[cowpat]

hi all.i have an area of good grassland about an acre.how may sheep could I keep on this.i quite fancy a few in lamb ewes.any advice would be great thanks

[Hillview Farm]

Personally, I would say about 3 ewes and lambs for permimant grazing as there is nothing worse than being short of grass!

[cowpat]

thanks.its on the side off my dads farm so if the grass got low I dare say I could move them.but would like to stay self contained.woud it be best to graze half acre at a time and then swap to let grass recover or just let them at the lot?.

[smallflockshearing]

If you split it in summer, the grass will get away from you: not good, unless you are able to take hay or silage from it.  The best time to rest grass is early spring.  It depends what your ground is like, whether it gets poached easily, and just how hardcore you want to be.  Strip grazing is best for rationing grass, but you will need to be moving the fence every day.  Winter will be the problem - I know some farmers can maintain all-grass grazing systems for sheep, but you might need more paddocks and to be really clever with rotations.

[Hillview Farm]

I made my field into four smaller paddockd this year and grazed each for 2 weeks. The grass never 'never got away from me' and there was no need to make hay etc. Over winter I strip graze larger fields and move the fence weekly and not daily and this works perfectly fine for me

[cowpat]

do you think I would find in lamb ewes at the market?.Melton mowbray would probably be my nearest

[Hillview Farm]

For April lambing I would say it's abit early as they don't get scanned until 2 months pre lambing. Have a look on preloved or farming ads. It's always best to go to someones farm, see their stock, see the ram used and their offspring and see if they are healthy! You Can ask questions too and you know whO to turn to if they sell you something bad which is unlikely anyway. Markets are stressful at the best of times let alone  for an in lamb ewe

[jaykay]

Our breed society has an in-lamb sale in Jan, so that may happen locally to you too.

But I'd ask around and see if a local farmer will sell you a few.

If it were my acre, I would divide it into 4 paddocks too. You rotate the sheep round, new paddock every week, which significantly reduces many worms, whose cycle is around 3 weeks (ie they hatch in the empty paddock each time in this system, have no sheep to infest, so die).

[smallflockshearing]

Hi Hillview, out of interest what is the stocking density on your winter grazing, do you fence in front and behind, and do you go over it once only or do you get a second crossing?

[Hillview Farm]

I couldn't tell you the stocking dencity as I have acess to graze over 150 acres and I don't have a lot of ewes. I front and back fence as the ground is quite wet and I don't want to poach it. As I have a lot of grass I only graze it once, silage fields get grazed reasonably hard

[devonlad]

dividing your land up is something I would firmly advocate. our initial one field of just under 5 acres is now split into 5 bits- two main fields of approx. 2 acres each and 3 further smaller bits that have sort of appeared for various reasons and come in really handy on occasions. the longer you have sheep the more reasons there seem to be to need to separate them ( weaning, gender splits, illness, different feeding requirements etc. etc.). now that we can rest ground for periods we seem to get away with pumping in chemicals less often, plus there seems to be nothing like a fresh bit of grass if you're a sheep. we even got to make a bit of hay this year by being able to keep a bit back for a couple of months. obviously fencing costs and we have slowly got things to the way we want over several years. wire is always going to cost but farm sales are usually a great place for dead cheap fence posts. we've worked out that our limit is probably about 12 ewes on our land but that seems to need supplementary hay throughout the winter and we do keep pigs alternate years in one of the smaller bits