[feldar]

We have fed haylage as well, but i am always worried about listeria doing this. We have made big bales again this year but we do have a lot of sheep so should use the bales quickly.
love the smell of it not so good when you get it on your clothes then stand by the aga!!
We use sugarbeet too, cracking stuff keeps condition on and gives ewes extra bit of energy especially when the weather is bad

[Rosemary]

Re Hay nets, we've had a few eartags ripped out via haynets although never any sheep stuck. We bought an 8ft wheeled rack with a cover - it was expensive but I reckon it's saved a lot of hay. As Fleecewife says they do waste some and even if you pick it up and put it back in the rack, they won't eat it.

A friend of mine had a problem with her sheeps' eyes - as they pulled hay from a bag above their heads, the seeds fell into their eyes and caused terrible conjunctivitis, so just be aware of that.

Re haylage. It will go "off" if it's opened and not used quickly enough as will silage. That's why we use hay - we don't have the numbers for haylage or silage.

Like jaykay, we don't tup ours until they are 18 months old. Because we have small numbers, it's not practical to have too many groups, so we weaned the ewe lambs 10 days ago and yesterday we put them back in with the ewes and gimmers. Mums and daughters just ignored each other. All the females will stay together until just before the tup goes in, when the ewe lambs will be moved away. Once Leo's finished, the ewe lambs will go back in and all the females will run together "forever".

It's not the way a sheepkeeper with lots of sheep would do it, but it seems to work for us. Actually, it's quite interesting to see the family groups. Juno has a 2010 gimmer, Nellie, and two 2011 ewe lambs (Pixie and Poppy) and you often find the four of them grazing together. When this year's lambs were small, Nellie was often with them - big sister babysitting.

[SallyintNorth]

It's quite interesting to see the family groups. Juno has a 2010 gimmer, Nellie, and two 2011 ewe lambs (Pixie and Poppy) and you often find the four of them grazing together. When this year's lambs were small, Nellie was often with them - big sister babysitting.

That's lovely.  And running your untupped gimmers with their mothers gives the youngsters experience of lambs, so they won't be so surprised and shocked when, the next year, one seems to have popped out of their backsides! 

There's no question that cattle and sheep form attachments - have mates in the herd / flock.  It can be quite stressful for them to arbitrarily group them to suit our convenience, splitting up friends.

BH often tells about a pair of lambs he had once where he didn't at first realise the one was blind.  The other used to look after it, go and fetch it when the flock was moving, keep it clear of ditches, etc. 

[feldar]

We don't tend to run mums and last years lambs together but it is a lovely thought. It is amazing though we have loads of sheep but we can still pickout whose mum is who and we know all our ewes individually; traits and personalities by the time they come to lamb.
The shearlings stay as a group until they have their first lamb just so we can give a bit of TLC and know how they are going to cope then we run them as two shears with the older girls and split according to what ram we want to use.
We had a NZ chap come to buy rams from us and he was amazed our ewe lambs were not in lamb ( we always put them out to tack for the winter) He said all ewe lambs lambed in NZ  Otherwise you miss out on a years money.
I would prefer well grown shearlings myself i think having a lamb as a lamb knocks them to pieces

[Pasture Farm]

I did it for one year I pick 10 of the best lambs i had,  "A Lamb having a Lamb" not for me im afraid. They require a lot of TLC and all i got was VERY small lambs.
Each to their own i suppose

[SallyintNorth]

We had some accidental hogg lambings in 2010 (turned out we had an incorrectly castrated rigg in with the ewe lambs; when the temperature went below -15 deg C his internal testicle stopped being so hot it killed his sperm!)  9 of the 10 girls did absolutely brilliantly, lambed mid-May without assistance, all reared their lamb (thankfully all singles) and went to the tup again late autumn.  (The 10th had mastitis and couldn't rear her lamb.)

We were so pleased with them we bought some strong mule ewe lambs last year and put them to the tup in late November for late April lambs, along with a few of our earliest and strongest home-bred lambs.

They've done okay and the lambs are really good considering their mums were just babies themselves.  We did take off a few second lambs and either fostered them or reared them as pets.  (They've done okay too - thanks maybe to the Jersey milk!)

We won't tup any ewe lambs this year and will monitor how the bred-as-hoggs girls do next year compared to the other shearlings who were not tupped last year.

If we could be sure they'd all have singles it would be easier to decide to tup a few ewe lambs each year.  But asking a one-year old ewe to rear two lambs and continue to grow herself is asking too much, we think.  I suspect our 2010 crop were all singles precisely because, not knowing they were tupped, we didn't give the girls any extra feeding or special treatment at all.  As soon as you start caking them, cosseting them, etc, they go and have twins!

[robert waddell]

sally i would question your thinking on your last paragraph  the quantity of lambs conceived is determined at the moment of tupping not some time after 

[Rosemary]

sally i would question your thinking on your last paragraph  the quantity of lambs conceived is determined at the moment of tupping not some time after 

Would nutrition in the couple of weeks following tupping not affect implantation? Do sheep abort  / reabsorb part litters in hard times, like rabbits?

[shep53]

YOU are  correct ROSEMARY the nutrition/condition in the first third of pregnancy affects foetus implantation/ survival, death and re absorpstion is common and can be seen by the scanner  .the advice is to hold condition for the first third

[Corrie Dhu]

I am a bit mystified by this bringing out warm water for the sheep - mine just eat snow! (and mainly haylage, no feed blocks until 6 weeks before lambing, and just a small amount of ewe mix and shreds when all-day frost/snow, increased a bit 6 weeks onwards before lambing).

It would have been impossible in the last winter to bring out warm water for both the sheep and the goats (goats got it, but then goats don't do snow!) - I still had a 170% lambing, only one ewe barren (she never came into season) and a problem free lambing season. No triplets either!

Funny thing though - I had 29 lambs, 21 of which were girls!

Same here Anke. 

I've cut the flock down now but last winter I had 400 ewes plus followers (all the lambs which I finish and tups, home bred ewe hoggs) and there is no way I could have provided them with warm water, nor would they have been interested in it.

I do not feed hay if there is grass available.  I feed the twin bearing ewes ewe rolls before lambing time, depending on their condition upto 6 weeks before, last year they were in tremendous condition and I did not feed them concentrates until 2 weeks before lambing and the single bearing ewes got nothing until they were actually lambing.  Did not have a single case of TLD and the ewes maintained perfect condition through out.

One thing to remember is snow does not take condition off sheep like persistent rain and wind do.  If they have hay in snowy conditions, they are perfectly happy as their backs are dry.  They soon make their little tracks and it really doesn't bother them.

In snow conditions I give mine adlib hay.  Whatever the weather I give them Crystalyx high energy tubs 6 weeks prior to lambing.

Every year is different and you have to judge what they need based on their condition.

If you have plenty of good dry storage for hay, buy as much as you can fit in, if you don't need it, it will be there for next year!

[SteveHants]

I've never had much room for hay.

I don't feed sheep if there is grass available usually, but I did in the prolonged snow last year, it's usually beet pellets I'll feed em, you just have to be careful not to overfeed, since they seem to be more than capable of grazing through snow (I've watched them do it). Ewes have 'rockies' to lick most of the year. The thing that I do always remember to do is break the ice on the water trough, especially if it is cold and there is no snow for them to eat/drink (depending on how you look at it). I have a tiny field shelter I have access to for lambing and I will bring anything problematic in to deiver/'mother up', depending on what they need. I can't see the point in buying a hardy breed of sheep that will lamb outdoors and then bringing them in to lamb. My grazing is fairly overgrown in parts and there are a few thickets that they will lamb in if its raining hard.

[raygezer]

Hi all I have been reading the post about winter feeding some people mentioned sugar beet but never said how it was fed dry or soaked in water i have horsers and soak the beet overnite so now i am confused HELP    Thanx

[bigchicken]

I feed hay in the winter ad lib and a bit of sheep mix, more to keep them on the bucket and it keeps them handy. A bit about being in good nick at tupping time, I have a ewe who had pink eye and she took a bit longer than expected to recover and lost a lot of condition she managed to escape her pen and got caught with a tup she produced twins this was her second lambing, I was a bit surprised she didn't follow the norm. I never put her to the tup last year as she just needed a rest to recover and regain some condition.

[Fronhaul]

I feed sugar beet shred unsoaked for sheep.  I introduce it slowly and feed it in addition to coarse mix for the ewes that are in lamb if I think they need a little more condition.  The alpacas get alfabeet that doesn't need soaking and so does the ancient Shetland mare (over 30 but still enjoying life).  But you are right if you are feeding sugar beet rather than a roll such as Alfabeet (which is made for horses) to equines then it must always be soaked throroughly.

[ellisr]

I normally do 3 buckets of soaked sugar beet, 1 for the horse and 2 to pop in the field so that the sheep don't raid the horses. It is very funny watching as it ends up being musical buckets as they all move to the next one and so on. Sheep being sheep we know the other bucket always tastes better than the one your at. My sheep also get small amount of pellets and hay through the coldest part of winter but the hay generally stays from end of october until the grass shoots start coming through