The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: wonderwooly on April 08, 2014, 08:25:33 pm
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Hello,
I have two pooey Dorset Down rams which I am slowly trying to get used to the new spring green fleid.
First to give a picture:
The Down ewes are up in the top field, it is dry and they have been there all winter with hay, shelter and grazing space, lambs all done and fine. Not pooey.
The males who are with 2 Shetland ewes were getting quite difficult to fence by the end of January, due to the nature of our riverside land. They have all been in on hay from January until beginning March. The Shetlands not pooey. They have been let out into a low, dampish, field for 4-5 hours a day, they get pooey when they're out and it clears up if they're on hay for 2 days afterwards.
There seems to be a startling difference between the female downs, the male downs and the Shetlands.
My first question is when to worm? if i do it now will it be detrimental to their health, should i wait until there are signs of worms in the flock?
has keeping them in on hay made them more susceptible to the problems caused by new spring grass? I have a smaller area of slightly drier grazing that they could go onto in about 4 weeks but it is small and not yet fenced, so they can't go on straight away.
What to do? Any advice welcome, thanks.
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It would be worth getting a worm egg count check before you dose to see how your worm management is working so far. The problem is almost certainly just a slight dietary upset rather than worms. The rumen bugs take about 6 weeks to adapt to a different feed. You can use probiotics eg biocell farm mix ( a yeast based product) to help but if they're not getting bloated I would just leave well alone. Depending where you are you may need to treat to prevent flystrike.
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thanks farmvet that is interesting about the probiotics not sure what it would be called here in france. I will treat for flystrike strait away.
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Hope you get to the root of it all, crovect we find is the best, and give him a darn good dagging of course x
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I'd recommend crutching rather than dagging, if it's too early for you to shear. Some of my young sheep always get a bit runny as the grass growth kicks in but we've had egg counts done in the past and they've come back low to non-existent. If more start scouring it might be worth getting one done.
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Same thing isn't it , or am I total :dunce: Lol xx
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I thought dagging was just cutting off the dags, but crutching was more thorough and is shearing right down to the skin around the back end.
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Which amounts to the same thing minus the poop lol x
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Well they're scalped with a rather unfortunate haircut when we ve finished with them. Got about 15 to do at vaccination time now, the rest Are immaculate x