What to buy to help with my small flock

[spin cycle]

I am new to sheep and have a flock of 20 ewes on 14 acres (split into 3 fields)
I was looking at the Productivity small grant scheme and wondering what to get....if anything!
I live on site so trailer systems are not vital
I am on my own so working on the animals can be tricky...especially injections...dagging
I intend to breed so could be at 60 sheep through parts of the year.

My main issues so far seem to be getting all of the sheep in a pen. The greedy ones are easy...others not so much. I could do with a better means of working on the sheep and doing vaccinations etc..

Maybe I should just make some better pens from hurdles and netting? Create my own race with simple footbath..
I have no hard surfaces so a fixed handling system looks out..they insist it is call concreted in
Would a combi clamp be worth the money as it doesn't help with looking at feet??
What would people suggest? I dont want to buy stuff for the sake of it but I am very inefficient at the moment..

see my diary post today.....smaller version?

 

[Robin2020]

I would say that plenty of hurdles will make your life easier. We also use rolls of electric sheep/chicken netting (not electrified) to build shutes so that we can easily shoo the reluctant sheep in to a pen. We also have an IAE economy sheep race with a shedding gate at the end and a weigh crate. That does a good job for us and I do almost everything on my own. The race has been great, we have used it a lot for things like loading up sheep going to a new home, as well as worming/shedding off lambs etc.

Great advice from someone in my boat. I had my eye on pladtic netting. Nice and easy to put out when needing to gather them in. Cheapish too. A race does seem like the critical bit..

 

[twizzel]

I’ve got 20 ewes and the best thing we bought was hurdles, and lots of them ! We are lucky we can run them into a shed but everything has to be moveable. If I had somewhere to set up a small handling system with race and shedding gate I would buy one. Something like the Ritchie portable starter system, but the only thing that puts me off is dismantling it every time. If we get a new shed up I might be able to leave it set up in a corner

 

[Robin2020]

we only have a few old hurdles at one place we pen the sheep up but our sheep will follow if they think they are off somewhere new so we let them out through the pen on to the road stop them a little way up the road one of us closes the pen up and we drive them back through the gate in to the pen.
no good if you are on your own but the point is you have to think if there is anything there already that will help you, like a gateway they are used to just walking though to get to the next field, set up a few hurdles permanently in the next field so they are used to walking through them then when you want to catch them just shut the hurdles.
this sort of thing wont work if you do it to often though as they get wise to it.
we have no sheep dog and bits of land scattered about the place and have found ways to pen them anywhere without any great expense
I don't think the grant is worth looking at as you have to spend a lot to get it, also if you buy expensive stuff and leave it away from home its likely to get nicked

Nice tips!!! People say they are stupid. Far from it in my opinion. Due to various foot issues they have been grabbed a lot and know exactly what I'm up to

 

[spin cycle]

Great advice from someone in my boat. I had my eye on pladtic netting. Nice and easy to put out when needing to gather them in. Cheapish too. A race does seem like the critical bit..

race is waste of time for small numbers on your own/with no dog as you spend half your time trying to get them to go into it ....series of small pens is better for small numbers

 

[Al R]

I’ve got some groups that it’s quicker just to take 5-6 hurdles and a marker than it is to take the full rappa and set up. A semi permanent bit of wire and netting now mean I only need 3 hurdles to tend to 60 sheep doing them in batches of 10’s, sometimes might do Bolus, fluke and wormer pre lambing all in 1 go and just dot the heads as I do them, easy enough and cost was sub £100. It’s actually easier to do them in that than it is in the IAE economy and standard races as they bunch up and accelerate forward/backwards and you can’t fit in. Give me a pen or a wide high throughput race anyday!
when I first expanded onto Other farms I bought 50x6’ hurdles at £16/each. This was enough to hold 150 ewes and also had 2 pens of 12x6 so 2 of us could treat. Find a nearby dairy farm and get some old cow cubicle mats to put under your “penning area” and they won’t get muddy again, mine wash clean.

 

[ShooTa]

like that idea...

 

[Loftyrules]

I bought hurdles and a race from a chap called “Deano the hurdle guy” on Facebook. Not as pretty as an iae etc but price was great. I can run my 15 through the footbath no trouble and makes life much easier. Agree with people saying buy lots of hurdles

 

[Fendt516profi]

From CPGS Booklet.

"The grants are 40% of the standard costs listed in Annex 3 for a minimum grant of £3,000, up to a maximum of £12,000."

"The standard cost for each item in Annex 3 is the actual fixed price which we will pay grant towards. For example, if the standard cost is £7,500, even if the actual amount you pay is only £7,000, you will receive 40% of £7,500"

Keep hearing the 7500 figure mentioned and it's irrelevant as far as I can see...

There is a minimum spend of £7,500 and maximum spend of £30,000. You will receive 40% back of your standard cost. The deadline is 4th November 2020.
Text received from agents yesterday

 

[Greythundercloudys]

Dean o the hurdle man on Facebook has handle systems, well made and good price but a pit of a wait to get it.

 

[Greythundercloudys]

Iv 700 sheep, and Dean o stuff does mine, half the price of big brands.

 

[cowboysupper]

I use my trailer, some steel sleigh hurdles and a Gallagher smart fence for funnelling the sheep to the pen. Currently working on setting up some more fenced pens to reduce the number of hurdles I need to bring with me.

What do folks use for footbathing remotely?

 

[Danllan]

@Robin2020 If you are on a budget and don't want anything permanent, you can get away with a few hurdles, a couple of rolls of black plastic wind-break netting - see below, even Amazon sells it - and some rebar posts to support the netting. I use the netting even now if it's just me and a dog and I need to get them somewhere they aren't used to and are b*ggering around.

 

[unlacedgecko]

Try and resist buying expensive and unnecessary stuff just because you don't want to miss out on the grants, you still have to pay your share, the sheep will still be difficult to handle at times, no matter how amazing the handling, for 20 ewes spending a very small amount on a few extra hurdles will suffice?

Personally even for a couple of sheep I wouldn't be without a dog to pen or just catch an individual sheep that needs handled.

If I didn't have a dog I wouldn't have sheep.

 

[Loftyrules]

Iv 700 sheep, and Dean o stuff does mine, half the price of big brands.

It's worth the wait but do wish their communication was better.

 

[clod hopper]

You have three fields, can't help feeling you are over complicating things. Is there a area were 2 or 3 fields join? Build a pen were your sheep have to travel through to next field or fields. Make it as long and narrow as it's easy to shut off/close. Sheep will eventually think nothing of it - expecting a nice fresh meal. You can then upgrade the pen to your needs.
Best of luck

 

[Greythundercloudys]

She has been good at updating me, waiting on something from them the now.

 

[Henarar]

You have three fields, can't help feeling you are over complicating things. Is there a area were 2 or 3 fields join? Build a pen were your sheep have to travel through to next field or fields. Make it as long and narrow as it's easy to shut off/close. Sheep will eventually think nothing of it - expecting a nice fresh meal. You can then upgrade the pen to your needs.
Best of luck

You put better what I was trying to say

 

[Henarar]

If I didn't have a dog I wouldn't have sheep.

We have a dog who thinks he's a sheep, does that count?

 

[Highland Mule]

If I didn't have a dog I wouldn't have sheep.

If I needed to have a dog, I’d get rid of the sheep. Would rather spend the dog food money in getting the place fenced correctly - increasingly smaller paddocks along flight lines, leading to a catch pen is my preference, but something like clod hopper would be grand too.