How do you get your breeding sheep through the winter?

[PerformanceLleyns]

How do you get your sheep through the winter? It is a difficult one. It very much depends on your options and priorities. Is it a straight forward cost/output decision? Or do considerations such as biosecurity come strongly into the equation? If you are lucky enough to have your sheep as a small part of your farming relative to your acreage then you are lucky and you can expand the area available to your flock, during the winter, with grass or forage crops without much compromise. Things are completely different for sheep farms. Winter is a challenge. Forage and acceptable standards of welfare and stockmanship must be maintained. Off-farm grazing and catch crops have to be the cheapest most cost-effective solutions for the commercial sheep farmer as long as he can assess the biosecurity risk accurately. Stock containment and disease risk are big issues. Here at Innovative Sheep Breeding, we make biosecurity paramount and keep the sheep on the farm. We use a combination of catch crops and indoor housing to get over the winter hump and back into the growing seasons. Click here to see a blog and video of our sheep 6 weeks before the start of lambing.

and here is a youtube video link.

 

[Further a field]

I always struggle to get them through feb and march it's a lean time here in the pennines.
I m thinking of trying some baled silage this year...how long does it last once opened if stored in doors...I be only 40 ewes so I m not sure how long it would take them to eat it when housed?

 

[PerformanceLleyns]

If you want bales to last make them dry out of top quality grass. Also using a big square bale might be easier. You will need a handling device or someone close willing to sell his services.

 

[Agrivator]

I always struggle to get them through feb and march it's a lean time here in the pennines.
I m thinking of trying some baled silage this year...how long does it last once opened if stored in doors...I be only 40 ewes so I m not sure how long it would take them to eat it when housed?

The ideal feed for sheep, in the last 8 weeks before lambing, is leafy second-cut grass, wilted for up to four days, round baled and stored so that vermon can't puncture the bales.

The easiest way to feed them is in ring feeders with one ring feeder for 40 ewes. One 4ft bale will last 40 ewes about 5-6 day, and will not go off in cold weather.

If you want all the ewes to eat at once, 1 ring feeder/20 ewes is needed. So you either need to split the bale, or find someone
with a variable chamber baler who can make 3' 6'' bales. And these smaller bales are easier to man handle, particularly if they a very dry and lighter.

 

[Further a field]

The ideal feed for sheep, in the last 8 weeks before lambing, is leafy second-cut grass, wilted for up to four days, round baled and stored so that vermon can't puncture the bales.

The easiest way to feed them is in ring feeders with one ring feeder for 40 ewes. One 4ft bale will last 40 ewes about 5-6 day, and will not go off in cold weather.

 

[Further a field]

I'd be buying some round bales in this year but I doubt it's been wilted 4 days ..will probably be wetter...do sheep take to it readily mine have only had hay this and previous years?...do you need to introduce it gradually?

 

[Guleesh]

How do you get your sheep through the winter? It is a difficult one. It very much depends on your options and priorities. Is it a straight forward cost/output decision? Or do considerations such as biosecurity come strongly into the equation? If you are lucky enough to have your sheep as a small part of your farming relative to your acreage then you are lucky and you can expand the area available to your flock, during the winter, with grass or forage crops without much compromise. Things are completely different for sheep farms. Winter is a challenge. Forage and acceptable standards of welfare and stockmanship must be maintained. Off-farm grazing and catch crops have to be the cheapest most cost-effective solutions for the commercial sheep farmer as long as he can assess the biosecurity risk accurately. Stock containment and disease risk are big issues. Here at Innovative Sheep Breeding, we make biosecurity paramount and keep the sheep on the farm. We use a combination of catch crops and indoor housing to get over the winter hump and back into the growing seasons. Click here to see a blog and video of our sheep 6 weeks before the start of lambing.

and here is a youtube video link.

Is the desired outcome not also to keep costs down? By breeding from sheep that have never experienced any winter hardship, and by creating these artificial conditions for your flock could this not eventually lead to breeding a line of sheep that will be completely incapable of surviving a winter without housing and feeding?

 

[CopperBeech]

The ideal feed for sheep, in the last 8 weeks before lambing, is leafy second-cut grass, wilted for up to four days, round baled and stored so that vermon can't puncture the bales.

The easiest way to feed them is in ring feeders with one ring feeder for 40 ewes. One 4ft bale will last 40 ewes about 5-6 day, and will not go off in cold weather.

If you want all the ewes to eat at once, 1 ring feeder/20 ewes is needed. So you either need to split the bale, or find someone
with a variable chamber baler who can make 3' 6'' bales. And these smaller bales are easier to man handle, particularly if they a very dry and lighter.

that’s great but I would have something like 60 ring feeders in a field try to avoid feeding anything and when I do it’s big square bales stuck in their sides with string facing out, let the ewes pull at it for a few days and as it starts to collapse cut and remove the strings and let them clear it up, mostly heat eaten that way not lay on.

 

[Devil's advocate]

Would love to see loose stored barn dried clover hay fed with a hay crane, on a system like that shown in the video.

 

[Bury the Trash]

How do you get your sheep through the winter? It is a difficult one. It very much depends on your options and priorities. Is it a straight forward cost/output decision? Or do considerations such as biosecurity come strongly into the equation? If you are lucky enough to have your sheep as a small part of your farming relative to your acreage then you are lucky and you can expand the area available to your flock, during the winter, with grass or forage crops without much compromise. Things are completely different for sheep farms. Winter is a challenge. Forage and acceptable standards of welfare and stockmanship must be maintained. Off-farm grazing and catch crops have to be the cheapest most cost-effective solutions for the commercial sheep farmer as long as he can assess the biosecurity risk accurately. Stock containment and disease risk are big issues. Here at Innovative Sheep Breeding, we make biosecurity paramount and keep the sheep on the farm. We use a combination of catch crops and indoor housing to get over the winter hump and back into the growing seasons. Click here to see a blog and video of our sheep 6 weeks before the start of lambing.

and here is a youtube video link.

Ewes are looking well, just right i should think by the looks of them and
usefully shorn .
ideal.

 

[PerformanceLleyns]

The trouble is if you don't take the pressure off the ground/grass you can end up with a mud bath and a ruined ley. It also means you will get very slow grass growth in the spring when ewes and lambs need it the most. I still have a lot of sheep outside making quite a bit of mess. The best option is to find good winter keep on someone else's farm. The sheep just need to be effectively contained and kept well away from anybody else's sheep. However, you just don't want them to decide they have to go home just because it has rained too much.

 

[spark_28]

We’ve had a brutal winter. Was ment to get them scanned and now not due to Covid so now they are all getting 0.4kg per sheep (Lleyn) of 18% ewe rolls. I’ll assess them again at the beginning of March and separate depending on condition

 

[neilo]

The trouble is if you don't take the pressure off the ground/grass you can end up with a mud bath and a ruined ley. It also means you will get very slow grass growth in the spring when ewes and lambs need it the most. I still have a lot of sheep outside making quite a bit of mess. The best option is to find good winter keep on someone else's farm. The sheep just need to be effectively contained and kept well away from anybody else's sheep. However, you just don't want them to decide they have to go home just because it has rained too much.

Do you not have electric fencing down there?

 

[HarryB97]

Smart setup in the video but not for me, be better filling that shed with cattle! Over winter cover crops here before spring barley and if they run out then they get baled silage in feeders on the bare fields. Try to sell as many lambs as possible from weaning -November. If I had to take sheep off farm to overwinter or house them I would just cut back numbers.

 

[glasshouse]

I always struggle to get them through feb and march it's a lean time here in the pennines.
I m thinking of trying some baled silage this year...how long does it last once opened if stored in doors...I be only 40 ewes so I m not sure how long it would take them to eat it when housed?

You will get listeriosis
Stick to round bales of hay or small squares

 

[Agrivator]

I'd be buying some round bales in this year but I doubt it's been wilted 4 days ..will probably be wetter...do sheep take to it readily mine have only had hay this and previous years?...do you need to introduce it gradually?

Well-preserved silage is fine, but with all changes in feeding types, it's best to make the changeover gradually - say, five or six days. But in your case, keep feeding hay in smaller quantities, but make the silage available ad lib, and stop the hay when all the ewes are eating the silage.

Quote Reply

 

[S J H]

How do you get your sheep through the winter? It is a difficult one. It very much depends on your options and priorities. Is it a straight forward cost/output decision? Or do considerations such as biosecurity come strongly into the equation? If you are lucky enough to have your sheep as a small part of your farming relative to your acreage then you are lucky and you can expand the area available to your flock, during the winter, with grass or forage crops without much compromise. Things are completely different for sheep farms. Winter is a challenge. Forage and acceptable standards of welfare and stockmanship must be maintained. Off-farm grazing and catch crops have to be the cheapest most cost-effective solutions for the commercial sheep farmer as long as he can assess the biosecurity risk accurately. Stock containment and disease risk are big issues. Here at Innovative Sheep Breeding, we make biosecurity paramount and keep the sheep on the farm. We use a combination of catch crops and indoor housing to get over the winter hump and back into the growing seasons. Click here to see a blog and video of our sheep 6 weeks before the start of lambing.

Can you not find one farm to send them to one keep to minimise the risk to bio security ?

Our leanest month is feb, it’s around then, I think that I’d rather have them in a shed, but then if there’s no existing buildings for them then there’s no way it can pay. Would sooner send them away on keep than house them.

and here is a youtube video link.

 

[S J H]

How do you get your sheep through the winter? It is a difficult one. It very much depends on your options and priorities. Is it a straight forward cost/output decision? Or do considerations such as biosecurity come strongly into the equation? If you are lucky enough to have your sheep as a small part of your farming relative to your acreage then you are lucky and you can expand the area available to your flock, during the winter, with grass or forage crops without much compromise. Things are completely different for sheep farms. Winter is a challenge. Forage and acceptable standards of welfare and stockmanship must be maintained. Off-farm grazing and catch crops have to be the cheapest most cost-effective solutions for the commercial sheep farmer as long as he can assess the biosecurity risk accurately. Stock containment and disease risk are big issues. Here at Innovative Sheep Breeding, we make biosecurity paramount and keep the sheep on the farm. We use a combination of catch crops and indoor housing to get over the winter hump and back into the growing seasons. Click here to see a blog and video of our sheep 6 weeks before the start of lambing.

and here is a youtube video link.

Can you not find one farm to send them to one keep to minimise the risk to bio security ?

Our leanest month is feb, it’s around then, I think that I’d rather have them in a shed, but then if there’s no existing buildings for them, then there’s no way it can pay. Would sooner send them away on keep than house them.

 

[firther]

You will get listeriosis
Stick to round bales of hay or small squares

yep that's the danger, i could only get haylage this time as weather turned when fields were ready to cut, its good stuff but i'd have much preferred hay just for piece of mind

 

[beardface]

How do you get your sheep through the winter? It is a difficult one. It very much depends on your options and priorities. Is it a straight forward cost/output decision? Or do considerations such as biosecurity come strongly into the equation? If you are lucky enough to have your sheep as a small part of your farming relative to your acreage then you are lucky and you can expand the area available to your flock, during the winter, with grass or forage crops without much compromise. Things are completely different for sheep farms. Winter is a challenge. Forage and acceptable standards of welfare and stockmanship must be maintained. Off-farm grazing and catch crops have to be the cheapest most cost-effective solutions for the commercial sheep farmer as long as he can assess the biosecurity risk accurately. Stock containment and disease risk are big issues. Here at Innovative Sheep Breeding, we make biosecurity paramount and keep the sheep on the farm. We use a combination of catch crops and indoor housing to get over the winter hump and back into the growing seasons. Click here to see a blog and video of our sheep 6 weeks before the start of lambing.

and here is a youtube video link.

Looks expensive....