The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Blackdane on December 11, 2012, 11:18:36 am
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Hi, just found this forum, and it seems like a good place to start getting advice. I'm looking into having a small herd of sheep or goats, probably at the start of next year. We own about 20 acres of land in the southwest, i've had plenty of experience with cows and horses, but not much with sheep and goats. I would like as much info as possible, such as which breeds are more hardy,easy to handle,are not escape artists etc...
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Partly it depends on whether the sheep will be more of a hobby/for your own eating (in which case more primitive breeds like Shetlands, Hebrideans etc are ace) or whether you need them to earn their keep and will have enough that you need to sell them commercially (in which case you might be looking at more commercial improved breeds).
Escape artist wise the heavier more commercial ones are probably better. However - you may have to intervene more with lambing, bottle feed rejected multiple lambs etc. One reason I keep Shetlands despite them enjoying testing fencing integrity is that of the 40 lambs born here to date, I have not had to intervene in a single lambing, despite quite a few of them being maiden mums.
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We'll all likely sing the praises of our own, but, any advice given here IS based on experience so it makes sense that we'll talk of the sheep we've had experience of.
I have Gotlands and Shetlands, both of whom are small enough to handle, friendly, bucket trainable, great fleece and good meat. It's my first experience this coming spring of Shetlands lambing so maybe someone else can tell you how they are on that front, (lachlanandmarcus speak well of them in that department). Gotlands are fabulous lambers too, had to bottle feed just one in last four years who was a triplet. Twin births are most common and ideal though triplets can happen and singles in equal measure. In our experience, some singles can be a little larger and may need an extra pull and ewes cope amazingly well with triplets. Mums are very milky and mothering instinct kicks in well with maiden ewes as well as experienced ones. The Breed Society is based near Honiton. I'm sure you would be welcome to visit and see what the sheep are like for yourself which you should do in any case with any breed you're considering. Read lots too on general sheep care before you plunge in. Forewarned is forearmed and different breeds have advantages and disadvantages. As some shepherds lamb early it's also worth seeing if you can have some experience of that. Basically immerse yourself. Ask yourself what you want from keeping sheep and go for a breed which fits in best with your ideal. Happy sheep hunting :fc:
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I think also you have got to like the look of your sheep! ;D Do you want coloured, white etc. It's the hill sheep that tend to be the escape artists but are also usually hardier. I've got a mixed flock of all sorts - Gotlands, Zwartbles, Charollais, Ryeland and commercial crosses. I probably love the Gotlands best because they are so friendly (some of mine are like dogs!), have lovely wool and are also lovely to look at (IMO :sheep: ). I had three maiden ewes lamb this year, all had twins with no help and were perfect mothers.
Some of the sheep have very thick dense fleeces which can be prone to flystrike and/or difficult to detect it. Bear in mind also that the larger breeds will be harder to handle if you need to manage them on your own! Some can attain weights of 100kgs or more. Have a look at all the sheep breeds and pick ones you like, and I'm sure there will be people on here who have them and can advise!
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There'll be lots of factors coming into your equation... If you live on the land and are there fulltime, you could manage pretty much any breed takes your fancy and is available locally. If the land is not near your home and/or you work away from home, being in the usually sunny southwest, I'd be considering a self-shedding breed like the Wiltshire Horn - less risk of flystrike catching you unawares.
Best to give some thought to what you are wanting to achieve - do you or anyone in your family spin, would you want to use the fleece? Are you wanting to do any showing? Will all lambs be for your own freezer or will you be wanting to sell them - if so, fat or in the store? Will you keep your own tup or will you expect to send your girls away for tupping? Or would you prefer to buy in store lambs and not have the work and worry of lambing?
What will you have for handling pens? Are you physically able to catch and upend a full size Texel (commercial) type sheep? What is the fencing like? And what is the other side of the fence?
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Goat wise, I've found Togg's are hardy and easy to care for. Good for milking, meat, harness work etc.
Sheep - mine are just lawnmowers and all texel crosses. The 3 boys are suffolk texel crosses and very healthy and grow quickly!
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Thanks for all the people who have posted so far, i'n glad to hear your opinion's on your own sheep and experience's. I'll try to explain a little more about myself and what i'm looking for, in the past i have worked on large cattle farms, and now would like to use what land i have to keep sheep. I'm not looking to do any spinning and haven't got anyone in the family who does it either.
As for showing i haven't given it much thought, i've always liked heritage breeds, years ago we use to keep ruby red devons, before my dad moved to france. So that may interest me, the decision on wether i'm going to keep the lambs for myself or to sell them on, i think will depend on the breed of sheep that i eventually take on. I will most probably have my own tup, running in a group of about 20 or so. (i'm not sure how many one ram can cover without problems) ???
I like to think that the surronding fencing is pretty solid both the fields are hedged in at all sides, we also have electric fence around the border aswell because of the horses. Hopefully with the extra info i've given it may give more of an insight on what i'm looking for.
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20 ewes for a tup should be no trouble at all, for the two years. After that you have to have to think about what you use for your home-bred ewes.
We found choosing breeds difficult. Consider
- what other people have nearby: being unique in an area makes it more difficult when there's a problem
- lowland or upland
- rare breeds are cute, but rare for a reason.
- big chaps are harder to handle, little chaps are harder to catch and escape through smaller gaps.
We started by buying-in commercial crosses and don't regret it for a moment
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rare breeds are cute, but rare for a reason.
But not necessarily a very valid one - sometimes it's just fashion and again, it depends what you want. Being rare doesn't mean that there are any specific difficulties with the sheep.
We keep Coloured Ryelands. We've gone with them because we wanted a British traditional breed (the breed was classified as rare but is now a minority breed) to produce quality lamb for ourselves. The breed produces a good carcase and the lamb is beautiful (we lamb in April and the tup lambs are away at the end of October off grass) - we sell any surplus as half lambs. The carcase is fattier than the commercial breeds but very tender and flavourful.
The fleece is good quality - we sell ours to spinners and crafters, but it doesn't cover the cost of shearing. It also has a big fleece, so you do have to be careful of fly strike.
We'll be lambing for the fifth time in 2013. I haven't found them to be the most prolific breed - about 150% lambing, but my ewes have all been good, attentive, milky mums. Can't say they've always lambed on their own - we had a C section this year but that's as much down to management as the breed and I've had to lamb one every year. Never had to bottle feed any except two that we topped up this year because I felt the gimmer didn't have a lot of milk.
The Ryeland isn't very big, is very docile and friendly. If it gets out, it will go as far as the next clump of grass. If you haven't seen them, they look a bit like Ewoks :)
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I agree with Rosemary. If you have 1200 sheep and are selling on the meat market, you need the meatiest quickest growing commercial sheep you can get, which will not be a native primitive rare breed.
If however you have some land sitting spare and ability to make your own hay, and are looking for taste, then you would be far better off with the rare breed - since they are likely to need less intervention lambing, overwinter just on the hay you make yourself (rather than requiring quantities of concentrates), and cost a lot less to buy in some cases.
Ease of handling by one person also makes a big difference - I can tip up our Shetlands quite easily to do feet etc - there is no way on earth I could do that with great big commercial mules or terminal sire meat breeds.
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we are 1st timers to and also in the southwest at the begining of year we brought some portland and portlandx ewe lambs from the user on her TheCaptain and we cant praise them up enough most of them are very friendly will follow bucket, easy to check feet ect and arent to big to handle on yourown i can herd our slowly growing herd of 16 up from a ten arce field on my own. the fleeces look very thick and they have pretty faces to look at to, plus on rare breed list.
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Where in the SW are you to?
I'm near Glastonbury and keep Shetlands and Shetland x Castlemilk Moorits. They do very well here, almost too well :D
I also have 4 goats ranging from varying degrees of mongrility to a purebred Anglo Nubian :goat: :goat: :goat: :goat:
My goats have escaped a grand total of never ever, and I have had one fence failure that let the sheep go for a visit to the post office :-[ ;D (hubby has since learned that lekky fence is only good if you remember to switch it back ON ::) )
If you wanted to visit give me a shout, I only have little bits of land and we do fab :thumbsup:
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Greyface Dartmoors are a hardy westcountry breed, they are docile and easily bucket trained. But, they are longwools so need lots of fly protection, and lots of feed! They have the prettiest lambs which can be finished by christmas if born early.
(http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa43/crazysheep-795/P4261266.jpg)
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we are in chard somerset we also have some soays but they can be quite flighty and ours jump but never escaped luckly, we have to watch our girls weights here as they seem to do bit to well.
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I have to defend the crossbreed. Everyone else loves and defends their favourites but we'll stick with our miscellany.
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If you liked your Ruby Reds you may also wish to consider the local sheep breed, then, being the delightful, canny, Exmoor Horn. Or, fairly local, the Dorsets (3 types - Poll, Horn and Down), all of which would give you a perfectly acceptable meat lamb. Portlands are not so geographically distant, either, are rare, beautiful meat and have beautiful fleeces you can sell to handspinners (if you treat them right - the fleeces, I mean!) Wiltshire Horn is only from over the border, too, and as I mentioned above, has the advantage of shedding its own fleece so being a little less of a worry on flystrike, plus not having to find a shearer for a small flock.
One decision is whether to breed your own replacements or not. If you do, then as others have said, you need a new tup every two years or he's onto his daughters - or, you can just buy a tup lamb each year, work him, then fitten him and sell him in the fat.
If you are happy to buy in replacement ewes, then you can use a tup of a different breed - a terminal sire like a Texel, for instance, or maybe a Dutch Texel (a bit smaller) if your ewes are a smaller breed themselves, eg., a Portland.
If you're planning to buy in replacements then you don't have to restrict yourself to pure breeds. You could buy Exmoor Mules locally (their mother is an Exmoor Horn and their father a Blue-faced Leicester) and run them with a Texel or Charollais tup for a good commercial lamb. Or, as SF is advocating, buy any reasonable commercial ewes sold as suitable for breeding, of mixed parentage but likely to produce good fat lambs to a Texel, Charollais or similar.
If your lambs are 'white' lambs (dad a Texel, Charollais or similar), then they should sell readily through your local mart. If you go the rare breed route, particularly if you breed true, then you probably want to be thinking about processing the lambs yourself and selling the meat. You'll get very little for a Shetland, Portland or Castlemilk Moorit wether in an auction ring, but the meat is beautiful and will sell readily as half a lamb - or half a hogget if you keep them through to their second year to mature - for the freezer.
Other breeds that I see smallholders praising include Zwartbles, Ryelands, Llanwenogs, Lleyns.
I see that you are wanting to start soon after the New Year, so you have little opportunity to go to shows and have a look at different breeds in order to choose one that appeals to you. One option would be to get some orphan lambs to rear this year, to get yourself used to sheep and give yourself time to choose your breed. Find a farmer you can trust to supply you with orphans that have had a proper start in life, though - if they haven't had colostrum, they just make work and usually heartache.
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Sounds like you have had some great advice from everyone, but one other key thing is that you choose a breed that you like. Afterall you are the one that will be looking and handling them. If you could wait until the summer and get to a few shows to see a range of sheep in the flesh and to talk to the owners in person that would be great - just bear in mind they are talking about a breed they have chosen and therefore their views could be a tad biased so do additional homework before you make your final decision.
I wish you the best of luck and many happy shepherding years to come. You have chosen a great forum where everyone will be very happy to offer good advice.
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Decide what you want to achieve with your sheep and look at your land, then choose a breed that will do the job for you. It will be no good you deciding that suffolks are the breed for you because you love the look of them and and then putting them 1500ft up a welsh mountain and expecting them to live and do well, and lamb outside in February with minimal assistance.
An extreme example I admit, but it illustrates the point.
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If you don't like wool, may I suggest the Wiltshire Horn?
If you dont like wool or horns - may I suggest some kind of composite shedding breed?
I may be biased..... :innocent:
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I may be biased..... :innocent:
I remember seeing a fit young farmer at the WH annual show and sale wrestling with a ram that was certainly heavier than him. He did win but I was close....
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Aye, Wilts Horns are big sheep and they are a git to handle - but as they are woolshedding and easy lambing you shouldn't have to handle them that often. I appreciate them most in the summer when I am flapping about worrying about flies on my wooled sheep.
(I keep missing WH annual show, I keep forgetting to join the breed soc.....)
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A friend of mine has Manx Loughtans if you were looking for something rare and a little different. He has been delighted with them. The RBST website is a good place to start looking and has links to many of the different breed societies.
My parents bred South Devons so we were in a similar position when choosing which breed and we started with Jacobs because I had always wanted some. I then sneakily added some Black Welsh Mountains because they had been another early years love of mine and somehow a Shetland flock materialised as well. :innocent:
Provided they suit your land the very best advice is to choose what pleases you. From the point of view of your local breeds I would be wary of Devon and Cornwall Longwools both because longwools require a lot of care and because I vividly remember a ram who transcended nasty and descended into outright viciousness. He may well have been the exception but he certainly put me off the breed for life.