anything about lincoln sheep? My grandmother talkes about them. I may not have spelled it right or understood her right but I think she says lincoln like the car. ?

 

[Grassfarmer]

JayH, yes there is a breed called Lincoln - from the English county of Lincolnshire so they're not Lincoln continentals :roll: :lol: Don't know much about them - other than they are pretty rare and pretty big. Supposed to have fancy wool though.

Angus Cattle Shower, I guess it depends where and when you would plan to lamb them. They manage just fine outdoors if the weather is decent but if you are bringing them into a barn or corrals it's not a bad idea to put them into an individual pen for 24 hours after lambing. We lambed indoors latterly and had them penned about 20 to a pen, put them in small pens for 24 hours after lambing, then ideally put 4 sets of twins back into a larger pen for another 24 hours so they got used to mixing with other lambs and then getting back to the right mother. We did put them straight out sometimes if we were pushed for space and the weather was nice.
Most breeds will have twins as the most common lamb number, with some singles and triplets thrown in. Avoid the ones that have 3-4 lambs regularly as sheep only has 2 teats! The ones I would be wary of would be what I call milksheep - the fin x dorsets etc.