Sheep

[GarethM]

So you're not a farmer, guessing you've recently bought it then?.

[Zaman]

12 minutes ago, Will C said:

No the bloody things won’t die.
They will however:

beat you over if you manage to get near them (see point 3)

eat anything you don’t want eating and little you do

run faster than you over any terrain

escape and not die so so you have to catch the bloody things (see point 3)

need 7ft fencing not 4ft

have no value to sell if you want to

smell that bad you will not want to go near them or in the same field during the summer

 

heb sheep need minimal maintenance and would be your best bet in my mind

 

 

Thank you 

[GarethM]

I did mean that nicely, being a landowner doesn't make you a farmer.

 

No amount of research or book reading will ever match experience. If I were you treat it as a learning curve.

 

Rent out the land, probably sheep grazing.

Use that as a way to bring everything upto snuff and pitch in. Learn with them and in say 5 years or once it's upto snuff get a few dozen and form a friendship with the sheep guy. Keeps down costs and you get shearing for free etc.

[Zaman]

13 minutes ago, john87 said:

Not saying it is a daft idea, but you need to live on site.. When i had to do with sheep, you had to get up first thing in the morning and walk around all the boundaries [of 130 acres] to make sure none had got out.

The usual thing is, one or two will find a weak spot in the fencing late at night, and then, very early the next morning, the lot will all walk out through the same gap.. So, you had to find the gaps before you had 200 sheep in the school next door..

 

The you had to trudge across fields and put out maybe ten bales of hay in the freezing bloody cold [we would leave a horsebox trailer full of hay in the field so we did not have to carry them], then again at night, AND feed the things oats or barley or whatever. Just as well as we would have a trailer with hay in it, as from time to time, it would be so cold the tractors would not start..

 

After lambing [which involves checking them every couple of hours, so yes, midnight and 3 in the morning, then again at about 5am, that sort of thing] you then had over 400 of the things to look after, and all in the freezing cold, as you would have the things lambing in about January.. It was bloody freezing.. You would also have prolapses and the like to deal with in the run up to lambing..

 

It would have you on the go first thing in the morning, in the evening, and all weekend..

 

Do not get me wrong, it is not none stop work by any means, but you HAVE to be there, or at least someone does, all the time, for the well being of the sheep..

 

Fairly often you would have sheep with some sort of brain disease. A predecessor of "mad cow disease" i think. They would go round and around in ever decreasing circles until they fell on their side. If you left them for any length of time, the crows would peck their eyes out while they were still alive.

 

We would spot the ill ones, catch them, it was not difficult, they would run away, but in a circle like a boomerang, and hence come back to you, and then bash them on the head with a hammer..

 

It will be a steep learning curve for you.. If you really want to do this, then do it, but it is not like having a cat..

 

john..

 

 

Wow. Thank you. Appreciated and for the brutal honesty too. 

[MattyF]

I vowed never to get sheep again but got some Icelandic ewe lambs back in November, they seem pretty placid and easy to handle and have been no bother so far but like most sheep I would say they need to be handled to make them that way which is essential if you don’t have a well trained sheep dog .. although the black faces we had are usually  wild , destructive escape artists and have one reason to live and that’s die. 

[Zaman]

13 minutes ago, GarethM said:

So you're not a farmer, guessing you've recently bought it then?.

We have other land too. My grandparents were crop farmers mainly and did have some animals but I was very young then. As I got older my passion was always horses and worked on many of farms. The whole idea of sheep is literally an idea. Nothing is set in stone. I didn't really want cows even though I do know slightly bit more about them. In all honesty they scare me. 

[Conor Wright]

Get alpacas instead, less hassle than sheep, waay less hassle than goats (never again),the fleece has a value, they can be halter trained and offspring have a higher value. They will need some similar maintenance to sheep but not as intensive. 

They can be kept back with 3 or even 2 strands of electric fence. Plus they look cool and are good guardian animals for poultry as they fend off foxes and some dogs. Bigger dogs or packs of dogs may well just see them as big sheep with more neck to bite.

[Zaman]

8 minutes ago, GarethM said:

I did mean that nicely, being a landowner doesn't make you a farmer.

 

No amount of research or book reading will ever match experience. If I were you treat it as a learning curve.

 

Rent out the land, probably sheep grazing.

Use that as a way to bring everything upto snuff and pitch in. Learn with them and in say 5 years or once it's upto snuff get a few dozen and form a friendship with the sheep guy. Keeps down costs and you get shearing for free etc.

Thank you 

[Zaman]

3 minutes ago, Conor Wright said:

Get alpacas instead, less hassle than sheep, waay less hassle than goats (never again),the fleece has a value, they can be halter trained and offspring have a higher value. They will need some similar maintenance to sheep but not as intensive. 

They can be kept back with 3 or even 2 strands of electric fence. Plus they look cool and are good guardian animals for poultry as they fend off foxes and some dogs. Bigger dogs or packs of dogs may well just see them as big sheep with more neck to bite.

I know it may sound strange but are alpacas agricultural animal? 

[MattyF]