[Nickie]

We've kept shetlands for a few years now. We are nearly 1000' up in the Snowdonia National park, facing the west coast & with only dry stone walls for shelter. They are on our 'improved' land, but it's not great grazing.


I always have licks in the fields as our grass is low in minerals etc. They get adlib haylage (as the 2 horses don't eat a whole big bale before it would go off so the sheep help consume it) & I give a tiny amount of hard feed twice a day mainly to keep them bucket trained. Funnily enough I have found that if the weather is really foul (so wet & windy you can hardly breath) I forego the hard feed as they would prefer to stay under the walls - who can blame them! It doesn't stop me getting soaked checking them though!


This year we have sold all our shetlands & swapped to welsh mountain (bigger market locally), so it will be interesting to see how these differ in needs. They should be ok in this environment, we got them straight off the mountain, fingers crossed.

[jaykay]

I moved my hay racks last year, as one a particularly rotten day (horizontal sleet) they weren't eating cos they didn't want to be in the exposed field, and were hugging the walls.

So my hayracks are now within shelter of the wall and it worked much better. I might need to shift the feedtroughs there too.

[SteveHants]

I run commercial type sheep, mostly on sparse chalk downland, and I don't really feed them - odd bit of hay in winter and the older ewes get hi-mag buckets at lambing.


But then, in winter, I run them at just over 1/ac, so they should have plenty of grass to go at.

[Fleecewife]

It does of course depend on just where you are and your local climate, soil type, elevation etc as well as your stocking rate, as you say Steve.  Where we are the grass is dead for most of the winter (Nov to March/April), hence adlib hay, so if they need it they take it.  Sometimes it grows for a week or so in Feb to give them a welcome bite, but we have to plan for 5 or 6 months of feeding.