The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: FrancesV on March 28, 2016, 01:15:16 pm
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Hi,
Does anyone have any experience at feeding up/housing older sheep/separating them from the main flock to improve/maintain their condition, for them, not for selling them on or slaughtering?
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Do you mean you have some old girls that you'd like to see their lives out in your care? If so, being on good grazing or with unlimited access to good hay means they don't need to be separated from the younger ewes. Access to an open-sided pole barn or field shelter will take the edge of the challenge of the weather. If they're thin it may be because their ability to digest feed is much less efficient than it once was, or they could need worming. Watch out for broken teeth, as one or more can limit cudding efficiency. If they've lambed this year check for mastitis, both now and during the summer.
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[member=4333]Fleecewife[/member] has had some lovely old ladies living to ripe old ages; I'm sure she'll have some good advice when she comes along.
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Little old ladies - love 'em 8)
Marches Farmer has some good advice in there.
First off FrancesV, how old are your 'old ladies' and what breed/s are they? My experience is limited to Primitives and females. When to decide they are 'old' and in need of special care does depend on their condition. I have another ewe who is 16, which many would think was ancient, but she certainly doesn't think so. She was mortified when I put her in with Blondie, my last remaining ancient - she bawled her head off til we let her out again and charged off down the field like a bat out of hell to get to her mates ;D
I have only one really old girl now, Blondie a white Heb :innocent: who is either 18 or 19, but as she's not registered we don't know for sure. To look at she's a bit like a toast rack covered in wool, with a very dirty face from spending a lot of time with her head in a molasses bucket. However, she can still skip along with the best of them. She spends her time between sitting in her shelter, which faces the sun so can revel in that, surrounded by her pals the hens which love to sunbathe too, and being out grazing or at the hay heck. Ideally she should have a companion, but her chum died at Christmas. We let her in with the rest of the flock for a gossip whenever she wants to, but she soon gets bored and demands to come back to her own paddock.
She needs slightly longer grass than normal so she can pull it with her gums, and also eats ad lib hay, coarse mix, her licky bucket and of course Digestives. She still has all her molars but no front teeth at all - this is ideal for a sheep which has started to lose front teeth - once the molars start to drop out then that's the end.
We found it better for the really old girls to keep them in a separate small paddock, with the food just for themselves as they eat more slowly than younger sheep and tend to get pushed aside at the trough. Same with Digestives - they wouldn't get any if the rest were crowding round.
They definitely need a shelter as the wet is what gets them, so if they are in with younger sheep they won't be able to defend their part of the shelter and could end up standing out in the rain. The fleece tends to thin in old age, so they don't have such protection as a younger sheep.
We would never keep them indoors - they would hate it and would probably rather be dead :o
We concentrate on keeping these old ladies very contented, but if for some reason things start to go wrong, then that is when we call in the knackerman. Sometimes they just die in their sleep as Jezebel did, just a few months short of her 20th birthday. If you don't have time to spend with these old ladies and really make pets of them, then it's not fair to keep them going just because you can.
Of course they need all the usual treatments all sheep need such as foot care, shearing, worming, anti-fly-strike and so on.
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Hi! I have kept my old ladies but only separated them when the tup goes in ,otherwise they stay with their mates :love:
My last one, a mule, no idea of her age but she was no spring chicken had stumps for teeth , lost weight in the winter even with ad lib hay and shelter but appeared happy, weight up again in the spring when the new grass came through. Only PTS when getting out of bed became an issue for her because of moving in a hurry when the rain came. All my other cross bred home bred ewes, the same applied realy , a health issue usually PTS ages 14 - 16yrs. Glad I'm not the only one that can't let go :love: :love:
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Once you get to the point of losing teeth, they often do better with none than one or two. I've found my older ladies often do well on liquid feed.