[marka]

Womble - What is the crucial bit of advice that we always give anyone who is new to keeping sheep... its pick a breed that you like but im getting the impression that you've fallen out of love with them so its probably time to say enough is enough and move them on either to another breeder or to the freezer.

Time to rethink methinks....

[Womble]

Marka,

No, I love them to bits, that's why I'm desperate to keep the tamer two if I can.



They're just so perfectly suited to life as basically wild sheep, I have the utmost respect for them. They need no extra feed, I've never needed to lay a hand on them and they each lambed twins unaided, first time. What's not to love?  Oh yeah, the fact that I now need binoculars to go check on them! 



Isn't it always the women you love most who drive you crazy though?! 

[princesslayer]

How old are your lambs now Princesslayer?  We were doing fine until a few weeks ago, but evidently the grass is now good enough, and the lambs now weaned enough that the ewes don't want hard feed.

Suddenly my only 'carrot' is ineffective, and I have neither stick nor dog to help the situation!! 

They're 16 weeks now. A few will eat out of my hand, and they'll hang round my feet even without food. In fact, I think the lambs are tamer than their mothers but I've deliberately handled them frequently to try and de-sensitise them a bit (and to practice on a smaller animal, as someone suggested to me on here!). Their mothers didn't have much handling before they came to us, but they definitely sheared more quietly this year than last, so they're mellowing.

[marka]

Ive got a good spare pair of binoculars if you need em !!

[xnbacon]

I've been reading this thread with a sense of having been there....!
Anyway, just thought I'd share this with you.  Today we did some shearing and the first sheep that ambled into the pen and stood obligingly to be sheared was one of our original Jacobs that we could never catch!  We had six and we usually managed to pen 5, but one would always evade us.  Whilst this might give you the idea that there is light at the end of the tunnel I should just mention that its now six years later! 

[mab]

When this poll originally went out I think I opted for the bribe 'em with ewe nuts option; but this years lambing does seem to have made a difference, particularly to Fatty, who is one of my original 4 easycare ewes who came from a big farm and she was particularly wary and mistrustful. Last year she didn't produce anything but this year she had triplets - and now she's the one who comes right up and sticks her nose in my hand or anything I'm carrying.


Mind you, I still suspect it was getting her own personal bucket of nuts in the pen at regular intervals that tamed her.

[roddycm]

I had manx, they are highly intelligent and will def tame down! you just need patience and bribery haha I love the breed personally! Don't give up on them. Mine loved bread and biscuits etc... thats how i tamed them down. They eventually enjoyed a scratch behind the ears and didnt need to be bribed anymore! Give it a few weeks! Good luck

[smee2012]

Don't know much about these naughty Manx sheep, but I find our ram lambs come weaning are far more forward than the ewe lambs, braver more inquisitive, the girls are far more scatty.

That's very interesting as I've always found it the other way around! When I first got my Zwartbles, the girls took a lot less time to tame and the tup lambs were never entirely tame. We've had two lots of our own lambs now and I've found it exactly the same. The boys are much more wary and the girls not at all!

My sheep are handled daily by me and the kids and the four ewes are more like dogs than sheep - one of them even jumps up for a scratch!

I was wondering if the Zwartbles tup might create lambs that are a bit too big for your Manxes? They really are quite big and leggy sheep!

[Womble]

Well, I'm sorry to say it gets worse  .

I found one of the lambs in the field on Sunday afternoon looking very bedraggled and weak, and right over the other end of the field from all the others. I did my best for it, but it gradually got worse and was dead by Monday afternoon.

It wasn't scouring particularly, but I had an FEC done yesterday just to check, which came back with a high count for Nematodirus. So, I've now caught and wormed half of the lambs, but try as I might with the others......


Once it becomes a welfare issue, it's just not funny any more I'm afraid  .

[SallyintNorth]

Oh dear.  So sorry about the lamb you've lost, and I feel for you about dosing the others.  For a while, the vets' advice was to not dose the fittest 10% of the flock, so don't feel too bad if you can't catch and dose all of the lambs.   

I can't get hold of my lambs separately - they just jump straight over the walls - but the mothers are all now fairly relaxed about coming through our pens, so I just run them all through together, and walk through them dosing whoever needs something.  The lambs seem happy enough to stay in the race if they're with their mums.  I do have to be careful to be slow and gentle, so that none of the mums get agitated, or they all bunch up and then it's only a matter of time before a lamb jumps onto a back and over the wall...

I've had a frustrating time this evening myself, actually - a Mule x Shetland tup lamb is being lame in each foot in turn and tonight was not with the others, and reticent to walk about, so I wanted to treat him.  But of course as soon as you look like you want to catch him, he can get about perfectly, thank you very much.  He gave both dogs a real runaround; in the end I had to call them off as he was clearly plotting an escape across the river...

After tonight's shenanigans he did go back to Mum and the others, had some milk and was then grazing, so at least he's with them and feeding now.  Tomorrow I shall have to try a different tactic, getting him to group up with his Mum and sister, and trying to get the three of them into a makeshift pen.  I'm not at all sure I'll be successful, though.  I don't really want to bring the whole lot back to the farmstead to treat one lamb's scald, but I don't like him lying under cover on his own, away from the rest of the flock and without their protection.  Where they are is idyllic - except when I need to catch one...

[marka]

Womble,

Sorry to hear about your lamb - it does bring it home at times likes these how fragile life can be, despite all of our best efforts.
Perhaps the compromise is to keep the ones that behave and either introduce others with a similar disposition or build your flock back up by breeding from the ones that are tame ( r! ).
We ended up with a sub-flock of 4 ewes that comprised mum ewe, 2 of her lambs from last year and 1 of her lambs from the year before and whilst the main flock would come to the bucket and generally go in the direction we wanted, the sub-flock would always hang back and do their own thing - we've subsequently sold them to our neighbour but as they are their own flock they now behave quite well. Consequently any time we need to move our lot, its a lot less time consuming and stressing for us and the sheep.
So the morale is perhaps that it is not that you have got the wrong breed, just that you have currently got the wrong sheep

[Buttermilk]

Feeling smug yesterday I walked up to a zwartbles ewe as she laid cudding, slipped a halter on, led her to a gatepost and clipped her whilst standing still cudding.  Only three more to do now...

[Kimbo]

Womble,
any news on your Nematode problem? Im hoping you haven't lost any more 

[waterbuffalofarmer]

In the winter they should be OK, I hope I Feed my ewe lambs over the winter and I always stick some pet ewe lambs in with them, so they get to know who I am and learn to come when I call em.  It might help to put some older ewes in with them, or simply to put them in a smaller field, so that they can get used to you. Maybe give em a routine as well? Some of my ewe lambs were very flighty, I put some pet ewe lambs in with em and because the pet lambs know my voice they brought the flock with them to food, now when I shake the bucket the ewe lambs, or rather shearlings now, get there before the older sheep.

[Womble]

Hi All,

I'm sorry if I caused confusion by trying to update an old thread, but I wanted to keep everything together as the overall story is quite interesting. So for those that may have missed the first few chapters, here it is, warts n' all.....

Last year, we bought some Manx Loaghtan hoggs from my Aunt. She's kept Manxs for years, and we wanted to keep this going in the family if we could. However, right from the start, we found them really skittish (My Aunt was very ill for much of last year, so they weren't used to people; something they never really got over).



A few months later we bought some Zwartbles. I'd love to say this was part of some great a master plan, but really it was because one of them nibbled Mrs Womble's sleeve at  the Royal Highland Show and she was utterly smitten! 

 


They're much bigger sheep than the Manxs, not to mention ten times the price  . However, we found them so easy to deal with that we bought a Zwartbles tup, Ace to go with them.



He is super friendly, may or may not look like Jeremy Clarkson, and really doesn't see the point in Selfies).



So Ace ran with the Zwartbles ewe lambs last year, whilst Bloomer provided a Shetland tup lamb who ran with the Manxs before he turned into a grumpy old man and subsequently a very tasty Shepherds Pie. This means we now have a flock of six Zwartbles ewes plus Ace, four Manx Loaghtan ewes and an assortment of this year's lambs who will all be going in the freezer sooner or later.



The lamb that died this week is a wierd one. I don't know if it was due to nematodirus or not - it just sort of faded away over a couple of days (it was scouring a little, but nothing like other lambs I've seen with nematodirus). So far, the other lambs seem fine, although three of them still remain un-caught and un-dosed, which is playing on my mind a little  .

The Zwartbles definitely get to stay, since they're easy to live with, commercial and as somebody else said on another thread, easy to find in both mud and snow .



The only problems we've had with them so far are that the lambs are very prone to scald, whilst a couple of the ewes have had shelly hoof, where the side wall of the hoof detaches from the base. If we could find a solution to both of these, life would be perfect!! 



The wildest Manx Loaghtans are definitely going for mutton now - this is as close as I could get to them this afternoon: they have a 'scare radius' of about 30 metres! Basically, I've admitted defeat with the Manx Loaghtans - they just weren't the right sheep for us  .



Perhaps we'll keep Alice, who is the tamest. She can run with Ace this year and we'll see how that goes. Both are easy lambing breeds, and I reckon she'll be fine. Also it's her only hope frankly, since otherwise she's going in the freezer with her pals!!



Obviously I'd be keen to hear other people's opinions on this, particularly from folks who've done similar. I hope you like the photos though. Putting them all together made me realise how far we've come over the past 18 months. Watch this space for the next chapter!