[FiB]

Grrrr.  My lovely neighbour comes for a cup of tea once or twice a week and to manage me!!!  I rely on him for help and advice and have been really happy to have been able to help him out a few times in return this year - but on that front I am well in his debt.  My trouble is that I am struggling to try my own ideas (well not my own - but thoughts gathered from here and what the vet says..) out. 

For example Ive just put my 14 sheep (about to become shearlings) on a 2 acre field a week and a half  ago and plan to move them on in 2 and a half weeks, because of what I have gleened on worm life cycles (the thinking being that after 4 weeks , the old field will be clean (er) the eggs having hatched and found nowhere to go - is this right?  He is persistantly questionoing why they are still on this field (I know that 14 sheep on 2 acres is technically overstocked, but for another 2.5 weeks??  They have had access to hay (and arnt interested so assuming the grass is growing sufficiently?) and a litttle hard food each day just to keep them coming to me for a look over....

Then there is the shearing - hoping to get singing shearer over this Friday  - thought I would wither away under his frown (the way of the valley is July)!!  But my gut feel is that they are 13 or 14 months old, they look like puffballs, they have had persistant probs with biting lice so treatment will be more effective post shearing (??) we are hand sheering, so they wont be quite as bald AND they will have access to shelter.

I feel bad going against his thoughts/wishes (and it would be much easier to just do what he says in all), but I want to try to manage the worm burden on my small patch and make some of my own decisions about my flock.  BUT I am starting to wonder if anything I am proposing is wildely wrong (particularly keeping 14 sheep on 2 acres for 4 weeks).  Dont want to upset neighbour and loosing confidence....

[colliewoman]

Well if it's any help I keep my sheep on any given area until they've ate the grass, otherwise it grows back patchy and horrible

[Pedwardine]

My neighbours thought I was mental for considering a spring and an autumn shearing as they don't value fleeces around here, just meat. I sell both and my fleeces need to be the best they can so I don't care what others think. Very hard nosed shepherds with commercial flocks mainly around my area. My rule with grazing is don't let it get nibbled down too hard as it takes so long to recover if it can at all (plus weeds will get a hold in bald ground). 3cm and below isn't recommended on sward length. Sheep will also get 'grass is greener' tendencies if allowed to hard graze an area so you're creating future escape problems for yourself. As long as you keep an eye on the situation you're fine and 14 to two acres is only a tiny bit over the optimum stocking rate anyway so that's not really an issue.
They're YOUR sheep!

[Fleecewife]

We are out of sync with our neighbours on many things, and not on others. For example we make hay differently - but we get a crop when they don't 
We shear when we feel our sheep are ready - we hand shear but don't do them all at once (creeping decrepitude).  Singing Shearer will keep you right about whether he can hand shear them yet.

Your system is on a different scale perhaps to your good neighbour.  An approach which might work would be to say - 'you can have a good laugh at me when it all goes wrong, but this is what I'm going to try this year'. Keep it good humoured because you will still be needing advice in the future.

[plt102]

We have 14 sheep as well. Our ram and 2 wethers are out in our 2 acre field with 3 horses and our ewes who are lambing are in a small paddock near the house so we can keep an eye on them until after lambing/shearing/feet trim and worming at which time we'll swap the boys and girls over. We had a bit of a problem with over grazing over the winter so had to rotate and rest the grass so we are going to reduce our stock by at least one horse if not all 3 before winter. The sheep seem ok though and always can have the run of our garden if they need another paddock :-) I think as long as you have plenty of hay and keep an eye on your grass (and don't have horses) you would be fine with 2 acres.

[SallyintNorth]

I'm inclined to agree that if they don't eat the hay then they're not hungry - but sheep are notoriously finicky about eating hay when the grass is growing, even if they'll  happily eat it in winter.

Look at the grass in your 2 acres.  Pick a representative 1m x 1m square.  What proportion of the 1 square metre is:

• grass vs weed or bare ground
• covered in sheep poo
• of the grass, stems less than 1" long
• of the grass, stems over 1.5" long
• of all grass stems, stems with a pointed (grown) end vs. stems with a square (cut / bitten) end

I don't have target percentages (does anyone else?), but I suspect if you do the above analysis it'll be clear to you whether your sheep need to be on better ground or not. 

Lovely advice from Fleecewife about handling your experienced neighbour.

[shep53]

You could say that you are following the latest thinking and trying MOB STOCKING where a lot of sheep or cattle are put onto a small area for a short period . AS to shearing if their neck wool is loose then they are ready, if you sell shearlings in aug/sept then you clip them march/april , so your not that unusual .

[tizaala]

I seem to remember once reading that tapeworm eggs can live in the topsoil for 40 years. ....makes you wonder.

[FiB]

I seem to remember once reading that tapeworm eggs can live in the topsoil for 40 years. ....makes you wonder.

Blimey!!  I read a report today that said worm eggs take 2-12 weeks to hatch (didnt say whether that was for different species or different weatehr conditions) ... Dont think I can bear the wrath of neighbour for 3 months!!!!  Wish there was a formula for land management best practice - the more I read the more confused I'm becomeing re worm burdens !!   Thanks all for wisdom and advice as always. Fi xx

[plumseverywhere]

I'd planned to get my 2 ewes sheared sooner rather than later but faced some ridicule for the idea too. Singing shearer will do ours once we are less rainy. As someone else already said, I trust his experience and judgement.
You are in a tricky situation because as a relative novice (as am I) you want to seek good advice but at the same time just because someone else has done a, b or c for 20 years doesn't mean its currently right or 'best practise' any more 

[FiB]

I'd planned to get my 2 ewes sheared sooner rather than later but faced some ridicule for the idea too. Singing shearer will do ours once we are less rainy. As someone else already said, I trust his experience and judgement.
You are in a tricky situation because as a relative novice (as am I) you want to seek good advice but at the same time just because someone else has done a, b or c for 20 years doesn't mean its currently right or 'best practise' any more 

Exactly!!  Friday is supposed to better - I think we may be sharing him on Friday??  Fingers crossed for NOT the coldest May in 100 years!

[hexhammeasure]

Talking to my SQP the other day I was trying to buy a worming drench for the lambs... they said not to bother til the soil warmed up as worms needed warmer weather to hatch and this year has been too cold ... maybe he missed the warm spell we had?!!!

[plumseverywhere]

Talking to my SQP the other day I was trying to buy a worming drench for the lambs... they said not to bother til the soil warmed up as worms needed warmer weather to hatch and this year has been too cold ... maybe he missed the warm spell we had?!!!

Do you know what, it was EXACTLY that which scared me into ringing the shearer  There's no way I could handshear (on my own) as we are so new to sheep and having seen 2 sheep go down with flystrike when other people used our land I didn't want to see that ever again.
When the weather is as unpredictable and interchangeable as it has been this year, I don't think we can rely on "this is how we've always done it..." so much     I still feel like such a scared, newbie though LOL!

[Small Farmer]

Commercial aint the same as small scale, and every farmer I know disagrees with his neighbour on just about all farming matters.  Stocking ratios are year-round numbers - we graze hard and move often.

You have to make your own mistakes otherwise you never know why you're doing something. 

But also "learn from the mistakes of others because you won't live long enough to make all of them for yourself" as the Civil Aviation Authority says.

[smudger]

We have two sheep neighbours both big commercial boys and both seem to do things differently (peering over the hedge, not that they give us advice). One mobs his fields and moves them off quickly - probably every 2 weeks. The other has all his fields open so the sheep free roam (about 50 acres I think), but I have rarely seen the fields without sheep in them. I do see more limping sheep in the latter (his is also rented lands, the other owns theirs). Neither field seems to have much grass to my untrained eye, but their fields have greened up quicker than ours so, they must be doing something right.

I have been trying to get head round  stocking rates and rotation. Think what I want to do is achieve both things mentioned here ie balance the field/paddock size and  stocking nos so the grass is grazed down quickly to optimum length to allow sheep to move onto the next field/paddock and avoid worm/foot problems.  When I did my into to sheep course, they mentioned that traditional farmers say sheep shouldn't hear church bells twice on the same piece of ground ie move on within 2 weeks.  Maybe for the next field subdidvide with temp elec fencing to achieve this?  My rotation plan involves 2 acres paddocks but I will have double your no of sheep, plus a few horses. Ignoring one field safeguarded for tupping/lambing/stable paddocks, I've got six to rotate around for summer grazing. Don't know if it will work, but will give it a try but hoping each paddock will get a month's respite in between horses or sheep grazing for grass growth and 10 weeks for worms/foot bacteria to die off.