The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: piggy on May 20, 2010, 10:52:19 pm
-
We have 2 orphan lambs about 6 weeks old they are on our lawn at the moment in the daytime with a 50 meter electric netting fence and come into the stable at night,when they are bigger they will go in to the 2 acre field but my worry at the moment is there anything in the garden that could hurt them as they love nibbling all my trees and bushes.
Thanks
-
I don't know the full list of vegetation which is poisonous, but an obvious one is laurel - we lost a ewe and had another sick for a while after they escaped into the garden and chewed on the laurel. The bush has long since been cut down and burned and the stump dug out. Rhododendron is also poisonous to sheep and I would think that rhubarb and daffodils are too. Because your lambs are orphans you need to be extra careful as they would normally learn from their dams. If you can face looking through the DEFRA website there might be a list of plants poisonous to sheep. In addition to plants which are actually poisonous, there could be some which would cause young lambs an upset stomach. You are probably best to limit them to the lawn itself, as long as you haven't used any chemical herbicides and so on on it.
-
This is a pretty good list for garden plants - http://lavenderfleece.com/poison.html
I've got foxgloves in the hedges and all my sheep naturally avoid eating them. However, when choosing any new plants for our backgarden I've avoided all of the worst offenders like rhododendrens and azaleas and especially maples since we had two bottle lambs last year and they do end up getting everywhere.
Good luck with the orphans
Sue
-
The list of poisonnous plants is excellent. Thank you for that