Some people may find it hard to get excited about sheep, compared to say, pigs or cattle and if you see no charm at all in the animals you should not get involved with them. But my experience with sheep at River Cottage has convinced me that they are in no way short on character. They can be cheeky, affectionate and playful, and ready to form a lasting bond with their stockmaster. And the smallholder whose flock may be measured in single figures has the advantage of being able to get to know the quirks and character of each individual the greedy one, the friendly one, the shy one, the leader. Sheep can often be good with, and are usually safe with, young children not that you should leave them together unsupervised. But if they have been used to close human contact since birth, they will not merely tolerate, but actually enjoy, a pat, a scratch and a hug.
The River Cottage flock has been the source of considerable pleasure for me and my family. And the way they gently crowd and jostle me every time I walk into the field still brings a smile to my face.
But there are other reasons, besides their under-appreciated affability, to consider keeping sheep. They are extremely efficient grazers, and if you have even a small paddock or field, a few sheep will take care of it very nicely. On a slightly bigger scale, their grazing efficiency can be very complementary to cattle. They graze much closer than cows, and tidy up pasture that would otherwise be left very patchy and tufty by cattle. Most breeds of sheep are hardy and can overwinter out of doors without any trouble at all. Given enough grazing, they will not even need any extra winter fodder. In this sense they are relatively low maintenance, though of course sheep do need to be sheared, and may also require a little more routine veterinary attention than other stock.
Of course, there is one overarching reason for rearing a few sheep: good lamb and mutton is quite delicious, and the stuff you raise yourself is sure to be the best you've ever tasted.
Starting a flock
To the uneducated eye, a sheep is a sheep. But as with pigs and cattle there are actually dozens of different breeds, usually regional in their origins, and each suited to different kinds of pasture (though most are pretty adaptable). And physically, they can be very different from each other. In fact, it is often the discovery of a particularly distinctive breed, which is deemed to have more 'character' than most, that charms the first-timer into giving sheep-keeping a whirl.
Hobby-farming sheep on a small scale is already a surprisingly popular enterprise ? as you will quickly discover if you take yourself into the fold. The result is that in any given part of the country you are never far away from knowledgeable and, for the most part, friendly people ready to offer you help and advice. The best possible start you can make in sheep-keeping is to make firm friends with such a figure, and adopt them as your mentor. You then have someone you can turn to when you have questions and, most importantly, when you have problems. If they keep the same kind of sheep as you, so much the better, and if they sell you your stock in the first place, then better still ? they have a vested interest in helping you get off to a good start.
It is worth taking a bit of time to choose a breed of sheep that you like, that will meet your needs, and that is suitable for the land you can offer them. But before you are going to start talking to sheep people, and possibly acquiring their stock, you will need to know the very basic sheep vocabulary. Here is a basic glossary:
Ewe: a mature female, usually a stock breeder
Ram: a mature, physically intact male, usually a stock breeder
Lamb: any young sheep, especially those destined for early slaughter
Wether, or mutton wether: a castrated young adult male being reared for meat
Chilver: a young ewe that has not yet had a lamb
Hogget: a yearling sheep of either sex (also 'ewe hog' and 'ram hog')
The most sensible way to start a small flock is to buy some ewes that have lambed before and will lamb for several years to come. The reasons for this are fairly obvious: if you are a beginner, it is better to buy ewes that are not also beginners. On the other hand, you don't want animals whose lamb-producing days are all but over.
The best times of year to buy not least because this is when others are inclined to sell are, as with most stock, spring and autumn. If you buy ewes in spring, you should buy ones that have new-born lambs. And if you buy ewes in autumn, you should buy ones that are already carrying next years lambs. It is hard to be absolutely sure of the latter, but any healthy ewe that has been running with the ram ought to be pregnant and with a bit of luck she should have the raddle mark (see below) to prove she has been 'tupped' (the shepherd's term for mated).
As with most stock, the ageing of sheep is done by looking at their teeth. A lamb will have eight immature teeth on the bottom jaw, which are used to cut the grass by closing them against the 'pad' (palate) of the toothless upper jaw. The middle two teeth are the first to grow, and at one year old these should be noticeably longer than the surrounding teeth. At two years, four teeth will be prominent, at three years six, and at four years she will have a full mouth of eight fully grown teeth. After five or six years the teeth will be showing a considerable amount of wear and some may be missing altogether. Once their teeth are gone, sheep will not feed well and quickly lose condition, most are therefore sent for slaughter in their sixth or seventh year.
Good sheep are rarely given away and you should therefore have no compunction about looking them in the mouth before parting with money for them. As well as ageing them by the teeth, check that the teeth are nice and straight, and come up level with the front of the pad. Teeth that stick out (overshot jaw), or do not reach the front of the pad (undershot jaw) will not last as well, and neither will their owner.
So, the best ewe to buy is one that is two or three years old and has already had one or two lambs. You should get two, three or even four more lambing years from her. An older ewe whose teeth are in good shape may also be worth a look, but if she has already lambed three times you should be ready to haggle a bit.
Check the udder too. Hard lumps of tissue indicate that she has had mastitis, which means that one or both of her teats may have trouble delivering milk to her lambs. Of course, if you are buying in spring she should have her lamb(s) with her, and you should be able to see that they are suckling well.
How many ewes you buy depends on the amount of pasture you can offer them and how many animals you wish to kill each year. On summer grass, stocking rates are about five sheep per acre, but if you wish to overwinter your sheep without too much extra feeding you should think in terms of about half that. If you wish to kill two or three animals a year for your own use, and are not particularly concerned about selling any meat, then four ewes is probably a good number to start with. They should give you three to six lambs in the spring, and you can keep one or two ewe-lambs as replacement stock. Or you can start by buying two or three ewes and two or three chilvers from the same flock. The chilvers (who may be the daughters of the ewes) will lamb in your second spring of sheep-keeping, by which time you will not be such a beginner and they will have seen from the senior ewes how it is done.
A larger flock will allow you to keep on top of a larger amount of grazing, but will require more concerted management. You will need to sell your excess lambs or use them for barter.
Choosing a breed
With over fifty different breeds registered in the UK, it's almost impossible to answer this question. There is nothing wrong with allowing personal prejudice to be your guide, and buying sheep that you simply like the look of, provided they are suitable for the land you can offer them. Don't put soft sheep (i. e. down and shortwool breeds) on very tough hill country, they won't be able to hack it and will quickly lose condition. The reverse, on the other hand (i. e. mountain and hill breeds on lush lowland pastures) is not necessarily a problem, although they may run to fat and therefore not breed as well as you had hoped.
If you are not attracted by the physical characteristics of any particular breed but simply want some good healthy sheep that will be largely trouble free and provide you with strong lambs, then one of the commercial breeds of ewe will suit you very well. These are hybrids, usually known as half-breds or mules. The most popular are those known as North of England mules. Scotch and Welsh half-breds are particularly popular in their respective countries. Mules and half-breds don't breed true, so they are always crossed with pure-bred rams, the most popular being the black-faced Suffolk or the white-faced Texel.
If you do go for something a little more fancy, there is still much to be said for starting with a breed that is, if not common, at least locally popular. You will then be able to tap into a good support network of fellow enthusiasts. My own choice at River Cottage has been the Dorset Down. I love them to look at, I love them to manage and I love them to eat. And I have been positively spoiled with support and encouragement from local enthusiasts. Best of all, borrowing a ram is never a problem.
Tupping
Ewes cannot lamb on their own. They need servicing, 'tupping' from a reliable ram. If your breeding ewes number in double figures you may want to keep a resident ram. When buying a ram you can age him in the same way as a ewe. You should also check his testicles with your hand. There should be two of them.
But good rams are expensive, and if you only have half a dozen sheep, then buying and maintaining a ram will put the economics of your little flock out of kilter. What you need is a helpful, sheep-keeping neighbour who is prepared to lend you a ram for long enough to be sure that all your ewes have been tupped, though this can be a problem if you have chosen some exotic rare breed of sheep and want to keep the blood line pure. How far will you have to go to borrow a ram? There is another problem. Those who own rams keep them primarily for the benefit of their own ewes. They won't want to lend them out until they are confident that all their own ewes have been covered. This may not be until some time in November, which means that your lambs may not be born until April (gestation time is a few days short of five months). That is not necessarily a problem. But if anyone else has got ahead of you in the queue, then you may be pushing your lambing period impractically late. Book early to avoid disappointment. And if you can get the ram in by Bonfire Night, (traditionally for lambs on April Fool's Day), then so much the better. Those managing commercial flocks like early lambs (often from late February), so they may be a good bet for a timely loan of a ram. Incidentally, the going rate round our way for the loan of a ram is a bottle of good Scotch if you pick it up yourself, two if it's delivered. It is traditional to ensure the fertility of your ewes by 'flushing' the flock before putting in the ram. This means putting them on your poorest pasture for 3-4 weeks, then putting them on very good pasture and introducing the ram a few days later. This technique works by appealing to the ewes' sense of maternal opportunism: a lush period after a lean period says to them 'get pregnant quick while the going's good'. It is also believed to increase the chances of twin lambs.
Unless you happen to have two or more suitably sized paddocks, the easiest way for smalholders to flush is by strip-feeding, using an electric fence to concentrate the ewes on a small patch of pasture while giving a neighbouring patch a chance to grow. You can artfully boost the 'good' pasture by feeding them a little extra hay, sheep nuts or rolled barley. Whether you flush or not, the bottom line is that fat sheep are less likely to conceive, so make sure they are not too pampered in the month running up to tupping.
Those used to loaning rams will normally be happy to deliver him wearing a 'raddle' - a harness that holds a large piece of coloured crayon across his chest. This leaves a clear mark on the backside of any ewe that he has tupped. When they've all been done you can send him home again, although sometimes not all ewes will have got pregnant from one tupping. Ideally you should leave him in for another three weeks (the ewes come into season every sixteen days) to pick up any ewes who failed to conceive first time round. A ram will not tup a ewe who is not in season (i. e. those already pregnant), so by changing the colour of the crayon you can see who gets done second time round, and mark them down as late lambers.
Commercial breeders use a veterinary technique called 'sponging' to bring on oestrus in ewes. This can be useful to concentrate lambing times, but it is probably not worth worrying about for the small-scale sheep-keeper. Not quite knowing is all part of the fun.
Lambing
Having said that, you must be ever-vigilant come lambing time. All lambs are precious, they are what your sheep-keeping is all about and in a small flock they are doubly so. When lambing time is a week or two away, start inspecting your ewes twice daily. Watch, and occasionally feel, their udder. It will, quite suddenly sometimes, inflate with milk. In this state a ewe is probably only days, a week at most, away from lambing. If the weather is very cold, bring your ewes into their shelter, laid with fresh clean straw, at night. The shelter should also be prepared as a lambing area, with hurdles ready to make small compartments, one for each ewe and her lamb(s).
But until they lamb, let your ewes out again for all but the chilliest, wettest days, so they can graze and move around. Leave the gate to the shelter open, so that they can go in there to lamb should they choose. Once lambing starts, you should be looking out for your ewes every few hours. The first sign that lambing is actually under way is usually a coloured bag of opaque fluid hanging down from the back end of the ewe. The lamb will not be far behind.
Most ewes can manage quite well on their own, but occasionally they will need help. Normal delivery is front feet first, then nose. If you see front feet poking out, or front feet and a head, but nothing further happens within, say, half an hour, you should pull the lamb out. This may be easier in a confined space and ideally you should walk the ewe into a pen or your prepared lambing area, then help her to lie down. But if she is already lying down in some corner of the field, don't try to move her. The feet of a lamb are very slippery, and a soft cord can be tied around them to help your grip (old neckties seem to be a favourite tool for this job). Ideally time your pulling to the ewe's pushing, pull down, towards the ewe's back feet, as well as out and never pull up or you may damage the lamb.
As the lamb's body emerges, support it with your free hand. When it is half out, a gentle twist as you ease the lamb downwards may help to relieve the pressure and free the back end of the lamb. As soon as the lamb is out, check that it is breathing. If necessary, wipe away any mucus from the nose and mouth. Then gently poke a piece of hay or straw into the nostril to encourage the lamb to sniff or sneeze, which should help to trigger normal breathing. If there is still no sign of life, hold the lamb up by the back legs and gently massage its throat with finger and thumb, then try the nose tickle again. As soon as you are confident that all is well, present the lamb to its mother and back off. She should lick it for a while, and pretty soon it will stand up and find her teats. If this hasn't happened within an hour of its birth, some gentle coaxing may be required. Place the ewe's teat insidethe lamb?s mouth. If it doesn't start to suck, trying milking a little milk on to your fingertips and getting the lamb to suck your fingers. A lamb should respond quickly to the taste of milk, and soon get the hang of suckling. If things are still not working, the problem may be with the ewe check by gentle squeezing that the milk is flowing. Once the lamb is sorted and settled, keep an eye on the mother to see if there is another to follow.
Coping with complications
The above procedure is for assisting a ewe with a normally presented lamb. Unfortunately there are also a number of abnormal presentations. There is the breech birth, where the lamb comes out tail end first. There are lambs presented with their heads thrown back. And things can get especially complicated where twins and triplets are concerned. There are procedures for the correction and delivery of all mal-presented lambs, and they involve putting your hand inside the vagina of the ewe and back into the womb, where the position of the lamb can be corrected. Such manoeuvres are best not practised by the novice without the attendance of a vet, or experienced stockman (i. e. your local sheep-keeping mentor, as suggested above). Such a figure should be alerted some days before you are due to start lambing, and called immediately you suspect a ewe is having difficulty delivering. Sooner or later you will have to learn to deal with such problems yourself. With that in mind, there are two excellent ways to gain valuable lambing experience before your own flock is due to lamb. One is to book yourself on to a registered lambing course, which you can do through your local agricultural college, or through Lantra. The other is to assist a local sheep farmer or smallholder who is lambing before you. I would urge you to do either or both of these things. When it comes to lambing, there is no substitute for hands-on experience.
Once you have delivered healthy lambs to healthy ewes you can stop worrying for a while. Your ewes will thrive on the spring grass and their lambs on mother's milk. If the weather is very cold, or very wet, keep mother and lamb in their shelter for a few days until the lambs look strong. Keep mum well fed with hay and or a little concentrate, and give her fresh water twice a day. Remember what she really wants to do is get out there on that spring grass, so as soon as the weather improves let her out with her lamb. You can always bring them in again at night.
Two or three days after lambing your ram lambs should be castrated. Tails on all lambs can be docked if you like, it will definitely help prevent fly strike (see below). For both castration and docking, the rubber band method is the best and the most humane. Kits can be bought from an agricultural supply store but get the vet, or your sheep mentor, to show you how to do it the first time.
Lambing can be tense and it is certainly tiring. Occasionally, it can be heart-breaking. But when it's finally over, and your flock, perhaps now doubled in number, is out on the spring grass, the satisfaction is immeasurable. It?s what smallholding is all about.
Bottle-rearing orphan lambs
It is extremely rare to lose a ewe that has successfully lambed. 'Orphan' lambs are usually the weakest of triplets, who are losing the battle to share two teats. Very occasionally a twin or even a singleton may be rejected by the ewe, or simply fail to find the teat. Such lambs can be hand-reared by bottle, using a formula powder bought specially for the purpose. Goat's milk can also be used but they do not do well on cow's milk.
Lambs reared in this way will grow up thinking they are humans, affectionate creatures who like physical contact and may therefore be emotionally difficult to take to slaughter. Female orphans can, however, go on to be good breeding ewes. Because they are expensive and time consuming to feed, and usually lag behind the rest of the flock in terms of weight gain, orphans can often be bought very cheaply from commercial sheep farms. They can be a good way for the smallholder to build up a flock.
Maintaining health
Sheep are susceptible to a number of health problems. For trouble-free sheep keeping, regular inspections and routine preventative treatments are essential. Here are the most common problems and the best way to deal with them:
Feet
Sheep's feet can suffer various problems, especially on damp lowland pastures (hill sheep are not so bad). They need to be trimmed regularly, say three or four times a year and this is a job you should learn to master; again, get your sheep mentor or the vet to show you how. As well as trimming, regular footbaths should help eliminate the risk of foot infections. You can buy portable footbaths and use hurdles to contain your sheep long enough to stand in them properly a few minutes is prescribed for most treatments, and simply running them through it is not enough.
Even with these preventative measures you may still find a sheep limping from time to time. The cause is likely to be some form of foot rot, a general term for bacterial infections in the feet, or 'scald', a specific foot injury caused by long grass chafing between the claws. Both problems can be treated with antibiotic spray. Nevertheless, call the vet to examine your first lame sheep and talk you through the diagnosis and treatment. Thereafter you may be able to deal with the problem yourself.
Worms
Sheep can be infected by various parasitic worms, especially on land that does not get a decent break (ideally a continuous six months every two years or so) from being sheep-grazed. The simplest solution is regular preventative worming. Ewes should be wormed roughly three times a year (including six weeks before lambing then again two or three weeks after, and again in mid-summer. Lambs should not be wormed until they are at least eight weeks old, thereafter with the rest of the flock.
Fly strike
This is a very nasty infestation of maggots from eggs laid by greenbottle flies, which usually affects the dirty rear end of a sheep around and under the docked tail (undocked tails are even more at risk). Dipping used to be the preventative treatment for this and various other ailments, but it is a big palaver and not very practical for the small-scale sheep-keeper. For undipped sheep, timely shearing, before the weather gets too hot, is very important. A preventative spray can be administered at the same time, which generally lasts a couple of months. The warm summer months are the riskiest time, so inspect your sheep regularly then. If caught early, fly strike can be effectively dealt with by a spray treatment. Left unchecked, it will kill a sheep in the most horrible way imaginable.
There are a number of other problems you may encounter, including pneumonia and something called 'twin lamb disease', which sometimes strikes ewes expecting multiple lambs in the month before lambing. I shan't go into detail over these, but it is useful to be aware of the general symptoms of an unwell sheep: standing apart from the rest of the flock (though this is normal during lambing); intermittent head shaking or twitching (not just occasionally but repeatedly); coughing or wheezy breathing. These are all signs that an animal is not well, and the vet should be called at once. The best preventative is general vigilance. Spend time with your sheep, daily if possible, even if only for a few minutes. Sheep are easily trained to come to a bucket of feed, when most can be scratched and petted a little. Sheep that enjoy, or at least tolerate, being handled are easier to inspect, easier to treat when they are ill, and ultimately easier, physically if not emotionally, to take to slaughter.
Slaughter
You can kill a lamb or a mutton wether at any time, but personally I favour late spring and late autumn. In the autumn I will kill either a mutton wether of around eighteen to twenty months or a large lamb of six to eight months, and in spring a wether of just over a year (once it's had a couple of months of good grass). In either case, I like to hang the carcass for at least a fortnight, ideally three to four weeks for the older animals. This usually means calling in a favour from a friendly butcher, so I can keep the animal hanging in his cold store. I've pushed this one a bit far over the last couple of years, and am beginning to think it's about time I got my own cold store! A tall fridge of the kind that doesn't have a freezer at the top, with the shelves removed, might just about be big enough to hang a lamb carcass in. There is no reason not to kill sheep in the winter months. They may be slightly out of condition, depending on your winter feed policy, but they will still be good eating. If you are singling out an animal for winter killing and you really want it fat, you can lure it into the shed for a daily treat of extra hay or oats for three to four weeks prior to slaughter. The advantage of winter killing is that you may be able to hang the animal yourself, if you have a reliably cool outhouse to do the job in. (You could even kill the animal yourself, and spare it the stress of the slaughterhouse, but you will need to know how to skin it, and you will not legally be able to sell, or even barter with, any of the meat.)
If you go to the slaughterhouse (for more on this, click here to link directly to my article on Getting Started with Pigs), wait while your animal is done, then take home the soft offals and the tongue, plus the blood if you want to make black pudding. Fresh lamb's liver is delicious, as are the heart and kidneys. The lungs (lights) can be used for making haggis.
It is much easier to butcher a lamb than a pig or a cow, and it is well worth getting a butcher to show you how it is done so you can do it yourself next time. Even on a summer's day, if you take delivery of an animal straight from the chiller you should be able to get it done and dusted in a cool outbuilding, or even a large domestic kitchen, before the meat gets dangerously warm. But you do need proper equipment: a butcher's block, meat hacksaw and very sharp knives. A sheep?s carcass is easily divided, either into symmetrical halves (sides), or across the body into legs, saddle and shoulders. I prefer the latter approach as it can be done on a (large, sturdy) table without hanging up the carcass. But however you make the first cuts, the resulting pieces are fairly easily subdivided, to give you the cuts favoured by the butcher. I divide my mutton into the traditional lamb cuts and treat them in much the same way.