[thenovice]

Wondered if anyone on here didn't heptivac, and drench or tube lambs after birth, and lambed outside with minimal interference? What are your experiences letting mother nature  do her thing?

[kanisha]

I have never drenched or tubed lambs I lamb outside although this year am still waiting........ I keep primitives which may well make some diference to my choices and also live on the north coast of brittany again the climate is in general milder here. I do vaccinate my ewes for clostridial diseases.

My former profession as a vet nurse means that I have seen first hand the effects of non vaccination  we worked in an area of endemic parvo distemper and also saw infectious heptatitis and lepto.  Vaccination is a risk management strategy you will always win ( by not vaccinating) until you lose and then you vaccinate.....

Mother natures selection is survival of the fittest its  natural but it isn't always kind or soft and fluffy.

[lachlanandmarcus]

I lamb outside on a hill on the edge of the Cairngorms. However...they are Shetlands, I don't breed from hoggetts so they are full grown, have only used a Shetland ram to date so no big lambs/triplets, and I do take them inside for a day if the weather is horrid once born. Have had about 50 lambs so far, never had to intervene. I cull older ewes once their teeth etc aren't good or any with any mastitis or any other lamb affecting issue as our environment is too tough and I don't want them to struggle.


No drenching or tubing. I do however Heptavac P+ the ewes just cos it protects against so many things and passes some immunity to the lambs. Have only had to fluke one ewe in 5 years and have never had to worm them, we do have a decent amount of ground which helps.


The ewes are fed just on good hay and yellow Rockies lick unless there is snow on the ground when they get a handful of nuts each. 3 or 4 weeks prior to lambing if the weather is bad like this year they get a hi energy bucket, but only one between the 16 ewes and 2 wethers.


It's really a low cost, low return approach but it suits me.

[suziequeue]

Same here. We lamb outside with no intervention. Most of our ewes seem to like to lamb at lunchtime 


We give Heptavac P+ and we're going to start a footvax programme this summer.


We rotationally graze and the chickens go in afterwards to mop up the ticks and worm eggs.

[thenovice]

I have just started my small flock of wiltshirehorns, chosen for their hardiness, ease of lambing and fleece shedding. There are 2 old girls in there, for whom this is their last lambing. I do intend to heptavac them, but want to go for the low stocking, hands off approach. I lambed 2 southdowns last year as my first taster, and had to assist in both! When you look at the descriptions of a lot of sheep breeds, they all say "easy lambers", and "do well on just grass", but in reality this is far from the truth! Time to take a step back from modern day farming, and really test that statement. 1 of the old ewes lambed on her own in the field a few days ago in the icey wind and snow. By the time I had got to her, her little ram lamb was up on his feet, looking for his colostrum. Didn't get chance to spray him, but she cleaned him up, and hopefully he should be ok. 

[woollyval]

OK....you can kill me now.....

but first let me say that the descriptions actually ARE correct however that is when kept like they OUGHT to be! Look at the history of the breeds.....and most sheep were not grazed on pastures that were spread with petrochemical based fertilisers to make them 'grow'  nor on modern fast single species leys. They were not fed soya based cereals.....(now often fed at an eye watering amount) and nor were they penned in huge metal and concrete barns where they could take little exercise.....

I am afraid we reap what we sow and that is why sheep that should do well on pasture only do not.....and its not surprising....eg south DOWNS and Dorset DOWNS and Oxford DOWNS were developed to roam over huge areas by day on unimprved species rich chalk downland and were folded on the arable at night to basically poo and therefore fertilise it!
Lambing was outside and the sheep were again often folded at night .....took a lot of man power to move all those wooden hurdles.
There was no vaccination....vaccination is a modern thing, like all the other so called improvements that allow more sheep to be kept to the acre in a higher stress environment.
Organic farmers do not routinely vaccinnate nor worm.......but do if there is a known problem as its an animal welfare concern.

Most of you will not agree with me I am sure but I have over 30 years experience to back up my theories!

Right.....now taking cover

[SteveHants]

As people are no doubt aware by now  - I lamb mostly woolshedders of one sort or another (and some Lleyns) outdoors with minimal interference. I do vaccinate, I mostly use Bravoxin though. I have fed a bit of hay /licks this year and I have got through about 5 bags of nuts per 200 sheep in total, but that was really only because the grass hadn't started growing - this year is the exception, I normally buy 1 sack of nuts per year, in case anyone needs penning as they are ill etc. The key to having sheep that 'do' off grass is to give them plenty of...er...grass.


I stock no more than 1.5/head/ac in winter and just over double that in summer, on unimproved chalk downland (most of which hasn't seen a plough in living memory). The right breeds are important. I would be terrified of lambing mules on this system, for example, because it is a major hassle of you do have to interfere at lambing. On the plus side, you hardly ever do have to interfere, so in reality you spend much less time pulling lambs. A good, sensible culling policy helps to minimise any stressed animals on your system. Try and buy from people who have a similar outlook on culling. I worm only when FECs show worms are present and 2012 aside ( I wormed 2-3 times last year, depending on which mob they were in), I can go from one year to the next not worming ewes at all. 


Ignore most of the literature when it comes to condition scoring. Outdoor lambing ewes should be fit and not fat. They should be at no more than cs 2.5 (cs 2 is fine) when they go to the ram and this will drop during pregnancy. Nature should see to it that they regain condition after lambing as your lambing will coincide with the grass properly kicking in. Down here, I usually aim to start on April fools day, but I held back this year.


Ram choice is important - look for good maternal ebvs if you are selecting replacements, and even if you aren't it should come from an outdoor lambing flock and should not have needed pulling himself.


When it comes to lambing itself - try not to get involved. I know this is hard. Time is one of the most important things you can give a ewe. Binoculars are a very useful tool. To aid me I spray number every ewe a while before lambing so I can see who is who. I try not to disturb the ewes much at all during lambing, observing from a distance and avoiding stirring them up. Definitley do not check on them when it is dark - you will do more harm than good spooking them with a torch at night time. Because I am performance recording, I catch, tag and mark lambs at birth - but if you aren't there is really no need to touch them until they are a month old. Iodining navels is much less important outside, like anything you have to asses risk based on the prevailing conditions. If it is very warm and muggy, Id be more bothered about iodining navels than if it was dry and windy. Again; if you are lambing in the pouring rain (see: April 2012) and everyone is hunkered down with their mothers, I would personally leave them be and scrap my performance recording in that instance - live lambs are better than performance-recorded dead ones. Mismothering should be fairly obvious and sadly, outside there is little chance of getting a ewe to take back a lamb it has rejected. Cull any ewes who mismother and do not keep offspring as replacements, as there is evidence mismothering is learned in the first few minutes of life. Hopefully, you will have chosen some decent ewes and mismothering wont happen very often.


Once you have chosen your system stick to your guns. My vet told me some horror stories last year about people who (rightly) had gotten worried about the wet right at the last minute and brought all the ewes in, they then had a series of complications at lambing and a lot of watery mouth etc after and ended up lambing at 70%, compared to my 185%. My 'go-to' book is still VSS's book - you just have to remember it is written from the perspective of a March based lambing system in the uplands of Wales. The author is kind enough to say at the beginning of the chapter on lambing that if you were to lamb in April it would be a no-brainer to do it outside. There is a real danger of it being too warm to keep sheep indoors in April - increased temperatures are good for infectious diseases.

[SteveHants]

OK....you can kill me now.....

but first let me say that the descriptions actually ARE correct however that is when kept like they OUGHT to be! Look at the history of the breeds.....and most sheep were not grazed on pastures that were spread with petrochemical based fertilisers to make them 'grow'  nor on modern fast single species leys. They were not fed soya based cereals.....(now often fed at an eye watering amount) and nor were they penned in huge metal and concrete barns where they could take little exercise.....

I am afraid we reap what we sow and that is why sheep that should do well on pasture only do not.....and its not surprising....eg south DOWNS and Dorset DOWNS and Oxford DOWNS were developed to roam over huge areas by day on unimprved species rich chalk downland and were folded on the arable at night to basically poo and therefore fertilise it!
Lambing was outside and the sheep were again often folded at night .....took a lot of man power to move all those wooden hurdles.
There was no vaccination....vaccination is a modern thing, like all the other so called improvements that allow more sheep to be kept to the acre in a higher stress environment.
Organic farmers do not routinely vaccinnate nor worm.......but do if there is a known problem as its an animal welfare concern.

Most of you will not agree with me I am sure but I have over 30 years experience to back up my theories!

Right.....now taking cover

Actually, I pretty much agree with all of this. 


In the past, any sheep that were poor, would have died (natural selection), but now the farmer can be 'natural selection' and make cull price for his efforts.

[Marches Farmer]

Agree with both the above.  Would add that we lamb indoors and aim to be there for every lambing - after all they're lambing because we arranged for it to happen.  What we do, though, is keep or sell only the very best for breeding purposes.  The rest end up on a plate.  Every year lambing gets easier, although the numbers get higher.  Vaccination is a bit like insurance - you don't like paying for it until you need it, then you really need it and really don't mind paying.  Because we lamb inside we dose with Spectam - wouldn't if we lambed outside.  This year, so far, our survival rate has been spectacularly good compared with our neighbours who lamb outside.

[Fleecewife]

Wondered if anyone on here didn't heptivac, and drench or tube lambs after birth, and lambed outside with minimal interference? What are your experiences letting mother nature  do her thing?

We lamb outside and certainly don't drench at birth, if you mean with a routine antibiotic.  That is only needed in a seriously full lambing shed.  In a small housed flock where hygiene is scrupulous, routine antibiotics should not be required except for something unexpected.  Nor would we routinely give a dose of colostrum because our primitive ewes rarely have a problem with mothering.  We do watch to check lambs have fed.
 
We don't Heptavac any more.  We used to but then one year I got in a muddle with dates and they weren't done, with no problems, so now we don't do it.  We had been getting some abscesses at the injection site and it seemed to be more problem to vaccinate than not to.  However, I do accept the comment that it's ok not to vaccinate until it's not ie there's a problem.  We have a closed flock, well protected from neighbours flocks, and so far all is well.  If we need to change then we will.
 
I also agree with Steve about not interfering too much, just watch with the binoculars from a safe distance.   I used to check every two hours through the night (when we had Jacobs as they always seemed to have lambing problems)  but now we leave them undisturbed between dusk and dawn.  They rarely lamb in the night, and we all sleep much better without the disturbance 

[VSS]

My 'go-to' book is still VSS's book - you just have to remember it is written from the perspective of a March based lambing system in the uplands of Wales.

Thanks. Will tell himself!

[VSS]

Agree with both the above.  Would add that we lamb indoors and aim to be there for every lambing - after all they're lambing because we arranged for it to happen.  What we do, though, is keep or sell only the very best for breeding purposes.  The rest end up on a plate.  Every year lambing gets easier, although the numbers get higher.  Vaccination is a bit like insurance - you don't like paying for it until you need it, then you really need it and really don't mind paying.  Because we lamb inside we dose with Spectam - wouldn't if we lambed outside.  This year, so far, our survival rate has been spectacularly good compared with our neighbours who lamb outside.

Sounds pretty much like us. THis year we have had lamb mortality of less than 3%. As I think I said in another thread, the only routine stuff the lambs get is their navels sprayed, but to be fair the ewes do get quite a lot of health care BUT only in response to known problems eg we know that the soil has serious mineral deficiencies, so the ewes get a drench pre lambing. There is no point throwing good money after bad and using a preventaitive treatment for something that doesn't cause you problems.

[Remy]

When I first started breeding my four foundation ewes, I only wormed about once a year and let them get on with it with minimal interference, and they were fine.  The first year they came in for lambing, all lambed in a week with healthy babies and they went out to grass soon after.  They stayed out over winter and were never a problem.


I then added another five breeding ewes to the flock, again these were minimal trouble and I was still able to bring them in to lamb without too much hassle.


My problems only started when I increased my stock and brought in purebreds from various sources; despite me having them in quarantine I began to have problems with worms, stock dying, and started to vaccinate and worm on a much more regular basis.  It seems the more sheep I've got the more problems, but all I do at present with my lambs is spray their navels with iodine when they are born and take any ones who aren't thriving (usually a triplet) to bottle feed.  I have had to have all my pregnant ewes inside this year due to the weather but normally I would leave them to lamb outside and not interfere.  I've wormed the ewes who have lambed and they are now out. 

[thenovice]

Words of wisdom and common sense woollyval, thankyou. Also SteveHants, very informative and practical info. My mind is already made up about how I am going to raise and build my flock, but I am so encouraged to hear the comments from you folks who are already putting this into practice, and doing well, despite the doom mongers. Cheers all 

[FiB]

Thanks you all (esp Val and Steve) - just the reassuance I needed to face start of lambing this weekend - I feel clearer about a lot now.   Bring it on!