Sheep Chat Thread

[ChocolateMouse]

So I am considering getting a babydoll southdown sheep ewe and keeping it with a Nigerian Dwarf goat doe. These two animals are similar in size and diet... Just a difference in copper intake. (Easy to fix, just put some copper supplement over the goats grain when you milk Id think.) I have heard they can get along well too.

What are peoples thoughts on this pair? I live on a big suburban property but what that really means is my space is comparably tiny. I Am trying to maximize my animal species number for a variety of product and food. This would give me wool, dairy and possibly two different kinds of meat.

What are the space requirements for a tiny sheep like that? I have a nice secure 6ft wood suburban privacy fence to keep them in and anything substantial out. But my back yard is not exactly rural and so they could not be on pasture at all on some days. I would provide special hanging feeders and anything I could like toys to keep them busy on days like that. They would be kept inside a pen in my substantial garage and fed primarially quality hay. I would love to also grow fodder and sprout grains for them. If I can make them fit into the property I could feed them and keep them pretty healthy I think.

Also I have heard mixed things about babydoll southdown fleece. Some people say it is awful and hard to work with. Some people say it is like cashmere. Which is it really?

 

[MidnightGyps]

I have one Dorper x and I am embarrassed to say he is very fat

He is VERY smart and gets into my chicken food, and he almost died once because of it (grain, sheep, not a good mix). I would post a picture but I'm embarrassed

 

[chooks4life]

@ Betty1:
Quote: Horses are pretty notorious for harming and even killing sheep and goats. They can bully them to death. A single small pony and a single sheep can generally become friends, but generally horses and sheep are too different, it's a bit like dogs and cats; some will get along, possibly the majority won't. How lonely they are may have an impact on their tolerance for each other.

Yes, sheep need shelter. Merinos and wool sheep can do pretty good without it, but if soaked they can get wool rot. Wool, like all hair and fur, has a lot of protein in it, so if it rots, along come the blow flies to do their job. Hair sheep do not seem to do so great without a shelter, they appear to be more like goats, which easily get permanently damaging and even fatal lung infections from being stuck out in the rain. The reason they 'cry' about getting wet like they're dying is because it is seriously life threatening to them.

If you're talking about shelter from the sun, of course, every pet or livestock animal needs to be able to get out of the sun. Often they will choose to stay out in the rain or sun, but when they feel the need to shelter, there needs to be a shelter, or their health will suffer. They can die for want of shelter. Plus, you can get done for animal abuse, depending on the laws in your area.

Quote: It depends on the individual characters of the animals. They may or may not get along. Sheep and goats can get along or can be such enemies that the require separation. Goats, especially horned ones, are fairly notorious for bullying sheep.

About the copper requirement, I believe sheep and goats are pretty similar unless in milk, but otherwise rather the same. Dark haired animals have about 6 times the need for copper than white haired ones do, so adjust according to color.
Quote: If you keep them on concrete they will be almost guaranteed to get lung and joint disorders. Even a deep bedding of hay won't stop that. You'd need to regularly wash the garage clean and keep them on a top notch diet. Also, exercise is vital to health and without it, nothing you do with their diet will give them a long life. They must have room to move and a reason to. If they are in a few square meters and food is a short walk away, that's not enough. Any 'toys' you give them should include object to climb on and hide behind, so they are at least able to jump up and down on and off things and wonder where the other one went and be compelled to investigate. In zoos, they discovered that having an "L" shaped cage was far better for the animal's mental health as they always wondered what was around the corner and had to go see. It revitalized their lives. To be able to see every corner of your universe is apparently able to depress you to death.

You might want to research people's intensive farming of goats and sheep. Some people have managed to keep them alive in sheds; Pat Coleby's "Natural Goat and Alpaca Care" book will teach you a lot about goat and sheep health and she also explains how some people successfully farmed shedded goats. From that book I learnt how to make my own stock lick. I intend to do so, soon. Apparently it's the same for goats and sheep.

They need sunshine, fresh air, and a steady intake of fiber in their diets or they will develop gut issues which can be fatal. But I'd guess you already know that, so if I were you I'd research ways to manage rotational grazing in a very tiny area and the best diets possible; it may be doable.

Also, like the other recent poster (Betty1 I think it was) with their situation, be aware that you may not legally be allowed to keep them that way and you may find yourself in trouble with the authorities. Suburbia is generally not legally a place for livestock even if you claim they are pets. In my area you must have 5 acres minimum for sheep, but only a fifth of an acre for a horse. lol. Battery horses, I thought.

Anyway, best wishes.

 

[theuglyduckling]

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Our city is an interesting one. Aside from dogs and cats there are no restrictions on how you keep/care for an animal, and there are no restrictions whatsoever on what kinds of animals or how many you can have. However, animals kept "outdoors" must be "housed and maintained" 100 feet from a neighboring house. Thus the back end of my lawn is currently fenced in deer netting for my chickens. In theory I could make a nice shed-like area out of pallets and scrap wood and put them back there... But I would certainly need more than the deer netting I have right now for them to stay secure! The garage is not considered to be outdoors so I could keep them right next to my house hence my intention to keep them there... But if there's serious health concerns (I had the intention of putting down wood chips, then hay and newspaper and adding to it every day doing something like a deep litter in my garage) I may reconsider the back end of may lawn. My back yard is expansive would be open to them most hours of most days but not all. I could also certainly tether and supervise them in my front lawn for grazing. None of this is illegal here. It'll make some heads turn and stare but a supervised sheep tethered in the front lawn won't be any more offensive than the aggressive dog across the street tethered in the front lawn, nor the daschunds down the road that are kept behind an invisible fence that they regularly disregard to attack people walking past. Heck, I could even potentially take the pair on walks or rent them out as an eco-friendly lawn mowing service to neighbors! XD It also helps that I have a sister across the street that would certainly allow me to walk my sheep and goat over there to graze for a while, and another two blocks away. Her lawn grows faster than any other lawn on the street with the thickest weed-free grass I have ever seen. I intend to bring in the same hay I feed my rabbits for them as their main diet... A nice timothy and orchargrass mix locally grown. I figure that is the best source of nutrients I can get for them since most of the lawns around here are regular lawn grasses, not pasture grass. I also really want to grow fodder for them and if I can get it set up I will grow grass fodder as their main diet year-round.

tldr; It would certainly be possible to give these animals a really enriching life with new experiences and exercise frequently in my situation... It just would not be every day that I could do these things is all. Some days I will not be home to supervise them in the lawns. Some days like today we have nearly two feet of snow and everything is cooped up from it. Most days they'd get to run in my over 4000 square feet of back lawn and eat grass and safe weeds and trim my rose bush to the ground so I can plant a nice apple tree there instead.

Regardless of which way I go for keeping them, I will divide their "shelter" area into two "rooms" so they can't see everything at once. It'd be like a U shape. One area will have the feeder, the other the water so they at least have to go from point A to point B. I will also make cubby hole areas for hiding and sleeping. I like these ideas a lot and appreciate hearing them. I will consider heavily putting them on raw earth rather than my garage even though the garage would be easier, warmer and much dryer. My concern with keeping them in the end of my lawn is how wet the lawn gets when it rains... The end of the lawn is the dryest spot but I don't want hoof issues. I think adding a foot of nice wood chips back there (very inexpensive) and a dry area off the ground for sleeping will do wonders for how wet my lawn is though. I guess it'll just come down to which area I think I could make work better with fewer health issues. It may still be the garage if I load down a mini soil ecosystem in a pen in there with 6-12 inches of wood chips, a few shovel-fulls of dirt and another six inches of bedding on top of that. Then I just rake it out and replace it 2X's a year, compost it and then use it to fill in low areas in my lawn and make more garden beds.

I'll do some more research on which way I think would work better...

What aout the wool? Anyone have any info on it? And what would be the best way to get a goat and a sheep to bond? The goat will be dehorned... I had no intention of keeping a horned goat!

 

[chooks4life]

Quote: Keeping them shedded requires a bit of learning to prevent issues, but I don't think deep litter would work too well for sheep. I have never heard of it done. The theory seems sound enough since it works for poultry (in my experience) but then you have to consider that sheep and goats produce a lot of urine which chickens do not. They would be likely to get respiratory issues and foot rot and no matter how quickly you added new layers, they would turn them into a mud sty. A milking goat (full size) has been estimated at having an output of up to 40 liters of urine a day! This must be a slight exaggeration but it's very close, from my experience with milking goats and cattle. Milkers can pee actual rivers and ponds. A mini-milker would still probably soak your bed area faster than you could keep up. It would be a great time saver and health aid if you could give them some sort of bed that drains the urine into an area away from their pasture and sleeping areas, which is easy to hose down or otherwise clean.

I would not recommend using newspaper, since a while back they changed to known carcinogenic chemical inks from the more natural ones they used to use. There were protests against this but the change still went through. It is no longer safe to use newspapers in mulch, as bedding for animals, or anything like it used to be good for... Using newspaper in gardens means they are not organic, something many people have not caught up to, since they are still doing things the way their grandparents did them and not realizing the chemicals involved have changed.

Quote: I always read about people in agricultural papers boasting about the sorts of grasses they've sown their pastures to, so I was quite surprised recently to read the goat expert Pat Coleby listing most of these popular pasture grasses as dangerous to goats. I don't know about the ones you've listed so would do a little supplementary reading up on them. Some grasses 'tie up' nutrients in animals and you get sometimes fatal issues from that.

Pat Coleby ran successful commercial goat ventures for most of her life and associated with professional goat keepers as well, and shared the info she learned, with referenced studies and data to support it, so her books are well worth getting if you intend to farm at all, whether with goats or anything. She covers soil health which is the foundation of all health above it, so this is vital to learn for long term health and prevention of serious issues.

The main value of grass is in the fiber, so adding a calcium and seaweed supplement to that will cover most nutritional bases. Extra copper and sulfur were added because in Australia the soils are very deficient in this on average, but this may not be necessary in your area. If your area has had topdressings of fertilizers (not counting manure) then you may well need to supplement like it's Australian soil because these fertilizers are proven to inhibit uptake of some minerals (especially copper and sulfur) up to 100%. Sulfur is a large part of what fleece is made of so fleece animals will always need more sulfur than those that do not grow fleeces.

Coleby condemned these pasture grasses as "hazardous" which I find strange because they are used throughout Australia on cattle... Pangola, Green Panic (Guinea Grass), Para, Kikuyu, Buffel, and a few others she only gave the latin names for, like Narok setaria and Kazungula setaria. Goats may cope with Kikuyu if properly supplemented but they won't do well, she reckons. All the other grasses listed will cause symptoms akin to nitrate poisoning in goats or any other stock*, and in horses the disease is called hyperparathyroidism.

Some feeds are only poisonous to white animals, as colored animals can cope with much higher levels of copper. So St John's Wort, Red Clover etc can kill white goats but not colored ones, or at least it's very unlikely unless that's all they have to eat and they are not supplemented with dolomite, which has calcium and magnesium in balance which is necessary. The treatment for copper poisoning is a teaspoon of dolomite and sodium ascorbate tipped straight into the mouth or in the feed. Personally I'd wet it down just before giving it to them for obvious reasons, lol. Vitamin B12 is also an antidote to copper poisoning.

*Pat Coleby sometimes overgeneralizes. Sometime she says "all other stock" meaning hoofed stock, not poultry, etc.

For fiber and meat goats Coleby made up a stock lick consisting of 25 kgs of dolomite, 4 kgs of seaweed meal, 4 kgs of yellow dusting sulfur, and 4kgs of copper sulfate. It must be kept dry or the dolomite neutralizes the copper sulfate in about 30 minutes. About 2 grams per head per day were given. It would be less for miniatures or animals that are not in milk, pregnant, or producing large quantities of fleece or flesh. Proprietary stock licks are often too hard for them to get enough nutrition from, she says, and I've found my sheep would definitely wear their teeth down if I only supplemented via those blocks. I broke the bock up so the sheep can gnaw on it, but I supplement with kelp, which they love.
Quote: Sounds alright!

Right now I'm trying to gently deter my landlord from making a mobile pen for sheep which is 20 square meters for four or more sheep; he's got 10 acres, of which at least 5 is available, but to his way of thinking sheep are lawnmowers able to live on grass alone. They would be moved to new pasture when they've eaten the grass down to stalks, but he starves them thinking they're just lazy gluttons and they don't need anything more than plain grass alone, or they're "spoiled". He's lost goats and poultry before to mystery deaths and isn't interested in the 'why' of it. No supplementation means sooner or later they die of malnutrition. He fertilizes his plants, but doesn't think animals need anything, doesn't seem to care, to be honest. Ok, enough about him...

I highly recommend you lime the ground before you put them there. Dog tapeworm can live a long time in the soil and fills their brains with cysts, and of course brain surgery on a sheep or goat is not within the average person's financial reach. The cysts will end up all throughout the body but it's the brain ones you will notice as they will of course damage the animal permanently; their effects are rather like the symptoms of a stroke. Lime will also kill many nasties and if you keep stock on the same ground for long periods then lime is a literal lifesaver, killing harmful fungi, parasite oocysts, viruses, bacteria, etc. It will break up any clay soil you've got so drainage is better and the pasture will be lusher. Cocci overload is an issue with sheep and goats kept eating off the ground, so best to give them feed bins off the ground and your idea for an off-floor sleeping area sounds like a good one.

While I personally prefer all animals have a wide range to roam, I know it's not always feasible, and there are animals dying for want of good homes which may have less than an ideal amount of space... So go for it and I wish you all the best with it. Definitely do a fair bit of reading up first to avoid suffering and damage later though. Minis are an ideal way to go. I would make your little goat a playground to climb, she'll keep herself fairly fit that way possibly. The sheep may try to join in too.

 

[Penny Hen]

Our city is an interesting one. Aside from dogs and cats there are no restrictions on how you keep/care for an animal, and there are no restrictions whatsoever on what kinds of animals or how many you can have. However, animals kept "outdoors" must be "housed and maintained" 100 feet from a neighboring house. Thus the back end of my lawn is currently fenced in deer netting for my chickens. In theory I could make a nice shed-like area out of pallets and scrap wood and put them back there... But I would certainly need more than the deer netting I have right now for them to stay secure! The garage is not considered to be outdoors so I could keep them right next to my house hence my intention to keep them there... But if there's serious health concerns (I had the intention of putting down wood chips, then hay and newspaper and adding to it every day doing something like a deep litter in my garage) I may reconsider the back end of may lawn. My back yard is expansive would be open to them most hours of most days but not all. I could also certainly tether and supervise them in my front lawn for grazing. None of this is illegal here. It'll make some heads turn and stare but a supervised sheep tethered in the front lawn won't be any more offensive than the aggressive dog across the street tethered in the front lawn, nor the daschunds down the road that are kept behind an invisible fence that they regularly disregard to attack people walking past. Heck, I could even potentially take the pair on walks or rent them out as an eco-friendly lawn mowing service to neighbors! XD It also helps that I have a sister across the street that would certainly allow me to walk my sheep and goat over there to graze for a while, and another two blocks away. Her lawn grows faster than any other lawn on the street with the thickest weed-free grass I have ever seen. I intend to bring in the same hay I feed my rabbits for them as their main diet... A nice timothy and orchargrass mix locally grown. I figure that is the best source of nutrients I can get for them since most of the lawns around here are regular lawn grasses, not pasture grass. I also really want to grow fodder for them and if I can get it set up I will grow grass fodder as their main diet year-round.

tldr; It would certainly be possible to give these animals a really enriching life with new experiences and exercise frequently in my situation... It just would not be every day that I could do these things is all. Some days I will not be home to supervise them in the lawns. Some days like today we have nearly two feet of snow and everything is cooped up from it. Most days they'd get to run in my over 4000 square feet of back lawn and eat grass and safe weeds and trim my rose bush to the ground so I can plant a nice apple tree there instead.

Regardless of which way I go for keeping them, I will divide their "shelter" area into two "rooms" so they can't see everything at once. It'd be like a U shape. One area will have the feeder, the other the water so they at least have to go from point A to point B. I will also make cubby hole areas for hiding and sleeping. I like these ideas a lot and appreciate hearing them. I will consider heavily putting them on raw earth rather than my garage even though the garage would be easier, warmer and much dryer. My concern with keeping them in the end of my lawn is how wet the lawn gets when it rains... The end of the lawn is the dryest spot but I don't want hoof issues. I think adding a foot of nice wood chips back there (very inexpensive) and a dry area off the ground for sleeping will do wonders for how wet my lawn is though. I guess it'll just come down to which area I think I could make work better with fewer health issues. It may still be the garage if I load down a mini soil ecosystem in a pen in there with 6-12 inches of wood chips, a few shovel-fulls of dirt and another six inches of bedding on top of that. Then I just rake it out and replace it 2X's a year, compost it and then use it to fill in low areas in my lawn and make more garden beds.

I'll do some more research on which way I think would work better...

What aout the wool? Anyone have any info on it? And what would be the best way to get a goat and a sheep to bond? The goat will be dehorned... I had no intention of keeping a horned goat!

Would you like a sample? I have some Babydoll fleece from a friend of mine. PM me with you address and I can send you a sample. I have it in the raw state currently. I haven't had time to process it but I like what I feel.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

In that case, the garage may be better with a thick layer of wood chips, gravel and sand with hay on top. The wood chips and sand would allow it to drain into the drains built into the floor of my garage and could be soaked down to clean it, but would still give a lot of padding for the goats to stand on instead of concrete. The gravel would help wear down hooves and fill in gaps, breaking up the ground so it can drain easily. And then the wood chips are fresh and would take a long time to break down. The chickens have not broken down my last batch in 8 months. I will definitely lime my back yard since my dogs got tapeworms right when we moved in just over a year ago from fleas. I haven't had problems since, but I will be cautious.

The hays rabbits can eat are pretty specific too like no clover, alfalfa, no reeds, not even fescue. Orchardgrass and timothy are generally considered safe for sheep from what I have read. I will double check anyhow.

 

[Penny Hen]

About running sheep with horses. You must train your horses to be gentle with the sheep. Mares who have had foals usually get this easily. They know that they cannot be so rough with a smaller animal. I have only had problems break out when feeding grain. I solved it by hanging the horses buckets from the fence where the sheep couldn't dip their noses in and feeding the sheep at ground level. I had one of my rams develop a close friendship with a large pony mare I had. They would play fight. She would threaten to bite him and he would charge her front legs and she would rear up and let him pass underneath her belly. The other ram I had was scared of her so her buddy would hold it as a mark of status that he was not afraid of her.

 

[Mr MKK FARMS]

Nice!