Lambing easycares indoors

[FarmerK]

Is anybody in here lambing easycare ewes indoors? Obviously a majority will be lambing outdoors but do any lamb indoors? Basically the grass mightn’t always be there for having them outdoors all year.
If you are lambing indoors are you just giving them forage or are you feeding a concentrate too?
I’m just wanting peoples views and thoughts on it so I don’t want any silly comments etc.

 

[A.sci]

Is anybody in here lambing easycare ewes indoors? Obviously a majority will be lambing outdoors but do any lamb indoors? Basically the grass mightn’t always be there for having them outdoors all year.
If you are lambing indoors are you just giving them forage or are you feeding a concrete too?
I’m just wanting peoples views and thoughts on it so I don’t want any silly comments etc.

Could always house pre lambing to start building up a grass wedge and turn out to lamb...

 

[Ysgythan]

Why not? The hungry gap is the hungry gap. There are only three options to deal with it - any combination of fewer stock, off-wintering or housing. Why should that be different for easycares? They’re not suddenly going to turn into Charolais or Beltex because you put them in a shed.

 

[Agrivator]

Is anybody in here lambing easycare ewes indoors? Obviously a majority will be lambing outdoors but do any lamb indoors? Basically the grass mightn’t always be there for having them outdoors all year.
If you are lambing indoors are you just giving them forage or are you feeding a concrete too?
I’m just wanting peoples views and thoughts on it so I don’t want any silly comments etc.

or are you feeding a concrete too

A neighbour reckoned that if they have a choice between bad hay and concrete, they normally choose the bad hay.
But he was speaking about Blue Grey coos, so I'm not sure about easycare yoos.

 

[HarryB97]

I lamb my triplets, quads & singles inside which is normally less than 20% of the flock. I just give them ad-lib silage and bed on straw

 

[Woolless]

I tend to lamb the triplets and the ewe hoggs inside, everything else out. Mature ewes carrying singles should be fine on decent forage. Twins are likely to need some cake, unless you have rocket fuel silage.

As above, house the ewes to rest your grass and turn out for lambing @Joe984? Mine are fed baleage (plus cake for twins last month) on a sacrifice field before moving on to their lambing paddocks about a week before they start.

 

[yellowbelly]

We only have a few - bought 2 or 3 pens of draft ewes in a market, on a whim one day, to 'see how they went'.

They're just sheep - if they need feed, feed 'em just like any other sheep. We've lambed 'em inside or outside, just like any other sheep.

 

[Wooly]

Not very easycare if you have to lamb them in doors !?!

 

[Johngee]

We have lambed some indoors, they'll be fine, feed them like any other ewe. Be careful when you bring them in as they probably won't have seen a shed before. Doesn't matter if they're wet as they'll dry out pretty quickly.

 

[Al R]

@exmoor dave did I thought?

 

[Bruce Almighty]

We have lambed 250 Easycares inside in February in the past.
I wouldn't say any different to any other breed except maybe not as good a mother so you have to watch them & be quick to pen them up

The main reason we stopped is because my son is the shepherd & went to Harper a year ago, so we moved lambing to Easter to coincide with his holiday. This year Covid 19 brought him home earlier which made my life easier.

We started with Easycares as dairy cows are the main livestock enterprise here & I didn't want to chase dirty arsed sheep when my son was at school. I personally still favour them. He wanted higher value lambs so moved to mules

He started with 50 Easycares at 14, he's 20 next month & we now have 700 ewes - 120 Suffolks to lamb at Christmas + about 200 Easycares + 380 mules lambing at Easter

 

[neilo]

We had a sheep meeting last year where a John Vipond gave a presentation. He seemed quite keen on Easycares (although he’s been keen on several breeds over the years). He did mention that one of the most profitable flockshe consulted for was a large flock of Easycares, inwintered on a TMR ration.

There’s no reason they should be managed any differently to any other housed sheep. They will still need their nutritional demands met, one way or another. Outwintered sheep aren’t fed any less nutrients, they are generally just fed it in a much cheaper form and manner. Nutritional demand is basically similar.

 

[Danllan]

Is anybody in here lambing easycare ewes indoors? Obviously a majority will be lambing outdoors but do any lamb indoors? Basically the grass mightn’t always be there for having them outdoors all year.
If you are lambing indoors are you just giving them forage or are you feeding a concentrate too?
I’m just wanting peoples views and thoughts on it so I don’t want any silly comments etc.

First thing that comes to mind after reading your post is that I'd be careful on the type and proportion of the forage part of their rations in the last fortnight or so. My concern being the risk of prolapse in a flock who haven't been selected to go with the system you describe.

 

[Jackov Altraids]

I tried running a few with my indoor lambing flock and it did not work well.
I like to run them out during the day and they were always a pain to get back in.
I found it very difficult to get them on an indoor diet which led to twin lamb or weak lambs.
I have no intention of trying again.

 

[tr250]

I tried running a few with my indoor lambing flock and it did not work well.
I like to run them out during the day and they were always a pain to get back in.
I found it very difficult to get them on an indoor diet which led to twin lamb or weak lambs.
I have no intention of trying again.

Is that because they didn’t know though! We lame our ewe lambs outside end of April and don’t feed them anything other than grazed forage. But then as theives expect them to lamb inside and eat concentrate so we have to train them alone to eat before we bring the older ewes in

 

[Ysgythan]

Not very easycare if you have to lamb them in doors !?!

He doesn’t HAVE to though, he chooses to for land management reasons. They’ll still be the same sheep.

 

[egbert]

It's not answering the question, but...

My ewes have far less malpresentations -and foot issues- lambing out than they did lambing in.
I can't envisage a time when I'd deliberately put myself in a position where we were housing ordinary breeding sheep.

We had a sheep meeting last year where a John Vipond gave a presentation. He seemed quite keen on Easycares (although he’s been keen on several breeds over the years). He did mention that one of the most profitable flockshe consulted for was a large flock of Easycares, inwintered on a TMR ration.

There’s no reason they should be managed any differently to any other housed sheep. They will still need their nutritional demands met, one way or another. Outwintered sheep aren’t fed any less nutrients, they are generally just fed it in a much cheaper form and manner. Nutritional demand is basically similar.

does this say more about the rest of the flocks Vipond 'advises'?

 

[Jackov Altraids]

Is that because they didn’t know though! We lame our ewe lambs outside end of April and don’t feed them anything other than grazed forage. But then as theives expect them to lamb inside and eat concentrate so we have to train them alone to eat before we bring the older ewes in

Good question but they had been running with the rest of the batch and treated the same.This would have included gimmers and ewe lambs with no previous experience. They just did not want to fit my system. This is not necessarily a fault of easycares but it did make my mind up that they weren't compatible with my farming.

 

[Woolless]

It's not answering the question, but...

My ewes have far less malpresentations -and foot issues- lambing out than they did lambing in.
I can't envisage a time when I'd deliberately put myself in a position where we were housing ordinary breeding sheep.





does this say more about the rest of the flocks Vipond 'advises'?

IF this is the place I am thinking of, then they are former FW 'Sheep farmers of the year'. Lambed inside but miniscule lamb mortality from scan to weaning, very well managed rotational grazing and presumably the financial performance was top notch as well.

I'm not sure why they lamb inside. My thoughts would be if i was doing that, then maybe a bigger, more productive ewe that maybe needs a bit more hand holding would be the way to go. But you can'y argue with results and they'll have steered their flock down a route which fits that system perfectly.

 

[neilo]

IF this is the place I am thinking of, then they are former FW 'Sheep farmers of the year'. Lambed inside but miniscule lamb mortality from scan to weaning, very well managed rotational grazing and presumably the financial performance was top notch as well.

I'm not sure why they lamb inside. My thoughts would be if i was doing that, then maybe a bigger, more productive ewe that maybe needs a bit more hand holding would be the way to go. But you can'y argue with results and they'll have steered their flock down a route which fits that system perfectly.

With ‘Easycare’ being such an open breed, I suppose there’s no reason why a flock bred up from something more prolific than a Welshy, couldn’t be kept & run the same way as any other sheep.
A Welsh Mountain x Wilt is never going to be a particularly prolific mix, but if those shedding genetics were bred into a BFL, would they still not be called an Easycare, but be more prolific, bigger and hungrier?

I guess there’s no reason you couldn’t start with a flock of mules and breed them to be shedders within a couple of generations, leaving you with that a version ‘Supreme’ sheep, but without the costs and hassle of wool? I suppose, once you’d got them to the shedding stage, you could start to select for Bonny heids again, as the obvious marker of improved performance.