keeping sheep healthy naturally

[marliah]

As I am just getting started with sheep I wanted to check in with you all on natural remedies/prevention to keep my sheep as healthy as possible.

I house my sheep at night because we have lots of coyotes around here. So I have been putting diatomaceous earth on the floor in there when I clean out the pen. And I am going to start applying neem oil to a spot on the neck (kinda like a topspot treatment for a dog) to try to prevent mites/lice. Also I think I am going to crutch all the sheep a couple times a year to hopefully never end up with flystrike. I also found a recipe for a dewormer using garlic.

Do I pretty much have all the bases covered there? or are there other routine things I ought to be doing to keep them healthy? We are hoping to put in a second pasture at some point to do rotational grazing as well.

Thanks!

 

[aggieterpkatie]

Honestly, I don't ever really have to do much with my sheep to keep them healthy. I keep an eye on eyelids for paleness, but I think I've had to deworm my ewes maybe only once a year if that. The lambs I check more often because they can't handle worms like adults can. I have never had mites or lice on my sheep, but my goat had lice and DE took care of that.

You may consider taking fecals into the vet now to see what kind of wormload your sheep have. They may need to be dewormed since they came from an auction, and who knows what care they had. Using garlic or some other herbal remedy may not be strong enough if they have a high worm load. It would be better to deworm them with a conventional dewormer to get rid of worms and then do maintenance with garlic or herbal treatments.

Other than that you shouldn't really need to do much! Sheep are not as delicate as some people tend to think!

 

[carolinagirl]

If you can rotate pastures every 6 weeks, that will go a LONG way in preventing parasites. If you can't rotate, can you keep them off the grass when it's wet with dew in the early morning? I have read that parasites move up the grass stems when it's wet so if the grass is already short from grazing, the sheep have a good chance of ingesting them. But what I have found from sheep so far is they are WAY hardier than goaties!

 

[miss_thenorth]

I also found a recipe for a dewormer using garlic.

Could you post this?
I'm with Aggie, I don't do much to keep my sheep healthy, they are pretty resilient. Check eyelid colour fo r anemia, which indicates worm load, and also I keep an eye on the dags, and trim them as necesary. My sheeps tails are not docked, and so far no problems. Mind you , I only have two sheep.

 

[SheepGirl]

Sheep are generally pretty healthy animals so long as you feed them right, provide them fresh water, and keep them in a sanitary environment. I wouldn't worry about the diatomaceous earth...just clean the pen out completely and add fresh straw to it. I also wouldn't worry about neem oil--sheep rarely get mites or lice, unless exposed to it through sharing shearing equipment or bringing an infected or carrier animal into the flock.

I have never crutched any of my sheep and I have never had flystrike. Flystrike usually occurs when their stools are loose (due to health issues such as scours or worms, lush pasture, overabundance of feed, etc) and it sticks to their wool which flies then lay eggs in. Wool doesn't grow that fast (about an inch every three or four months for medium wools), so crutching them a couple times a year wouldn't be too effective (once a year would be fine) and would be stressful to them (sheep don't like to be handled--even tame ones!). Also, as long as you wooled sheep are docked, you shouldn't have any issues with flystrike (sheep with wool are docked to prevent flystrike).

Garlic has not yet been proven to be an effective dewormer 100% of the time. You should only deworm when your sheep's eyelids are pink or white. When they are a cherry red, you're good and so you don't need to deworm. However, I would recommend doing fecal egg counts of your sheep every so often and worm them as needed.

I don't mean to bash all of your ideas--they're good ideas since you want to keep your sheep healthy--but since you're new to sheep I thought I would give you my two cents worth. All you need to do to keep your sheep healthy is practice biosecurity, feed them right, and practice good livestock management (stressed animals become unhealthy animals).

 

[Beekissed]

I used garlic/UP/ACV/raw honey boluses for maintenance purposes for my sheep~I found that doing this at least quarterly seemed to have the most favorable results. I also add UP/ACV in small amounts to their water whenever I think about it.

I used sea kelp meal and salt for my loose mineral and found it to be the most effective and cheaper in the long run.

I don't know about using the DE and the possibility of your sheep breathing that fine powder into their lungs...could cause some respiratory problems.

If you are going to try to go all natural with your sheep I find a multidirectional approach seems to work well. I have added Shaklee's soap to my bolus on occasion. I feed pumpkins...they love them, particularly in the winter and the seeds are a natural antihelminic. If you don't grow your own you can find many in November when people are done decorating with them. It doesn't matter if they get frozen, this seems to make them even yummier to the sheeples. If they ferment, even better...ask Freemotion about fermented foods for livestock.

Check hooves for overgrowth at least a couple of times a year, keep trimmed...a broken hoof wall can tear back into the inner portion of the hoof and be a source of infection.

I found pine shavings to stay drier than hay or straw for bedding and were much easier to clean out.

I used to have quite a few links about all natural health remedies for ruminants but my computer got ill and had to be purged.... Should have given it some garlic, huh?

You might also choose breeds known for hardiness, parasite resistance, easy birthing, etc. as a preventative method. Selectively breeding/culling for these traits is also a good preventative to flock health problems.

For the most part, the breeds I chose were pretty care-free and thrived well on the all natural methods I chose. I think that is the most important thing if one is wanting to have good flock health...start out with a breed that is known for hardiness in the first place then develop your flock from there. Get rid of any animal that doesn't thrive well on your management methods and breed those that do...then you have a flock that is well-suited to your animal husbandry practices and not the other way around.

Not to kick over an ant hill here but I find the number of threads about goat illnesses and birthing difficulties on this forum to be distressing. If each individual would try and obtain goats and goat breeds that were from healthy stock and culled to maintain that natural vigor all these enormous vet bills and strife could be diminished.

One can knock all natural husbandry all one wants, but it works well and best if you develop stock that respond best to an all-natural regimen. If you have animals that must constantly be dosed with high powered chemicals and antibiotics or fed high dollar feeds to live~ not even thrive~ just to live, then it defeats the purpose of even having animals. One should be able to enjoy the experience, not be struggling and grieving all the time~unless, of course, that is the desired outcome. I can't imagine how defeating that must feel.