The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: farmerswag on October 04, 2008, 01:18:39 pm
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Since being a sheep person for a whole year ;D ;D I have always thought that it would be handy to have a year planner for sheep to give you a rough guide as to what should be done and at what time of the year such as worming, vacs, dipping, pour ons, mineral supplements, prep for tupping etc
I know that people that have had sheep all their lives don't even have to think about it but for us newbies it would be helpful as I'm sure that everytime I speak to some one I am told there is something I should have done for my sheep ??? :o I will go and ask at the OH and see what he comes up with but its nearly 10 years since he had sheep and even then they would have been purely commercial. Will try and post it later but I want lots of imput from all the sheepy ppl :sheep: :sheep: :sheep: :sheep: :sheep: :sheep: :sheep:xx
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Hi Farmerswag,
I would be very interested in that chart! I'm new to sheep aswell & although I try to do lots of research there is always something you're not doing!
Anyway, Good Luck with them.
regards
Donna
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Very good idea!!!................. :)
I have been asked to write on about 50 times and one day I will.........its time, or lack of it thats the problem!
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ah yes but....
it would need to be two charts one for pedigree breeds and one for commercial.....
and of course each area will have its own timings lowland/upland/coastal
so now we have 5 charts
erm grow your own hay? feed foggage? feed brassica tops? beets?
the timings change and are almost endless....
still its a good idea
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yes that is a good idea, have trawled the internet and cannot find anything. 20 years ago (groans) i worked for 4 years on a dairy farm and yes youve guessed it on the wall was a circular chart that turned which gave you breeding calving info mainly but i think this is whats needed for sheep covering the whole year for sheep management jobs dragons den here i come neil
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I posted the idea 1st, I want a %age from Dragons Den!!! Will make a start at it tonight, away to look at another horse :horse: to buy while the OH is away ;D ;D
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I have a book called "Practical Sheep Keeping" by Kim Cardell. Chapter 12 is called the Shepherd's Year; goes from Month 1 to month 12 and you just start your year wherever appropriate e.g month 1 is "preparation for mating" so for me month 1 is October and so on, with month 7 being April and lambing. It also has, on page 55 and 56, a table showing tupping date v lambing date, so tupped on 5th November, lambs on 1st April and so on.
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Rosemary, could you put on a brief resume of the year bit from your book.
I'm sure it would be helpful to more than just me and at the moment I'm quite keen to see what my next steps are.
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That's being cheeky asking Rosemary to post that info. An awful lot of small sheepkeepers have that book me included as it tells you just about everything you need to know without getting to technical. :farmer:
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That's being cheeky asking Rosemary to post that info. An awful lot of small sheepkeepers have that book me included as it tells you just about everything you need to know without getting to technical. :farmer:
Probably is a bit cheeky, trouble is there is very little of that type of info on the net that I can find.
Got the sheep yesterday and very keen to get some / any sort of info. I've got pigs and their info is more readily available it seems. I'm quite keen to get things right rather than wrong. The experience I've had with sheep is limited and was some years ago. It's very different being told 'do this or that' to being the one who has to know what to do and when.
I live in The Lakes and there are sheep farmers coming out of our ears here. What I don't want to do though is pester the life out of the ones I know every time I wonder about something.
Also there are quite a few people who have just started or want to keep sheep and are a bit in the dark, so it would help more than me.
Christine is just off to the Co op for some milk, I'll ask her to call into the bookshop to see if they have it.
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It certainly sounds like a great idea. I'm another newbie to sheep (well got 5 lambs actually so not sheep yet!!!) and i've been worrying myself crazy about what i need to be doing when. Originally was only gonna have 2 and only till they were big enough to go for slaughter but now we have 5 we're gonna keep a couple of ewes for breeding from next year (mainly cos we haven't got enough freezer space for 5 whole lambs and don't thin i could eat that much lamb quickly enough!!!).
Been looking at buying some books but can't ever work out which ones are gonna be useful. Anyone got any tips???
Claire
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Try Amazon you should be able to get it there.
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I don't know if I right but i seem to remember Mr Ree's asking the same thing a while ago on page 2 of sheep under "sheep calender" theres a link on there to a calender thingy looks intresting. ??? ??? I don't have sheep!! so no idea myself. :sheep:
http://www.lackhamfarm.co.uk/about/sheep/shepcal.asp
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There is a good guide article to the shepherding year in the April issue of Country Smallholding.