The Poultry Keeper

nigel · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 4:27 am Post subject: Sheep

I know some of you keep sheep, what I want to know is what I would be letting myself in for if I wanted to keep a small flock [say around half a dozen]. My original plan had always been to get lambs in spring and fatten for the freezer. However I have been reading and many of the native Swedish breeds are down to less than 50 and in some cases 30 individuals and they are desperate for people to take on small flocks.
The sheep are mainly unimproved varieties [similar to the Soay and Boreray] there are eight strains that fall collectively under the title Forest Sheep. As having sheep as permanent residents was never my intention I didn't do the lambing and shearing courses when I was studying smallholder skills at college. How much of a learning curve would I be on?
If you're interested in seeing pictures of the sheep, here's a link to the Swedish Peasant Sheep Society the breeds are listed on the left under the title Allmogefår
Any comments/advice gratefully received. The sheep would mainly be kept for lambs both for the freezer and to sell to others to keep the genepool as varied as possible. At this point in time this is just an idea. Also bear in mind that we have a language barrier and many technical terms are not covered in dictionaries.

milkmaid · Joined: 19 Apr 2005 Posts: 6741 Location: isle of lewis

well deb on here has really helped me out Very Happy

the more primitive the less you should have to do ,its proberly better that way as some sheep have no flocking instict ,and catching them can be the devils own job, primitives tend to look after thmselves more ,both deb and me have comericals which need a lot more doing to them ,you did goats ,so you should be alright ,the first animal i ever clipped was a goat ,she was on a one way trip to the town nasty piece of work sent here and then i found out she had killed her companion
so i clipped her,lovely fleece,it wasn't a nice looking job it took hours ,but i did it Embarassed

,worm burdens are something that you have to watch out for ,what's you're grass like ,i found the grass on the croft was really a bit long ,would have been a lot better if i had grazed with cow first then the sheep in rotation then maybe geese
sheep are not difficult

debcat · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 9:06 am Post subject:

the native breeds are alot hardier and usually have easier lambing with less multiple births. Lambing is easiest to learn hands on, Shearings not too bad, as long as it comes off it doesn't really matter what they look like, it soon starts to grow back. Dipping is once a year but you can inject them instead -I presume it's the same over there. Feet are trimmed just like goats but less often and unlike goats you can turn them over so it's easier.
Sheep love food and it's fairly easy to train most of them to follow a bucket, stick a bit of food in the bottom and rattle it and most will follow you anywhere

One word of warning they are a bit like hens
you start off with a certain number in mind etc etc
I started with 2 now there are 26 Embarassed