[nin]

I am planning a new shed for sheep to live and lamb . They will be a small breed of welsh hill sheep , still deciding on breed!
We are not looking at starting with more than 15 ewes and going to a maximum of 25-30 ewes depending on how are grass copes !
How big a shed would you advise we go for? We are building ourselves over the summer any special cares will go in the main barn this will be the main sheep shed for spring pre and post lambing time before they split off into other fields with field shelters.
Yes i know hill breeds don’t need a lambing shed or field shelters but if you can give extra care why not is my thinking.

[SallyintNorth]

Yes i know hill breeds don’t need a lambing shed or field shelters but if you can give extra care why not is my thinking.

Field shelters if you're short of natural shelter? Yes of course.

Taking a hill sheep to live and lamb inside?  Recipe for all sorts of disaster in my (fairly considerable) experience.

Hill sheep expect and need space, to be able to go off and select her spot, nice and private away from the flock, to lamb.  Once the lamb or lambs are fit enough to run about and bonded enough to follow mum, maybe the next day or may be day 3, she'll pick her moment and gently introduce them to the flock.  Over the next 1-2 days the little family group will become more integrated - but given the choice, hill sheep don't really live all bunched up together at these times, they'll be spread fairly widely.

All of that natural behaviour, all of it, is quashed if you bring them in.  The ewe cannot do any of it the way her instincts tell her to. Now you have a shed full of stressed sheep, all far too close to each other. 

I could write pages...

If you want to have sheep indoors for lambing, there's absolutely nothing wrong in that.  Goodness, we work hard enough looking after these critters, may as well do it in ways that give you the most joy!  But if what gives you joy is hands-on, interventionist lambing in a nice shed, then please choose a breed that suits that system.  And that's not a wild little hill sheep.

Top piece of lambing equipment for hill sheep?  Binoculars.

[nin]

Thanks for the advice
I am
not planning on having the sheep in 24/7 just somewhere warm during lambing for them to come that’s dry and has feed , hide from storms etc just a bit more than a field shelter .
I am not looking at a particularly primitive breed one where people
i have spoken to lamb inside or out about 50/50 . From what i have read the birth survivals are about 2 with an indoor lambing and 1.5-1.75 out doors .

[SallyintNorth]

Survival rates for outdoor lambing will be impacted by conditions of course, and how swiftly the shepherd can take action if needed.  In cold wet weather, a lamb may need to suckle within half an hour, whereas in warm dry weather, it can stay alive for a couple of hours, so the shepherd has more time to get involved if there's a problem.

We moved our lambing back to mid April because we didn't want the sheep to have to deal with the impact of bad weather and no grass.  But if an earlier lambing is necessary for your own reasons, then yes, you might need at least a contingency for indoor lambing if the conditions dictate.

[Bywaters]

We are at 850 ft, at the foot of the pennines. Been breeding Whitefaced Woodlands (a hill breed) for 30+ years. In the beginning, we tried lambing indoors (in pens rather than a free for all) and they didn't like it at all
They lamb outdoors unless prolapsed or some other such reason for them to be inside. If there are any difficulties / awkward ones, we will bring them in for a couple of days to bond / receive TLC and then they are out again.
We can see almost all of our lambing field via cctv and have cctv in the barn so we can keep an eye on those inside.

Most of our lambs seem to come at dawn, rather than at a time convenient to us, so unless the weather is shocking or they have been delayed, we are able to kaap a remote eye on them.

It's up to you, of course, but nature is a wonderful thing, especially when left to it's own devices.
Sheep are fickle creatures, you would think that given the opportunity to go lamb in a sheltered shed, they would, but I've never known them choose what we would think is a common sense option !!

[SallyintNorth]

There's a pretty strong argument to say that lambing on the hill selects for fabulous mothers and hardy af lambs.  Whereas lambing indoors, the necessary interventions could mask an erosion of those traits.

Not a problem if you're only breeding for meat I guess.  But something to ponder on if you planned to sell breeding stock.

[Bywaters]

There's a pretty strong argument to say that lambing on the hill selects for fabulous mothers and hardy af lambs.  Whereas lambing indoors, the necessary interventions could mask an erosion of those traits.

Not a problem if you're only breeding for meat I guess.  But something to ponder on if you planned to sell breeding stock.

That's a good point. Back along a couple of decades, the RBST registered Whitefaced Woodlands were very much looked down upon by those in the Pennines and Derbyshire Peaks . A slight generalisation, but If they ever came up for sale at the Breed Sale, it was pretty obvious which were which, as the RBST animals tend(ed) to be much finer boned and "slack in their jackets" compared to the "natives". This was reflected in the price and demand

[JFW67]

I have a small flock Welsh black mountain sheep.  10 breeding ewes.  I’m in Northern Ireland on the north coast where we are subject to pretty nasty northerly and westerly winds, high rainfall and the classic four seasons in a day weather of the region.

The breeding ewes are all very biddable - not the wild mad sheep often associated with hill breeds.

I have two small holding pens that I bring the ewe and lambs into for about two days after they have lambed in  my lambing field.  The pens are two meters by three meters and have an open half and a roofed half.

They come in to the lambing field on the date they are due to lamb.  The lambing field has a few well established trees, some Hawthorne bushes, grass and Reed’s.  Loads of options for them to choose to lamb in.

I don’t meddle with them at all.

In the five years I have been keeping sheep I have had to assist three lambing.  All due to slightly difficult presentation with a foreleg out of position.

I have lost only two lambs.  Both from triplets where the mother had too little milk for the three and I failed to be able to get the smallest to bottle feed.

Early on I let them lamb wherever they liked and they almost always chose the furthert spot away from the home field that they could.

The few times any of my sheep have been enclosed in a more serious building they have been pretty unhappy.

[Rosemary]

I do wonder if, in our understandable desire to do well by and protect our own sheep, we are not doing the breeds a disservice, longterm.