# putting sheep together after breeding



## Stempelfarm (Oct 29, 2011)

Hi Everyone, I have a small flock of 11 sheep that I have separated into 2 breeding groups. 2 rams and 9 ewes. I have a large pasture, which one ram and 5 ewes are in, and a smaller area that one ram and 4 ewes are in. My rams wear marking harnesses and 8/9 ewes have been marked. I plan to change out the color on the harnesses in a few days, and keep them in their groups for 17 more days to make sure everyone is bred. After this can I put everyone together in the large pasture, or should I still keep them separate? I'm fairly new at sheep keeping and this is my second breeding season, but my first one wasn't very well thought out. If i'm sure everyone is bred it shouldn't be a problem to have them all together should it? Any info is appreciated.


----------



## SheepGirl (Oct 30, 2011)

Ideally, a ram should be kept with the ewes for 34 to 68 days, allowing for two to four breeding cycles. Colors should be changed every 17 days so you can easily tell if a ewe has been remarked. (Don't forget to record breeding dates!) After breeding season, seperate the ewes from the rams; put the rams in the smaller area and move the ewes into the larger pasture. Don't overfeed your ewes in the first three months of gestation...your ewes will get fat and have problems at lambing.

ETA: Here are a couple reasons to remove rams after breeding season:
1 - You don't want any late breeders. It throws off vaccinations, feeding, marketing lambs, etc. Usually by the third or fourth month of gestation you can start to tell who's bred or not. Any girl that isn't bred should be culled unless you want to give her a second chance at the next breeding season.
2 - Rams will get aggressive. I have seen a ram during breeding season ram into the ewes trying to get to the feed trough...sometimes right in the belly. You wouldn't want him doing that to a bred ewe, possibly causing an abortion.


----------



## zzGypsy (Oct 30, 2011)

how do your rams get along?  if you're moving them in together and they're agressive with each other, which can happen during breeding season, you can limit fighting and injuries by putting them in a squeeze overnight.  basically they should have just enough room to stand or laydown together.  if they're wanting to fight, they can shoulder each other, and maybe swing a head sideways, but can't get far enough apart to get a full shot in with any force.  we have had occasional sparring after doing this but no injuries, and usually within a few days they're good buddies. we have a couple of wethers as well, so we may put them in the squeeze as well.  just depends on how they're behaving.

here's what we do, we've got very mellow rams, it's part of what we select for, so this model might or might not work for your sheep.

we do run our rams and wethers with our ewes after we're sure everyone's bred, we keep plenty of feed bunk space so there's no fussing at feed time.  we have not had any trouble with rams roughing up the ewes or lambs, or losing lambs during pregnancy.  once the ewes are close to lambing, we move them into a jug or a group lambing pen, then jug them once they lamb, and once the lambs are spry, they amd their moms go out in the nursery group.  over the course of lambing all the ewes migrate out of the pen with the rams and wethers and into the nursery side.  once we're done lambing, and the lambs are big enough not to be fragile, they rams and ewes go back together until end of june.

we try to breed early, first heat in late july or august, so we have lambs in dec/jan and have all the sheep together from end of february through june. in July we separate out the breeding groups, or if we're using only one ram, pull the extra ram and the wethers to a separate area.  we run the breeding groups for mid-July/mid-sept.  rams and weathers are separate through october.  all sheep back in together starting in november, migrating the near-due ones as needed.  

in 12 years, we've had 2 late breedings (ewe lambs, bred in december or january) and two out of season breedings, so we keep an eye out for ewes that seem to be double-wide when they shouldn't be.  because we're usually under 30 head this is not a big problem for us, but it probably wouldn't work in a large production operation.


----------

