[messyhoose]

i know most of you are bemoaning the desert conditions currently being endured by the south but i have another problem that will not rest. My best pet Amber sheep died a month ago after what i can only suspect was pneumonia as no off island vet would visit and that is what i ended up treating her for, unsuccessfully. The age old saying "prevention is better than cure" is now revolving round my grieving mind. I live on a remote island and rent land and  preserved buildings (meaning i can not flatten them or adapt them in any significant manner). I have been here 5 years but over this time i have realised a common theme is my youngest get pneumonia in their first winter (i dont have many animals, and not all got ill- ps they are all ovipast vaccinated in autumn).
I now would like to ask the forum what their experience is of animal housing? i mean i have seen far worse than what i have mine in, they are not mucked out for a year with no air flowand the animals all surivive- while i try to clean out or if not put down drying agents onto beds to keep the beds dry and i am forever on my knees sniffing the beds to test the level of ammonia (when i worked on farms i never did or saw such a thing!). The main problem that i have is that these old "long house stone buildings" have not been designing with ventilation in mind- even my own house has minimally sized windows that dont open! However i realise that, especailly now with the the death of a beloved pet raw in my mind, that the animal house needs addressing- but how? You might suggest i leave my remaining pets out all winter. This point i tried to follow last winter that i was to let them out as often as possible -but there are here days and days of torrential rain with gale force winds and neither make letting the grass available or the doors to the barn open an option. Should i just accept i dont have enough grass, let some get poached and feed hay for longer? I  know sheep like it colder than i do, but when the wind is blowing over 30mph through the barn door then i feel compelled to close it. None of the openings (ie barn windows) are above 4ft from the ground so leaving them open just causes a vortex of wind in the barn floor and swirls the bedding everywhere, also there are no openings in the granite slab roof so the warm air can not escape that way. Im sure i have seen far worse housing for pet sheep or goats over the years but now i am paranoid my house is "deadly". I do not have a livestock housing architects degree, which it feels like i need, can anyone offer reasonable solutions to make this stone long barn suitable to provide shelter to a half dozen pet sheep over winter, when i will no doubt feel compelled to shut the doors and windows against the prevailing winds? I am already looking into an extractor fan for a window space at a short end of the building (though is facing east- is the wind mainly from the east in winter??) and am considering the tube ventilation systems (my barn is very low roofed- less than bungalow id say). Any advice- i really am struggling to stay afloat, thanks!

[twizzel]

A major contriving factor in sheep getting pneumonia in winter is housing them when wet, especially in poorly ventilated buildings. My sheep live out but if I have to house them for a night over winter I.e for scanning, vaccinating or when they come in to lamb, I try to make sure they are dry. They come in and stay in to lamb, I don’t put them out for the day and bring in at night.


So either keep them in, or keep them out, but mixing the 2 and bringing them in wet is a recipe for disaster. I’d just feed hay in the field and leave them get on with it rather than shut them in, especially if they are pets and not in lamb.

[Anke]

I don't have any housing for my sheep - they don't go under a roof ever! Feed hay and a lick in winter, and then feed the ewes in the last two months before lambing. As it is usually impractical to separate in-lamb ewes from the rest of the flock, they usually all get fed…


What breed are you keeping and are they suited to your local climate?

[Fleecewife]

I would suggest you don't use the stone barn for sheep housing at all.  Where we live the weather is also wet and very windy, sometimes with deep snow in winter.  When we started with sheep many years ago, we had Jacobs. We were told that they had to lamb indoors, so we kept them in a loosebox in a stone barn.  For the couple of years we did this, we had lambing problems and lost a ewe to pneumonia, and a lamb to E Coli.  We also had Hebrideans, which never came in - we had no lambing problems and no pneumonia.  We made outdoor shelters (you can see pics of one or two of them on our website (below)) and let the sheep choose to take shelter or not (sheep are far from daft and make very sensible decisions if left to their own devices).  Since then we have kept a variety of breeds and have kept them outside all year round, including for lambing. For the occasional problem we will bring a ewe and new lambs into a hurdle pen in the polytunnel, with a through-draft, to mother up.


Have you thought of putting up shelters, with three sides and a very well attached roof?  They are very simple to build, and can be based around four ordinary fence stobs. leave a gap of an inch or so between the side planks so the wind whistles through - sounds chilly but sheep have thick coats and are fine - it's the wet that gets them    Some breeds suffer more from the wet than others, Hebrideans for example can have a good shake in a heavy rain storm and their fleece appears almost dry; down type sheep with finer, denser coats tend to hold the wet more.  This is where the gaps between the slats of the shelter come in, as the sheep can stand out of the rain under a roof, but blow-dry in the wind.


As Anke says, what breed are your sheep, as that will affect their needs where you live?

[Backinwellies]

If I read your post right you only have 6 sheep   …….  put up separate shelter as suggested by others.  Lamb very late outdoors.  Maybe change breed if yours are a bit 'soft'  for the climate.  Old stone barns are not the place for sheep. 

Also remember sheep have a habit of dying whatever you do for them! 

  I also see you use ovipast ….. any reason why you don't use Heptovac P  ?

[messyhoose]

thank you guys. there is so much i need to re learn as well as unlearn. although having worked on normal farms my own animals started out zero grazed on a city farm. moving here to north ronaldsay i rented an acre of land along with the house and have then "rescued" over the past 5 years a few sick stray lambs. Amber being one of them- 3 years ago a severely scouring wild lamb. The long houses i assumed had been livestock buildings are i guess no longer fit for purpose in a very changed climate. The winters here are wet (the island is nearly submerged- the grass is underwater) and windy- you know average 50mph. I can not not use small three sided shelters as they will just get blown apart/ away (ive tried pallet shelters) I guess thats why everything is stone round here. This is what i try to contend with. For sure the wild natives know where to go (and the lambs learn from their moms) but i am my pet sheeps mom and i cant teach them that, so they remain on my smallholding all year. I shut them in (only ever dry- i totally agree you should never shut in a wet sheep) to protect the grass from being a mudbath and to keep them out of wind and rain while offering hay etc inside. Last year if it wasnt raining i took every opportunity to let them out (and yes the grass got ruined and there has been less grazing this summer- they are already on hay now). It is not about economics for me at all. I just dont want to be responsible for killing someone who would have been fine without me intervening. Rather than investing in extractor fans i will endeavour to keep all doors open and let the sheep decide if they are in or out the barn (it is a warm dry summers day now and they are all blooming lying in there as i write- their choice!) sorry, was just needing to share whats going round my head at the moment. I would like to raise this alert to anyone new to sheep keeping and thinking any old building will do as a livestock building to please get it checked out and not learn the hard way (i did ask my vet a few years back for advice but no-one seems to realise how wet and boggy the ground gets here) Now i wish i had the dry yard i had in London!
BTW i use ovipast and lambivac only cos i still have a goat and was always told goats dont do well on anything other than a 4 in 1 (ie lambivac). i only started them all on ovipast when we moved to this place cos of my worry about winter pneumonia.