The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: kellyrose on May 26, 2017, 05:19:07 pm
-
Thinking of getting some sheep, have around two acre`s for them how many sheep can i fit in that amount of land, any tips for breeds and places i could buy them from live in Stafford.
thanks for your help
-
What is your land like? 2 acres of lush, clean pasture can support more animals than stony, poor hill land, or acid, wet lowland conditions. Different breeds need varying pasture quality and acreage too. The breed you choose will be affected by your reason for wanting to keep them - meat, grass mowers, producing rare breed breeding stock.
Have you had a look back through past threads? There are endless discussions on this topic which would get you started.
-
If you want breeding sheep you may struggle on two acres, as tups are best kept separate from the ewes/lambs for most of the year, and if your land is all one field separation may be difficult. Also buying and keeping a tup all year for quite a small flock of ewes may not be cost-effective, however buying in a tup lamb in autumn, use him and then eat him may be a good solution.
You can probably rear bottle lambs quite well though, sell as fat lambs (or eat yourself) before the winter, give the land a rest until next spring and start again.
-
We are in our second year of sheep on an acre and a half (well now 2 acres as we are renting half an acre of poor grass).
We have split the 1.5 acre into 5 sections that we rotate around. We get about a months worth of grass in the winter but we only split the field in late autumn so there was not much growth to start with. We did supplement with hay over winter but most of it ended up on the compost heap as the sheep weren't interested. We only supplemented with nuts in the run up to lambing and just after.
We have pretty clean land (ungrazed for 10 years before we moved) and a very very low worm burden in our sheep.
We got 6 Castlemilk moorits as they aren't large sheep and would hopefully be gentle on the land. They also browse the hedgerows which is an additional all source of food.
We were intending to just get 3 but decided to get 6 and reduce down after our first lambing. We had only 4 get into lamb so the other two are marked for slaughter and possibly the worst one of the lambers. We may keep one of the lambs this year as a replacement and go forwards with 4 breeding ewes.
The downside of the castlemilks is that they take a long time to mature so you keep the lambs through the winter. So that is an additional strain on limited grazing. We hired a tup last year and had him here for 2 months. This year we will likely use a ram lamb and keep him with our un-castrated boys until slaughter time.
We may find we need to reduce down our breeding numbers further but we are keeping an eye on BCS and worm burden and will see how our land supports them.
Just thought I'd give you an example of a very much still in progress system of having sheep on a small acreage.
Dans
Edited because of autocorrect
-
Start with a copy of the Sheep Book for Smallholders by Tim Tyne. Other threads on here will cover your need for a CPH number, fencing, equipment, permanent water supply, trailer for transportation, provision of hay in Winter, registering with a veterinary surgeon, etc., etc., etc..........
-
It all depends on the breed of the sheep and grass consumption as there is no answer what you need to consider is rotation and 9 weeks for regrowth and worm control. On small land better getting lambs to fatten for the freezer then you have the best grass no hay buying and no messing. Once getting into winter then you need a barn as there will be no grass and poaching. Messing with a tup for a couple of sheep is financial madness.
Sheep need quality grazing unless you have moorland grazing. You want good grass to meat conversion then you must have tip top grazing.