[Tamsjute]

Please tell me what kit you have found essential for sheep keeping (on a very small scale maybe 3 sheep to start with).
Also any extras that may be handy at times.

[Womble]

So far:

• Tim Tyne's book on sheep keeping (absolutely essential  )
• Half a dozen sheep hurdles
• Blue 'cyclo' spray
• Foot shears
• Drenching Gun
• Dagging shears
• Rattly yellow bucket
• sheep nuts to put in rattly bucket
• Flock management plan (from vet)
• phone number of vet (for when something happens that's not mentioned in the flock management plan)
• selection of syringes and hypodermic needles
• Surgical gloves
• Swarfega
• Large bottle of whisky
• Little bottle of valium

[Bionic]

Rattly BLUE bucket 

[kanisha]

Nope definately Yellow 

[Buttermilk]

White bucket. Halter and foot rot/wound spray.

[Womble]

Blue and white buckets cost money. Yellow ones grow in ditches around here and can be harvested freely by passing Wombles  .

[Kimbo]

all the above PLUS:
- phone numbers of all neighbours so you can immediately apologise for herding your sheep from their land
- shepherd's crook or long stick for prodding the little blighters darlings
- 4 pairs of hands
....and most important of all.....digestive biscuits, as that's all they will eat (other than your neighbour's grass)

[Big Light]

Patience , fast legs and a strong back;0)

[SallyintNorth]

and baler twine.  Lots of baler twine 

[kanisha]

Real sheep keepers have a sense of humour,  don't worry you will learn to develop one very quickly 

[Thyme]

and baler twine.  Lots of baler twine 

One of my first questions to my mentor, when we were mending some fences with his baler twine, was "I guess I should buy some baler twine?"  He looked at me funny and said "no, one does not buy baler twine, there will be plenty of it around soon enough!" 

[Thyme]

Blue and white buckets cost money. Yellow ones grow in ditches around here and can be harvested freely by passing Wombles  .

I have a selection of hot pink buckets because Travis Perkins was selling them for £1 for breast cancer charity.  And they are easy to spot in the pasture 

[mab]

green or blue or red or yellow or black - anything works here - in fact my late very-tame shetland Elfie once cornered the parceforce delivery guy until she'd inspected the brown cardboard box and decided it wasn't edible.

womble's list is good but if it's just a few and your starting you can manage with less - at least I did:

you can improvise hurdles - eg pallets/ boards - though proper ones are good,
I used (good) scissors for dagging and hoof trimming for a couple of years (depending on what sheep you get dagging may not be an issue anyway - I never had to dag the shetlands)
you can drench with a syringe (if your getting a few doses from your vet they'll often put it in a big syringe for you anyway).
pre-lambing I managed without surgical gloves too - but I don't know if that's advisable or not.


also it does depend on if you're breeding or just keeping as pets/lawnmowers - if breeding then you'll be well advised to get a few lambing essentials too.

[Kimbo]

Real sheep keepers have a sense of humour,  don't worry you will learn to develop one very quickly 

Its that or crying but have you seen the price of Kleenex these days?

[Womble]

Good points Mab - perhaps my essentials aren't as essential as I thought. I notice nobody's argued with the whisky or valium yet though? 

I'll grudgingly admit that bucket colour doesn't matter, you can definitely improvise sheep hurdles (or might not need them for three very tame sheep), and can use scissors instead of dagging shears.

I did try drenching with a standard syringe to begin with, but I couldn't get it right over the back of the sheep's tongues, and one then bit down on it and cracked it, so that was the end of that!

I then swapped it for a re-usable drenching syringe:



It's not as good as a proper gun as you have to keep re-filling it, and it's harder to be accurate. However, it's fine if you only have a few sheep

I should say, the surgical gloves aren't for biological protection - they're for keeping the blue spray off your hands. The Swarfega is for when the surgical gloves tear and you cover your hands in blue spray anyway  .