The Accidental Smallholder Forum

Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: ho !sheep! on March 24, 2017, 02:58:07 pm

Title: bedding your ewes
Post by: ho !sheep! on March 24, 2017, 02:58:07 pm
What do you bed your eyes on, hemp,shavings, wood pellets, paper or  straw and over 3 months how much do you get through?
Title: Re: bedding your ewes
Post by: bazzais on March 24, 2017, 03:09:27 pm
we tend to use barly straw as its longer and thicker for the initial lay - intermeduate shavings down to help dry.  A good bed is a warm bed - not a stinking bed.
Title: Re: bedding your ewes
Post by: bazzais on March 24, 2017, 03:10:33 pm
but to be fair when the bed dryies down and is compacted and not sledge - it just about how far till you reach the roof.
Title: Re: bedding your ewes
Post by: ho !sheep! on March 24, 2017, 04:34:51 pm
I need to be able to compost the waste fairly quickly.  Sticky bed is defiantly something I want to avoid
Title: Re: bedding your ewes
Post by: Foobar on March 24, 2017, 04:38:44 pm
Shavings on the bottom, straw on top.  Absorbent and makes it easier to peel up when mucking out :).
Title: Re: bedding your ewes
Post by: twizzel on March 24, 2017, 07:00:31 pm
Straw... bedded every other day and mucked out every week. If it's a pen the tractor will fit in then it's left longer between muck outs.
Title: Re: bedding your ewes
Post by: Buttermilk on March 25, 2017, 10:00:03 am
I prefer shavings with straw on top but this year with using a different building it was shavings only and I will soon have used a full pallet.  For cost you would have to price up a pallet full locally.  I have used very large flake shavings which I find more cost effective than smaller shavings even though the initial price is more than a pallet of smaller shavings. I like the disinfectant affect of fresh shavings with young lambs in the mothering up pens so use them for that even when there is straw available.
Title: Re: bedding your ewes
Post by: Marches Farmer on March 26, 2017, 02:52:34 pm
Our contractor supplies small bale wheat straw, which we prefer to barley straw as it doesn't shatter so much.  Ewes come inside onto a thick bed of it, mucked out by hand (thick rubber gloves and a trug) every morning.  We lamb over about two weeks so it's still OK at the end as it's a pole barn on an earth floor so wet is absorbed and the top layer dries off on a warm/windy day.    Mothering up pens are mucked out and newly bedded for each ewe.
Title: Re: bedding your ewes
Post by: ho !sheep! on March 30, 2017, 05:51:29 pm
thanks for your opinions have wheelchair causes mucking out issues on bigger scales with straw so if we do straw its tractor poly tunnels are hard core base so drain. but shed is concrete. I use hemp bedding for horses and deep litter this it so easy to doo but £8 a bale! so not for the sheep 
any one used wood pellets?