[NethertonSH]

Hi,

We bought our first sheep at the weekend there (5 Shetlands) and love them. The plan is to use the wool, sell/use the lamb and have them keep the grass down. But now seeing the 5 small Shetland in our 20 acres we realise that we're going to need a lot more than the 5. I'm not sure however what the best thing financially to do is. Do Shetland lambs do OK at market with them being as small? Should I cross them with a commercial bread? Also, I've been told the sheep we bought could be registered, is this worthwhile, so that I could sell them as breeding stock? Should I just stick with Shetlands or bring in a larger breed for the lamb?

Sorry lots of questions but any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[shygirl]

Go slow. Enjoy the small flock.

[SallyintNorth]

If you have the time and resources you will do better rearing the lambs to slaughter weight and getting them butchered yourselves, selling boxed lamb.  Generally Shetland store and fat lambs are undervalued in an auction ring, IMO.

Because these sheep are best slow grown and slaughtered as hogget, your numbers will grow surprisingly fast after the first 18 months.

Your 5 ewes should have 7-8 lambs.  They'll still be with you when the original 5 lamb again in 2017, so that summer you'll have 20 sheep.  Perhaps 3 or 4 of the first lot of lambs will go that summer, the other 3 or 4 be kept on as breeding sheep.  So after lambing 2018 you'll have 7-8 ewes and their 12-13 lambs, plus the 7-8 hoggets growing on from the previous year - 26-27 sheep in all.

Yes, you'll need more than that for 20 acres, but because the numbers rise dramatically once your first lot of ewe lambs join the flock, do do the sums to work out how many ewes you need to start with for your eventual desired stocking level.

Do either of you spin?   If so, you'll love using your own fleece - and, more importantly, you'll know what to look for in a fleece and make a good job of selecting those to sell / get spun into yarn . 

Shetlands are capable of carrying lambs to a larger tup, yes, and thereby producing an acceptable and market-friendly lamb.  What they do on Shetland is cross them to a Cheviot, then keep the ewe lambs on and put them to a 'terminal sire' such as a Suffolk or Texel.  The Shetland x Cheviot makes a good ewe; we've actually considered bringing a batch down from Shetland for our own commercial flock.

Whether you'd want to do the whole three-tier breeding on your 20 acres I'm not sure.  It means using three tups - a Shetland, a Cheviot and a terminal.

You can also put the Shetland directly to the Texel.  I haven't done this myself, but I believe it will, over several lambings, cause the ewes' bellies to sag somewhat, so others I know who do this put them to a Texel or other larger tup for perhaps three crops, then back to the Shetland for replacement Shetland ewes until they're past breeding.

If I were going to try this, I think I'd be more inclined to use a Charollais than a Texel - smaller, lighter lambs at birth, but grow and fatten well.  You might get more crops this way.

Another interesting cross is to the BFL (Blue-faced Leicester) for a 'Shetland Mule'. I have a few of these now; they are good sheep, bigger and stronger than their Shetland mums, and with fleeces which can be very appealing to spinners.  (I say 'can be', because good ones are fought over! but they're not all that good.)

What made you choose Shetlands for your first 5?  Do you fancy showing them? 

If you like the idea of showing, and of breeding pure bred stock, might you consider a different breed?  There are a lot of Shetlands about now, they're easy to buy.  Whereas some of the breeds which are still rare (a) need help and (b) are harder to find to buy so perhaps fetch better prices. 

There are plenty of larger sheep on the RBST Watchlist too, so you could pick a breed you like, have larger lambs to sell, and perhaps also cross with the Shetlands for replacement ewes. 

[waterbuffalofarmer]

It really depends what you want and not necessarily what the market demands. If you want to breed pure then its up to you, if you want to cross them to send them to market, again its up to you. What you should ask yourself is what do I want? and not what does everyone else want.  What would you like to do with them? I think with Shetlands I wouldn't bother selling them through mart, as they wouldn't fetch a very good price, prices are bad for now and the forseeable future. If you want to sell them then keeping them pure and selling them through rare breed sales would probably be a much better bet. With rare breeds, like someone else said, boxed lamb would be better. You would get more  for them if you sold the meat. I always find pure is better and there is a (would you call it niche?) market for rare breed lamb, which really needs tapping. If you want to spin with the wool, there are some people on here that could help you. Finally what I would like to say is..... keeping sheep is wonderful and enjoy your flock, sheep are such characters. All the best for the future and keep us updated? if you need any advice at all then feel free to ask and we'll try to answer as best as we can

[NethertonSH]

That's great advice thank you all, its given us a lot to think about. We went with the Shetlands quite simply because we liked the look of them, heard good things about them and they weren't expensive to start off with. We also fancy some Ryelands but again just need to work out what our aim with the sheep is first. I like the idea of selling the butchered lamb directly, we've actually done this with our 4 pigs this year, selling half pigs to family and friends, not for profit but just to cover the costs of keeping them. Neither of us spin but would like to learn and love the thought of using our own wool to make things. I don't think we're too bothered about showing sheep, perhaps that will change when we find the right sheep.

I think taking it slow to begin with was good advice, it would be tempting to jump in and buy 20 ewes then before I know it I have more lambs than I know what to do with.

I grew up with sheep on the farm and it was amazing how the smell of lanolin brought happy memories flooding back. 

Thanks again.

[SallyintNorth]

Yes, definitely good advice to take it slowly.  You can always buy some store lambs now to run on and sell fat in the spring, and the same next year, while you grow your own flock at a steady pace - and while you decide what you really want to do.

I asked about showing because if you go rare / minority breed / primitive, it seems to me that you really need to be out there on the showing circuit to show off your progeny in order to get the good prices for your breeding stock.

And if you think you may start spinning, definitely don't invest buckets in a breed until you know what you want.  Well, Shetlands would be fine, definitely spinnable (though you'd still need to select the good ones), but some of the other breeds are less appealing to spinners, others very appealing, some suitable for some purposes but not others, and so on.  And in general, if you will be wanting to spin, you need to know what you are looking for in fleece before selecting your stock .  Sadly there's not a lot of consistency in fleece these days

Oh, and the other thing that often happens to sheep-keeping spinners is they start to 'blend' their fibres on the sheep... .  I started my own small flock thinking I would be going Castlemilk Moorit, then started spinning in part to make use of their fleeces, fell down a really big and thoroughly enjoyable wormhole, and now crossbreed for fleece  .  (Shetland x BFL is a favourite, a bit of Manx is good, Manx x Shetland can be gorgeous... )  At the time of writing, this is my flock linky

[Fleecewife]

Go slow. Enjoy the small flock.

Sallyintnorth has got it BAAAD       Her route is extreme and for dreaming about.  Right now you need to consider the short term.  Use your five little Shetlands to learn about sheep, the care they need, the problems, the results on a small scale, how to dag, how to shear, how to care for feet, how to lamb and whether or not you actually like spinning 
I love spinning, and at one time I could spin up to 12 fleeces in a year.  But that was a total marathon; now I'm lucky to spin a handful of fleeces.  Your five will provide you with plenty of raw material for spinning, peg looming, weaving, felting, whatever wool crafts you want to take up.  You will also learn how much time you can devote to wool crafts - and the more animals you have, the less time you have available to practise your crafts.

At this stage, don't approach things from the wrong end, ie how many sheep do I need to keep my grass short.  There are plenty of alternatives - make hay, see if someone wants it for silage, grow a wildflower meadow, plant a wildlife and firewood coppice...  Take this opportunity to learn about sheep with small numbers, as a large flock is in danger of becoming a chore.

My personal route began with 3 Jacobs, and within 5 years we had way too many sheep for our land, of a jumble of breeds.  Due to family ill health, over the 15 years since then we have cut our numbers right back to a small, manageable flock of one breed.  On the way, I have done the breeding for gorgeous cross fleeces, and developed a market for them.  They all ended in the freezer when an emergency struck.  But that's the great thing about sheep - you can always eat them.

[SallyintNorth]

Sallyintnorth has got it BAAAD      

No argument.     But just remember who it was that got me into spinning... two TASers, named Fleecewife and jaykay 

[Fleecewife]

Sallyintnorth has got it BAAAD      

No argument.     But just remember who it was that got me into spinning... two TASers, named Fleecewife and jaykay 

 

[mowhaugh]

It's a slippery slope.  When I bought our first Shetlands for our small sons, my husband went beserk, the whole "What are they, they are not real sheep, blah, blah, blah". Recently he was observed showing one on a halter (although if interogated he would claim it was an imposter) and when Angus (3) was asked the other day what he would like for Christmas and said "600 more Shetland sheep", OH said "Actually, if we put all the Cheviots off, we could probably carry 1750 Shetlands, it might be worth considering."  So you do not need to worry about having only 5 for now, just enjoy them!

[SallyintNorth]

I find it really interesting on Shetland, strapping great men handling Shetland sheep as though they're, you know, real livestock 

At the Flock Book Sale, the owners don't handle their own sheep, presumeably to reduce nepotism.  Last year the drovers were mostly men, two lasses.  This year there was a younger lad, probably 14 or 15 I would think, and one of the Shetland tups he was handling was way too much for him.   

You know, don't you Mowhaugh, that on Shetland the commercial farmers cross the Cheviot onto their Shetland ewes, and the resulting ewe lambs become their fat lamb mums?  And the cross ewes are good sheep too, we've considered buying a pen of them for the commercial flock here.   

[shep53]

My neighbour bought  100  she x chev  gimmers that were Shetland bred but had to admit defeat she couldn't work them with a dog and when upset walls and some fences wouldn't stop them

[SallyintNorth]

It is different, working Shetlands.  The dogs have to be very steady and stand-offish - less is most definitely more.

They use dogs on Shetland

[shep53]

The problem was that they wouldn't  stay together

[SallyintNorth]

Lots of hill sheep do that - our Swales on the moorland would double back, hide in the reshes, do all sort of tricks to evade 'capture'.  Especially if they had their lambs with them.  We could gather the 500ac moor in a couple of hours when they were on their own; it took two or three passes, three or four people, two or three dogs and a quad bike or two when they had their lambs.