Author: Nicole Doyle

Last April we noticed some of our elderly sheep (the 12 year olds) had come out of winter looking a bit slimmer than we liked.  So after a bit of research we came up with a plan – daily buckets containing a mixture of soaked alfalfa-beet and meadow grass pellets.

This is our first experience with looking after elderly sheep so we didn’t know if the supplement would make much of a difference nor how long it would take before we would see results.

We needn’t have worried, within about six weeks our three skinny girls began to blossom and put on condition.  We were thrilled with the results, especially with Sparkle whose natural body shape has always been on the roly poly side.

All through the spring we continued giving the girls their daily rations.  In fact we ended up adding three more ladies to the ‘green bucket club’.

Contrary to what people think, sheep are really intelligent.  At first the whole flock would come running over at the sight of me and my buckets.  But within a couple of weeks this dwindled down to just the odd cheeky teddy bear trying her luck.  This made life a lot easier.  Soon the flock learned who got a bucket and who didn’t and the only barging that went on was between the six elderly ladies themselves thinking their neighbour’s bucket was tastier than their own.

We meant to wean the girls off their buckets by mid-summer or once they’d gained condition, but somehow, not sure how it happened truth be told, we carried on giving them their buckets all through the summer into the autumn, and then into the winter.

Now we’re into April again and the six girls have come through winter with barely any loss of condition, hooray!

On a side note, we are extra pleased we’ve found this supplement because we had a poorly sheep last week.  Star, is one of ‘the oldies’ but has always been a robust sheep and not yet a member of the ‘green bucket club’.  She had separated herself off from the flock (not a good sign), and was standing in the shed with her head down (definitely not a good sign).  We rang the vet for advice but in the meanwhile we gave her some soaked alfa-beet with chopped carrot to spark up her appetite.  Three days later and she is back with the flock happy as Larry.  We’re not sure what was wrong with Star, nor if she would have made a recovery without the supplement but it’s a comfort to know the sheep enjoy it even when they’re not feeling very well and have little appetite.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Running a smallholding seems to involve a lot of muck shovelling.  Especially during the winter when the little darlings spend much of their time mooching around the shed, the paddock and the hay feeders.

With the increase in hoof-fall, these areas soon become very mucky.  So, every afternoon I pull on my gloves, my wellies and my dungarees, get my bucket and rake and have a good clean up.  I collect the dung from the shed and the area around the feeders.  Then I scoop up any large deposits left around the paddock.  Finally, I scatter bedding down around the shed and the feeders.

This is all quite labour intensive, but I do it willingly because there are loads of positives.

Obviously, there’s the welfare factor in keeping the sheep areas clean.  The sheep don’t enjoy trudging through muck any more than we do.  But over the years we’ve found that (in particular) keeping the area around the hay feeders clean has resulted in our teddy bears having hardly any foot rot.  No more limping and no Alamycin jabs, hooray!  When we started out as smallholders we often had foot problems during the winter.  We thought that was just how it was with sheep, but we can really see the difference now.

The other positive is that garden is happy.  We have a large heap of manure in the corner of the garden absolutely bursting full of worms.  The roses and veggies can’t get enough of it and it’s really satisfying knowing we can feed the garden ‘for free’.

Last year however the badgers got lucky and found the muck heap.  For the last few months they’ve been making regular nightly visits to the ‘worm buffet’ and having a lovely time, scattering manure in all directions.  On several occasions on the morning dog walk we’ve even spotted a badger curled up in the shed next to the heap snatching forty winks after late night shenanigans.

In the autumn we decided enough was enough and we made the painful decision to move the heap.  We were fed up with cleaning up after the badgers.  Furthermore, they were decimating our precious compost worms.  Given the size of the heap and that we had more than enough for our own uses we decided to create a communal heap half a mile down the track which our neighbours could use too.

So we hitched up the trailer and made several journeys back and forth from the old heap to the new.  But no matter how many trips we made the original heap still seemed enormous.

Next, Adrian set up two large compost bins next to the veggie patch.  Several trailer loads later we’d filled the bins but still the pile of manure loomed.

Not to be deterred, we mulched the polytunnel and the veggie patch which took another couple of weekends and several more trailer loads.

Last weekend we rolled up our sleeves and mulched along the track where we have 30 hungry roses.  We piled it on thick, not just to keep the roses happy, but to smother the grass and weeds growing up around them.

At long last and about six months after starting this mammoth task, we’ve made a dent in the heap.  It’s about half as big as it was originally, but the best news is that with all the disruption, the badgers have decided to go and party elsewhere!

 

Now we’re a month into winter we’ve moved the little darlings onto hay again.  Although there’s still grass on the hills and the flock trundle round grazing, the grass lacks nutritional content and isn’t sweet and tasty like it is in the summer.

For the last few winters we’ve been really lucky getting in small square bales of hay which are perfect for smallholdings.  They’re easy to store and carry around, much more so than the huge round bales that large farms use.  The huge round bales are only moveable by tractor and we don’t have a tractor.  (Well, we used to have one and it was useful when we had cows, but since we sold the cows we stopped using the tractor so we sold it).

This year however we hit a problem.  At the beginning of October, feeling very organised I pinged an email to our suppliers to arrange our first load of bales for November.  Only to be told that they’re no longer doing small bales, yikes!

I clicked into action.  There aren’t many smallholdings around here and not much call for small bales, but there are plenty of horses and horse owners like small bales too.  I phoned my friend who keeps a horse in the next village.  She gave me a number for her hay chap, but sadly his hay was all tied up and he didn’t have enough for us.  Next, I jumped in the car and whizzed over to our local agricultural store.  They’re a great mine of information and I was sure they’d know someone who did small bales.  Sure enough I came away with a phone number of a chap who was setting up a hay operation and potentially did small bales.  Unfortunately, it turned out he wasn’t going to be ready until next winter, darn!  I made several more phone calls – but no joy.  Finally, scraping the barrel I did some facebook searches and found a supplier in Cumbria who looked hopeful, they had a barn-full of soft meadow hay, perfect for sheep – until I calculated how much in fuel it would cost for me to go and collect, eek!  Time was running out and I needed to get something fixed up soon.

In moments like this a cup of tea is always helpful.  Sure enough, halfway through my cuppa an idea started to form.  As things were looking, it was either big round bales or no bales at all.  Handling big bales is pretty much impossible without a tractor, however, I wondered if there was a way we could roll them into our shed if we got them delivered right next to the shed entrance.  It would only be a few feet and the shed was slightly downhill.  The only fly in the ointment was that the bales would need to be stored on pallets to keep them off the ground.  I wondered if we would manage to get them onto the pallets or whether that would be a step too far.  I ran my idea by Adrian and he said we should go for it, basically, we had little choice.

So I ordered three big bales and they arrived on a drizzly day.  What with Adrian stuck at his desk doing his day job we wouldn’t be able to move them until later in the evening, so I rummaged about in the shed to find a tarp big enough to cover them and somehow managed to drape it over the bales to keep the rain off.

Later that evening we rolled up our sleeves and with a bit of pushing, shoving and the odd naughty word, by a minor miracle, we got our three bales into the shed, yay!

Now the only thing left to do would be to decant the hay from the big bales into user-friendly portions to allow me to transport them to the paddock where the feeders are set up.

Back in September, Adrian built a nifty little shed in the paddock, just big enough to store a week’s worth of hay.  Having a few bales stored near the feeders makes life so much easier when it comes to topping up the feeders (which I do daily).

I was so excited to use the new hay store this winter, and Adrian had even sized it up to accommodate exactly one week’s worth of small square bales.

Needless to say I was slightly concerned the new shed would take a week’s worth of hay in dumpy bags.

But I didn’t have to worry about that until a few days ago because during November I was still using the remainder of last winter’s small square bales and life was easy.  Then the time came to move over to the big bales.  To be honest despite my trepidation about storage, I couldn’t wait to rip open the netting on the first bale, last winter’s hay being a year old was a bit average, some of the bales were stale and I had to discard a couple which had got wet.  I couldn’t wait to get stuck into the new hay, there’s nothing like opening a fresh bale of hay, it smells amazing!

 

After a shaky start at the beginning of the winter wondering how we were going to manage, it seems things are working out fine with the big bales.  And the sheep are pretty happy with the situation too.

 

 

 

 

 

Every week, (weather depending) I arm myself with my ‘sheep bits and bobs kit’ and set off for a morning of hoof and bottom trimming.   In other words, I gather in a small number of sheep and spend a lovely morning with our teddy bears doing their health checks.  This includes checking and trimming their hooves, checking their bottoms and trimming their bikini lines, and if they’re woolled up I’ll trim the wool around their eyes too so they can see better.

We have nineteen sheep and doing the whole flock in one go is quite a lot for me on my own, so I do three or four each week.  This means each sheep gets a health check and mini hair cut roughly every six weeks.

My ‘sheep bits and bobs kit’ is one of the most useful things I own.  It contains:

Engemycin spray (aka blue hoof spray – great for mini foot infections)

Protego herbal powder spray (my favourite product of all time, I use this for minor skin wounds, it’s very effective and smells divine.  Yogi, Yssi and Ynca are all prone to getting urine stains on their bottoms so I’ll trim up the stained wool and follow up with a cloud of powder spray to prevent infection and keep their bottoms fresh)

Burgon and Ball hoof trimmers

Fiskars sewing scissors  (I find normal sewing scissors easier than full on shearing shears for doing mini trims)

Fiskars scissor sharpeners

Battles maggot oil (just in case)

‘Tom Tick’ (for removing pesky ticks)

Self-stick bandages, cotton wool and Styptic powder (in case of accidents)

Nitrile gloves

Rope halter (in case I need to secure one of the teddies)

Bribes (sheep nuts and / or chopped apples, carrots, turnips depending on what season it is)

I pop my bucket of things on the quad bike, secure with bungees and zoom off to look for the flock.  I have various hurdle pens dotted about over our pasture.  This means wherever the flock happens to be there’ll hopefully be a pen nearby.

Once parked up I’ll check my list to see whose turn it is, then I’ll walk over to the flock and bring in my first teddy bear.

Once I’ve got my sheep in the pen I’ll give her a piece of apple or a few sheep nuts, then a ‘tickly pickly rubbadubdub’, (some lovely scratches and head rubs).  This is important as I like the sheep to associate the pen as a pleasant experience.

Then I get to work.  I put a handful of chopped apples / nuts etc in a bucket and place this in one corner.  This part is very important as I want to keep my sheep fully occupied while working on her hooves.  Where I place the sheep and myself is super important as I want to make sure her body weight is fully supported by the hurdle and me at all times.  This way when she’s balancing on three legs she’ll feel secure and and not want to run off in a panic.

When I’ve done the hooves I’ll top up the bribery bucket and start on the bottom.  If I’m working on a skittish sheep I’ll halter her up.  Sheep instinctively move forwards when their bottoms are touched which isn’t ideal when I’m trying to snip off dags and peer through wool for maggots.

Bottom done, I’ll remove the treats bucket and get to work on the face.  Some of our flock don’t need a face trim but most of them do.  Ryelands generally have the full on teddy bear look so appreciate a wee trim up around their eyes so they can see properly.

Each sheep takes around half an hour, so after doing four or so sheep I’m pretty sore from all the shuffling around.  I’ll load up my things, call the dogs over and head back to the house for a welcome cup of tea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shearing is a big day in the sheep calendar and it can be pretty stressful for everyone involved, the sheep, the shearers and the farmers.  We start thinking about shearing at the beginning of May when the weather warms up and the sheep start feeling hot and itchy in their woolly coats.

Every spring I contact Guy our shearer to confirm that we’re on his schedule, and then it’s a case of waiting.  Unfortunately we can’t just pop a date in the diary because shearing is weather dependent.  Guy also has many flocks to dealt with, he goes up and down the country helping smallholders like ourselves and so we have to be patient and wait for a slot.

In the eight weeks or so prior to shearing we step up our ‘fly vigil’ watching for signs of fly strike which can be fatal.  Our weekly ‘hooves, bottoms and face trims’ routine becomes more important because the little darlings are at their woolliest.  Some of their bottoms can be particularly challenging with all the fresh spring grass and the effects that has.

This year we wondered if we’d ever get our little lot sheared.  We’ve had the wettest summer we can remember, and not only that, it’s been chilly too.  We regretted turning the aga off in May and have been piling on the jumpers ever since.

Normally our shearer comes in the second half of June or at a push the first week in July.  But June came and went with grey skies, wind and rain.  This year with the strange weather we knew shearing would probably happen in July, but still, we were getting a bit twitchy as were the sheep.

In theory you can shear sheep in any old weather as long as you keep your flock under cover so the wool is dry.  But ideally shearing is best done during a spell of hot, dry weather.  The wool should be dry so the blades can run through it easily, and the lanolin should be soft to allow the blades to travel more smoothly.  If the temperature’s too low, the lanolin doesn’t soften and the blades can stick which can be a problem as you run the risk of injuring your sheep.

But at last, as we came into the second week of July shearing happened.  We had two days of reasonable weather and our shearer Guy was in the area, hooray!

We got the flock down into the shed the night before to make sure they stayed dry and had restricted access to grass. The next day we were up bright and early checking on the flock and making some last minute adjustments to the fancy hurdle arrangement I put in place last month.  Then we dragged the shearing platform into position, and last but not least popped some lucozade and snickers bars on the shelf in the barn.

Despite the midges and cleggs who decided to join the party Guy did a sterling job sorting out our flock with their summer haircuts.

We were so happy to have our flock sheared and the sheep definitely had a spring in their step as they trotted back up the hill to their summer pastures.

 

 

 

 

 

Round about the beginning of May I started my annual “sheep shed muck-out”.   I needed to get it spick and span for shearing in June.  The sheep love their shed and spend a lot of time in it during the winter so it can get pretty mucky.  They would spend a lot of time in it during the summer too if they got half the chance.  Not fans of the hot sun, they seek out shady places, especially in the run-up to shearing when they’re still wearing their winter coats and everyone else is in tee-shirts.

As soon as the grass comes through at the end of April we shut off access to the shed and encourage the little darlings to break their “shed habit”.  They grumble for a bit and stand at the fence baa-ing, but after a few days they remember they have other shady places to lurk in such as their very own silvo-pasture.

With the sheep out of the way, I can roll my sleeves up and start mucking out.  I’m quite strict with myself and only do an hour a day to save my back.

At first the job seems endless, but after a few days I can see how much progress I’ve made and it’s a great feeling.  The hens love it too, they help out, grubbing out little insects and having dust baths in the newly unearthed dusty layer beneath the clods of dung.

This year it took me about three weeks to finish the shed.  I lost count of how many trailer loads of dung I lobbed onto the muck heap.  The best part was setting up the hurdles ready for shearing which I found hugely fun in a ‘re-arranging the furniture in a room’ kind of a way.  After many different hurdle arrangements which had to look right as well be practical, I eventually found a way to divide the shed into three areas.  Area 1:  multiple sheep waiting room, Area 2:  single sheep waiting room, Area 3:  shearing zone complete with board.

Now we just have to wait for shearing which is late this year because of the wet weather.  Its already July but we have the shearer booked in for Saturday so fingers crossed it stays dry.

 

 

 

 

It’s been about six weeks since my last blog entry about the wonders of alfalfa and sugar-beet for elderly sheep.

This winter just gone, we’ve been keeping a special eye on three of our more elderly flock members; Sparkle and Scarlett and Shelby.  Sparkle and Scarlett are missing some front teeth, and Shelby has arthritis and can’t get around as easily as she used to.

Winter can be tough, especially for older sheep who don’t have the reserves they once had.

We readily admit to spoiling our sheep a little bit, we give them access to their favourite shed to get out of the elements.  This is great for the sheep, but not so great for me as I have to muck it out every day.  But I digress, a happy sheep is a happy me.  As well as their shed, they also have ad-lib access to meadow hay and a cheeky sprinkling of ewe nuts every morning.  Despite this, as we came out of winter  this year Sparkle, Scarlett and Shelby were all looking a bit too thin for our liking.

Rocket is my middle name so I immediately researched nutritional supplements for elderly sheep with poor teeth and arthritis, preferably slow-release and non-molassed.  This is our first experience with keeping OAP sheep so it’s unchartered territory for us.

While I found lots of information on nutritional supplements for elderly horses and ponies, I couldn’t find much at all about elderly sheep.  Several cups of tea later I at last found something which looked promising; pelleted meadow grass and pelleted alfalfa with sugar beet.

Fast forward a few weeks and the three ladies are doing marvellously on their special supplement.  We are so pleased, particularly with Sparkle as she had lost the most condition out of the three.  Now she looks almost back to her old rolly poly self.  We’re also very happy that the two ladies with missing incisors are still able to graze grass so this means the pelleted feed is still just a supplement rather than a main meal, at least for the moment.  Well done Sparkle, Scarlett and Shelby!

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few years ago we made the decision to stop lambing.  Much as we loved having lambs skipping about each spring and doing zoomies around the paddock, we came to the realisation that it just wasn’t financially viable for us.  We do miss it from time to time though, lambing with all its highs and lows, it’s a profoundly magical time of year.  The miracle of witnessing life unfold, the heartbreak of having it slip through your fingers, it’s an experience you can never forget.

Since we stopped breeding, the number of sheep we have has stayed pretty much the same.  The only thing that has changed is how old they are.  Some of our girls have reached the ripe old age of twelve which is good going considering the average lifespan of non-commercial sheep is between ten and twelve.  Our youngest are now five (which is old in commercial terms) and the rest are somewhere in between.

This winter we had three sheep on our radar, Sparkle, Scarlett and Shelby.  We were keeping an eye on them because they’d lost a bit of condition.  While it’s normal for sheep to come out of winter looking a bit slimmer than usual, these three were thinner than we liked, particularly Sparkle whose normal physique is erring on the tubby side of tubby.

Both Sparkle and Scarlett are missing some front teeth which would account for them losing a bit of weight.  Shelby still has her front teeth but has a touch of arthritis so she finds walking tricky sometimes which means she’s not grazing as much as she ought to be.

 

Rather than wait for the spring grass to come through and see how they got along, I decided to fast track things a bit.  Actually, I was rather concerned about Sparkle as she only has one incisor left (thankfully she still has her molars), but even with lush spring grass coming through, she wouldn’t be able to get as good a nibble at it anymore.

So I did some research and found two products that looked just the ticket; Dengie’s Pure Grass pellets, and Dengie’s Alfa-Beet pellets.

Both the alfa-beet and the grass come in concentrated (pellet) form which you have to soak before use.  The advantage which comes with the soaking means that sheep with wobbly teeth should find it easier to eat.

I couldn’t wait to get started.  Once I’d whizzed into town to buy what I needed, I hefted the sacks into the kitchen, got three buckets, some scales and a handful of carrots.  I carefully measured out 20g of the grass pellets and 20g of the alpha-beet into each bucket.  I deliberately went with a very small amount knowing sheep have delicate digestive systems.  My plan was to start small and build it up. I then added 10g of ewe-nuts into the mix and a handful of grated carrot.  Lastly, I added 200g water.   Happy with my concoctions I left the buckets to soak and got on with some overdue housework.  Three hours later, I grabbed my coat, the dogs and the buckets and set off in search of the sheep.

On locating the woolly gang, I called the three ladies into a pen and set my buckets down in front of them.  I couldn’t wait to enjoy that moment – the sound of sheep enthusiastically scoffing.  Sadly the moment never came, they sniffed the buckets with great suspicion, kicked them over for good measure and then looked at me with beseeching ‘feed me’ faces.

I tried hand feeding them but they weren’t having it.  Hmm I thought, what to do?

I trudged back to the house and had a cup of tea.  I pondered things for a while and decided it would probably be best to contact Dengie’s for advice.  I sent them an email explaining my predicament and to my delight a reply came back the very next day.  They suggested making the mixture a teeny bit dryer, more ‘wet-crumbly’ than ‘wet-sloppy’.  They also suggested adding ewe-nuts which I’d already done, but this time I added a few more.  I experimented a bit and came up with what looked to be a good consistency.  20g of alfa-beet, 20g of grass pellets, 20g ewe nuts and 160g water.  Three hours later, off I went again with my buckets.  This time to my delight, they stuck their heads straight in and scoffed for all they were worth!

This is our first experience with caring for elderly sheep so we’ll be learning as we go along.  Fingers crossed with their nutrient-packed supplements all three will blossom and put on weight over the coming weeks.  For Sparkle who has only one front teeth left, the pellets will be a lifelong addition to her diet as she will struggle to get adequate grass.

 

As well as the ‘daily hay ceremony‘ which I wrote about a couple of months ago, I thought I would write a few words about another little ceremony which the sheep really enjoy; the daily ‘nut ceremony’.

Sheep go absolutely bonkers for their nuts.  I should add, these are not actual nuts, ‘sheep nuts’ are rolled pellets containing a variety of grains and legumes.

Like the hay, we only do the ‘nut ceremony’ during the winter when the sheep appreciate a little extra nutrition.

First thing every morning I scoop a carefully measured amount into a bucket, then, bucket in one hand, dog leads in the other I call the the dogs and off we go.

Our sheep are really good at telling the time.  They come down to the paddock exactly half an hour before I make an appearance and stand in a group looking towards the house.

Then they watch me walking along the fence round the outside of the paddock before moving as one unit to the gate which stands between them and the troughs soon to be filled with ‘nuts’.

I used to fill the troughs while the sheep milled around me but this proved slightly hazardous and required my wits about me, not a great situation to be in before I’ve had my breakfast.  Sheep can be quite adept at rugby and thought nothing of tackling me to the ground if it meant they could stick their head in a bucket.

These days I put the troughs in a separate part of the paddock and close the gate before the sheep come down so they can’t get up to tricks.  This makes life much easier and is also very amusing to watch when I open the gate and the sheep bundle through closely followed by Elliot who likes to join in the scrum.