# Sheep for milk



## rmonge00 (Jun 14, 2011)

Does anyone on here keep sheep for milk?  Which breeds are best?  Are they as destructive to orchards?  I know nothing about sheep!!

Ryan


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## carolinagirl (Jun 15, 2011)

rmonge00 said:
			
		

> Does anyone on here keep sheep for milk?  Which breeds are best?  Are they as destructive to orchards?  I know nothing about sheep!!
> 
> Ryan


they are not quite as bad as goats, but they will still eat orchards and will strip bark from some trees.  Seems like they may not be as aggressive about destroying stuff as goats are.


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## rockdoveranch (Jun 15, 2011)

rmonge00 said:
			
		

> Does anyone on here keep sheep for milk?  Which breeds are best?  Are they as destructive to orchards?  I know nothing about sheep!!
> 
> Ryan


I was wondering about the milk question too as I have no idea.  

Our 32 acres is heavily wooded, mostly with oaks and a few cedars, plus lots of undergrowth.  The sheep do not bother the oak bark but will steal a few leaves from time to time.  They, and the deer, will strip the bark of the cedars and eventually the trees will die.  They will eat the leaves and bark off our pear and peach trees so they are protected by wire.  They also find my camellia yummy   When our veggie garden is through baring we let them in there to eat the plants down to the ground.  

In general, sheep are grazers and goats are browsers.

Most all my garden pants are gone from either sheep or deer.


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## patandchickens (Jun 15, 2011)

I got my sheep for milking, although life has intervened and I never actually got them into proper production this year and although they are still in late lactation my chance is pretty much over til next year. I did milk the Shetland ewe a little last year, just for tasting purposes and to get a sense of how it was going to work; and have milked out some small amounts occasionally from the two dairybreds this year. But not Actually Milking Them Daily kind of thing, unfortunately. Hope to still have them next year and I SWEAR I will do it then!

Also, miss_thenorth had milking sheep for one or two years but I believe she's gotten rid of them?

I wouldn't trust them in an orchard with low-hanging branches (they can stand on hindlegs, also bounce, surprisingly high to prune things up) and would want some sort of protection on the tree-trunks as mine like to rub their skulls on the bark REAL REAL HARD to the point of damaging bark. They're not as bad as goats but they are not entirely different from goats either.

Commercial-type milking breeds available in North America are basically East Friesian and percentages thereof, and British Milksheep (I am not positive whether the latter are in the US yet, but I think they now are). If you are considering purebred East Friesians you need to have some serious heart-to-hearts with people about health issues, as they are apparently bred for high production but not low maintenance and I was actually steered _away_ from them by breeders of the breed. British Milksheep, if you can get them, are apparently hardier with fewer lambing or udder problems. I have British Milksheep x Dorset crosses (do not know the actual percentage but the former is dominant) and they are very userfriendly and easy. You can get 1000 lbs or more of milk per lactation (7-8 months) out of a well-managed good commercial milking type ewe, although AFAIK the higher numbers presuppose you are pulling the lamb at birth to bottlefeed it which is a whole nother level of complexity to deal with.

If you want more readily available breeds, with fewer problems, there are people milking Katahdins, Icelandics, and others. You would want to look for animals from very milky lines though, not just any animal of those type breeds. They say that from well-managed animals of well-selected lines you may get as much as 4-500 lbs of milk per lactation. The numbers usually quoted for milking a 'plain ol' sheep' of no particularly milky parentage is 1-200 lbs per lactation.

The big disadvantage of sheep as milk animals is that they don't produce much (a reasonable dairy goat, _not even_ an outstanding one, would give you 1200-2500 lbs in a 8-10-month lactation); and sheep lactations are generally fairly short (a couple months for a run-of-the-mill plain ol' sheep; up to 7-8 months for a very well-managed dairy breed sheep). British Milksheep and East Friesian have been selected for ability to breed out-of-season if you want year-round production from different segments of a flock, but many of the regular breeds that are sometimes milked are not capable of being manipulated into out-of-season breeding.

(If your interest is cheese, tho, note that sheeps milk produces almost twice the cheese yield per lb of milk compared to cow or goat milk, which offsets the lower milk production to some extent)

Also if this is just for a coupla sheeps for personal use, in most geographical areas (but check yours, specifically) it is MUCH easier to find a buck owner who will do stud service for your does than it is to find someone to lend you a ram. And you can't do normal AI with sheep (it is laparascopic and much more complicated than the turkey-baster approach used in goats and cattle)

That said.... you'll notice I have sheep not goats   For me, the shorter lactation is a bonus as I don't WANT to be milking into winter; and rams don't stink like bucks do (tho of course if I had goats I wouldnt NEED to keep a buck); and you get wool that you can do stuff with; and I feel less bad about sending lambs off to the packers than I would about goat kids which I think are just the cutest things in the world and nearly human  Also sheep are a bit easier to fence in.

Anyhow that gives you some idea of the issues to consider.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat


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## rockdoveranch (Jun 15, 2011)

Hi Pat,

I really enjoy reading your posts.


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## aggieterpkatie (Jun 15, 2011)

Pat, you may change your mind about sending goat kids to packers after they jump on you constantly (ruining your work clothes!  ), find ways to escape fences that you thought there would be *NO* possible way they could escape, and jump on everything in their pen including the hay bag and hay feeder (ruining the wire on the hay feeder) and refuse to stand on 4 legs and eat like _normal_ animals including the lambs right next to them.


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## carolinagirl (Jun 15, 2011)

aggieterpkatie said:
			
		

> Pat, you may change your mind about sending goat kids to packers after they jump on you constantly (ruining your work clothes!  ), find ways to escape fences that you thought there would be *NO* possible way they could escape, and jump on everything in their pen including the hay bag and hay feeder (ruining the wire on the hay feeder) and refuse to stand on 4 legs and eat like _normal_ animals including the lambs right next to them.


I agree with you completely!!After many years of having goats, I am finding my sheep simply a joy to own.  

1. They keep all 4 feet on the ground...except for the occasional hopping which is insanely cute.  
2. They don't insist on leaning their entire body weight into the fence to scratch themselves.  
3. They seem perfectly content inside the fenced area I gave them, they never stick their heads (and get hung up by their horns....if they did have them) because the grass looks greener on the other side.  
4. They are quieter and calmer. 
5. They are happy to follow me if I have the feed bucket.
6. They stay together in the pasture as a group and return to the barn at night as a group.
7. the only adult ewe I have has taken a leadership roll with all 8 lambs, never ever butting any of them, unlike nanny goats who will butt a strange kid to the other side of the pen if he comes to close.
8. They would rather eat grass then trees
9. They don't eat the barn.
10. They don't feel compelled to climb up on anything over 3" tall.
11.  I am sure I could think of more things if I put my mind to it.  
12. They don't jump on top of their BRAND NEW round bale and pee on it, then refuse to eat it because it smells like goat pee.  
13. They don't get up inside their feeders and poop, making it necessary for me to clean them before each feeding.
14. Rams don't stink.


I am really enjoying my sheep.


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## rmonge00 (Jun 15, 2011)

Thanks for all of the information!  I am really in a conundrum about which animals to get for dairy....

Im assuming cows are less destructive, but need significantly more to feed on!!  I only have about 1.75 acre of pasture...

Ryan


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## miss_thenorth (Jun 15, 2011)

Yes, I had sheep that we milked.  Mne were not milk sheep, and they were older when we got them.  We did nt get alot fo milk from them ( I had two)  We milked one for her whole lactation, I think it was for 5-6 months?  

I have a goat in milk right now, and a cow ready to be bred this summer. Milking sheep was not for us.  However, I do know the errors we made.
1.  we got older sheep who were from a large herd.  they were not used to people handling them, so they were extremely hard to catch, every day was a battle.  Teh second ewe we just gave up on and let her nurse here babies.  she was horrific.

2We did not get milk sheep, so we did not get alot of milk.  It was less a  litre a day.  Milk sheep I'm sure produce much more. 

 It was also our first time milking, and we didn't know if we drained them completely, , Ican tell you that I know when the goat is empty. but we did not know ifthe ewe was empty, so that might have had an effect on how much milk we got.  We would squeeze until no more came out, but hindsight is telling me we should have tried for more.

That being said, the milk was awesome!  We still have the sheep, but just because we discovered how awesome lamb meat is.  If you consider getting sheep for milk, my advice would be to get young ones, so they get used to you, (and spoil them like crazy, b/c they can be quite skittish,) and so it will be easier to handle them, and get a milk breed.


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## miss_thenorth (Jun 15, 2011)

rmonge00 said:
			
		

> Thanks for all of the information!  I am really in a conundrum about which animals to get for dairy....
> 
> Im assuming cows are less destructive, but need significantly more to feed on!!  I only have about 1.75 acre of pasture...
> 
> Ryan


I got a dexter cow, b/c we don't have alot of pasture.  On my three acres, I have two horses, two sheep, a goat and a cow. We havent had to feed hay for a month now, and it looks like we could go most of the summer ( if things continue to grow as well as it is now) before haveing to feed hay, but we make sure we have enough for all the critters, just in case.


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## patandchickens (Jun 15, 2011)

aggieterpkatie said:
			
		

> jump on you constantly (ruining your work clothes!  ), find ways to escape fences that you thought there would be *NO* possible way they could escape, and jump on everything in their pen including the hay bag and hay feeder (ruining the wire on the hay feeder) and refuse to stand on 4 legs and eat like _normal_ animals including the lambs right next to them.


Yeah well, that's what my HUMAN kids do too, and worse. Goats at least don't poo in their pants 

Pat


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## rockdoveranch (Jun 15, 2011)

I found this article on "Sheep and Goat Vacuum Milking" using a converted syringe.

After reading it I may just try milking for colostrum and milk for future rejected or orphaned lambs.  Colostrum and milk replacer gets expensive.

http://www.tvsp.org/sheep_milker.html


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## damummis (Jun 15, 2011)

DH keeps trying to get me to milk our sheep and get rid of the goats.  The goats are a handful and I am contemplating trying to milk the sheep.  I am still up in the air about it, but thanks for the thread.


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## aggieterpkatie (Jun 15, 2011)

I milked one of my ewes a few times this year. It worked out pretty well, because she actually has fairly good size teats for a ewe.  It still was harder to milk than my full-sized goat, and I'm not sure I'd want to do it full time.  The milk was really good though, and the yogurt I made for it was very creamy and delicious!


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## patandchickens (Jun 15, 2011)

With the admittedly-very-limited am't of milking I've done on mine, I haven't found it to be particularly a problem, even on the wee little Shetland ewe. Dunno if I could have done the Shetland if I had *large* hands (mine are sort of average I guess) but the dairybred ones were easier. Not as easy as a goat or cow of course but still not really a big issue.

Pat


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## miss_thenorth (Jun 15, 2011)

Yeah, my one ewe had fairly nice sized teats, and they were easy enough to handle, and the other ewe had rather small ones, but still not a problem to hold onto.  Milking was not difficult.  but compared to my goats teats, they are small.  i wouldn't let the size of the teats be a deterrent.  
The difference I have found between goats and sheeps teats is, with a goat, you give on squeeze and it goes along way.  Sheep, you need to squeeze more often, they don't fill up like a goats teats do.


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