The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Connor on November 07, 2013, 05:20:29 pm
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How do I keep them warm atm they will be lambing in a polytunnel so should I put them in the polytunnel at night or just put them in it when they are lambing??
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Hi !
Sheep on the whole are very hardy so don't worry too much about keeping them warm - their fleeces do that. .
Polytunnels don't have the best ventilation (and can be humid) sometimes and can therefore cause respiratory problems - so I wouldn't bring them in at night as a matter of course. Keep it for lambing and only then for as short a time as you can.
Do they have access to natural shelter (a good tree line) or a field shelter? Some sort of shelter from constant rain and heavy snow is good - but there are plenty of sheep out there that do just fine up on the hills where shelter is in short supply. Mollycoddling them can cause more problems than just leaving them to it. Have fun with your sheep :wave:
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The worst place for sheep is an enclosed unventilated space.
The second worst is a flat fenced field with no natural or other shelter.
Sheep on the hills can use the natural terrain for shelter; rough pasture affords a great deal of shelter until well-meaning smallholders / farmers destroy all the rushes and other natural shelter. Walls and hedges are good shelter too, provided they offer a face to each likely wind direction.
If you have only a flat fenced field with no natural or other shelter, you can provide shelter in a number of ways, including:
- straw bales to shelter behind
- corrugated panels attached to the fences as windbreaks
- old tractor tyres
and, at risk of labouring a point, it if has rushes, don't remove them all, they're great shelter ;).
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Put a long fence post in the ground and make a cross out of pallets, with another fence post at each end. All well wired together of course. Protects from all directions.
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You could house at night, or not, depending on the weather. Are they biddable enough for you to get a ewe inside if she looks like lambing during the day? I'm a big fan of lambing under cover, not being fond of crawling around a wet field in the middle of the night stopping the first of twins wandering off into the gloom. I view my job as ending up with as many live ewes and lambs as possible. I know all about the "My ewes lamb outside at 1500 ft in temperatures of -15" school of thought. What they don't tell you is that they routinely lose 22% of the lambs. Lamb 'em inside and put the lambs out as soon as you're sure the ewe has mothered up, has milk and the lambs have been ringed. Keeping them inside is pneumonia waiting to happen.
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I bring mine in about a week before the first is due to lamb and they go out with the lambs 12-48 hours after lambing. As long as they have plenty forage - digesting it creates body heat - and some shelter they will be fine.
Don't bring them in wet - they warm up, start to sweat and steam then you get respiratory problems - hence the difficulty of bringing them in at night and out in the day. Inevitably, you'll be bringing them in wet some nights at least.
I agree with MF for exactly the same reasons - lamb indoors if it's an option :)
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You certainly wont have to worry about keeping your sheep warm in a poly tunnel. Quite the opposite. You will be surprised how warm they get inside. Agree with everyone else that ventilation is the key. If there is limited ventilation bringing them in will cause more problems than it saves. We personally lamb outdoors and have found it much more successful although it does involve more walking from a management point of view than having them all together inside.. We have dry stone walls that they use for shelter and also place a few small bales of straw in an L- shape that they can use as shelter if they so wish. If there is a problem we put the ewe and lamb(s) inside somewhere, if not they stay out. Find the ewes are much less stressed outdoors and as a result the lambing process seems to be quicker and easier. If you do want them inside to lamb bring them in a week before so they settle and put them out as soon as possible afterwards.
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Yes ventilation, and it shouldn't be warmer inside, it should just be out of the wet and the wind. Get yourself Tim Tyne's sheep book for Christmas, it tells you everything you need to know about woolies ;)
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I make pallet shelters, as described, for during the winter. They can shelter from the wind and the worst of the driving rain like this.
There are some very nice drystone-wall Y or X shaped shelters up on the fell that do the same job. One day maybe.
I bring my ewes under a roof for lambing, they're in a couple of days before and then in pens with their lambs for 3-4 days, and then still with access to the barn after that for a couple of weeks, depending on the weather. Barn very well ventilated, and door always open.
Someone down the dale rigs a 'dining shelter' ie a large tent roof, with no sides, but hay bales around the perimeter, for lambing.
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It's very difecult to no when in the end of march the forecast was for snow and wind not to bad I thort .The snow started at dinner no problem .8 pm 80 miles an houre wind it was that bad that if I went out I wouldent get back .By 6 pm the drifts were 10 foot it took till 11 am to get out the croft .in the field there were nothink no sheep nothink I thort haw meney should be there be 60 for sale 40 im keeping the dog found most 60 dead but there was 1 berried for 7 days and lived .so you never no Whots right or wrong .
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I use pallets in fields without shelter and make a noughts and crosses board, using stakes and baler twine to secure. This is very stable and the wind can get through the little gaps so it doesnt get moved by the wind, it also provides shelter from all directions.
I lamb outside always but bring in mum and lambs as soon as poss afterwards to allow lambies to get dry and castrate the boys. However if it's ewe lamb or twin ewe lambs and the weather is great I sometimes leave them out.
If brought in they are in our stone steading which due to being a bit decrepit has 'ample' ventilation opportunities! However this is due to become part of the house (has PP, it's attached to the house) so this year we got a 25x12 field shelter with big ventilation slats for use for lambing. There's a central partition but this swings back flat against the back wall if you want it as one big space.
Our sheep are hardy Shetlands tho and never happier than when outside, even in dodgy weather.
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Another thing you need to watch for when lambing outside is the predators. Foxes, of course, and badgers are just as bad. A few years ago ravens were coming down when my neighbour's ewes had the first of their lambs and tucked it away under the hedge while having the second. They pecked out the eyes, tongue, umbilicus and anus of the first born. No choice but to end their suffering.
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Another thing you need to watch for when lambing outside is the predators. Foxes, of course, and badgers are just as bad. A few years ago ravens were coming down when my neighbour's ewes had the first of their lambs and tucked it away under the hedge while having the second. They pecked out the eyes, tongue, umbilicus and anus of the first born. No choice but to end their suffering.
My landlord has a massive outdoor pig unit next to the downs where I lamb - there are thousands of crows who will take a lamb, and yet my losses were nothing like the 22% you mentioned earlier. I wonder if you have to have the right ewe, I have known mine to be pushing the first to suck whilst having the second. They also don't seem to have them under hedges/in copses much, although there are plenty to lamb in, they lamb on a vantage point often, right out in the open.
Laming outdoors in April seems to have similar mortality rates to indoor lambing earlier in the year - its just that you can see the things that kill your lambs when you do it outside. Having said that, I think you either do one or the other properly, half measures dont work; ie if you are going to lamb inside, do it when it is cold enough to minimise microbial problems, bring the ewes in for a good while pre-laming for immunities etc. If you are going to lamb outside, do it in April/May, do it extensiveley, don't panic and shove the ewes in a small field, give them space and try not to touch the lambs (All my terminal lambs now don't get bothered by me at all until they are a month old, unless they are stuck/sickly etc I just look from a distance NO POKING).
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We have lots of crows but no problems to date from them. However I have lost a small twin lamb soon after birth to a golden eagle (!). None to foxes but I do try to lamb in a field with a 7 foot fence. However I don't think that is a complete protection as foxy took a gander from inside it. However the Shetlands are excellent mothers and protect both single and twin lambs fiercely, they really love their lambs.
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Never lost a lamb to a fox - here crows are the only things that will outright kill a lamb, we have ravens (a lot of them), buzzards, badgers but they will only take a lamb when its down its crows that will actually knock them down if they look a bit slow.
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A sheep on a maintaince diet through the winter with a fleece depth of 5cm is not under cold stress, that is burning energy to stay warm until about -15'C, a dairy cow in full lactation is about -20'C. That is in still conditions rather than very windy. What really knocks them about is constant wet weather when their insulation gets water logged and so loses heat faster, that and having a wet bed so they don't lie down and rest enough.
If to put them inside make sure there is lots of ventilation and even consider shearing them if you are going to house them all winter the same as in Norway and parts of Canada where they are housed due to the depth of snow and predation from wolves and bears rather than the cold.
Traditional farming houses all over Europe had the living quarters either next to or over the top of the livestock to utilise the heat that the stock give off. A 250Kg weaned calf gives off the same amount of heat as a 3KW electric heater. The cold will be the least of the sheeps problems over the winter.
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Traditional farming houses all over Europe had the living quarters either next to or over the top of the livestock to utilise the heat that the stock give off. A 250Kg weaned calf gives off the same amount of heat as a 3KW electric heater.
Wish we'd thought of that when we renovated the house :innocent:
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Brilliant ;D butt n ben - you could still do it Rosemary, get rid of the 3 piece suite ....... or not, creature comforts and all that :D
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:thumbsup: , a lot of cultures still keep their livestock in their home... :thumbsup:
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I have been wondering about hedge shelter so this thread has come in quite handy:
I have some tall hedges with tree overhang in the field with my 7 Soays and they have been very happily sheltering in there for the past couple of months. However it occurs to me now that all this growth is loosing their leaves, so there will be just bare branches left in a couple of weeks - not much shelter from rain then, it would seem to me? Or am I being over-worried here?
I've been wondering about building a shelter of some sort, the pallet ideas here seem really good - anyone has photos? Would love to see how you put these together (am very new to all this, I'm sure you can guess).
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My orphan lambs had a shelter in their field and they always used to bury their bums in the hedge instead.
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ladyK, our Soay love their shelters. They do use our mature hedges but if the rain/snow is heavy they head for the shelters. We just have one in each paddock. OH made a wooden one in one field - can stand up in it and it has gates that can be closed if need be eg. lambing, ill sheep and the other is just made from curved corrugated sheets (was fathers chicken shelter originally) and can be moved around.
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Soays, as in from the Island of Soay... that place on the west coast of Scotland that is so wet and so windy that trees don't grow? They'll be grand I can assure you! It's a little like Shetlands, from Shetland where the wind has a run up all the way from Florida and doesn't slow down until it gets to Norway and the hay is £70 a bale.
Sheep are hard beasts and can stand almost anything the climate can throw at them so long as they have some fat on their back and some grub in front of them. They'll be grand, stress less and enjoy their company all the more.
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That was my first thought too, Dougal - but we have to remember that in their native habitat, the little primitives are probably carrying just one purebred lamb. Often in the smallholding scenario they may be carrying a pair of commercial cross lambs - and a ewe will need a lot more help to get through the winter with her lambs on board if so. ;)
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That's all very true (no commecial crosses for me, just yet).
I have simply been watching my lot and I noticed that while in my small field they did like using the field shelter in hard rain only. After the donkeys moved into that shelter they started congregating under the raised poultry house which also offered a spot of dry ground in hard rain. So they do seem to like that, so I'd like to try and offer something better than bare hedges now that they moved to the big field. DYI skills in our household are very limited though so it will have to be something simple or I'll never get around to put up anything (which might be just fine, I realise).
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All stock performs best if it has a dry bed, makes sense really. The wet sucks the joy out of everything including sheep. A few sheets of tin on a slight angle and nailed to a fence post would give most sheep enough cover if they wanted. Simple and cheap.
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I've seen my sheep walking round with snow/ice on their backs which stays there until the temp warms up and melts it along with the snow on the ground. This should tell you everything you need to know about the insulating properties of wool, awesome stuff! Wherever they have laid in the field are melted spots because there is less wool on their bellies but it doesn't put them off sitting in snow - they have a perfectly adequate field shelter but, by choice, only go in there to eat hay, get out of a blizzard or drop lambs. As long as the lambs get a good feed they will stay warm but if you have shelter for them it is better to use it providing it is clean, well aired and dry.