Sheep Pasture

[Timonlionking]

As soon as the weather breaks, I am going to be starting in on the permanent pasture for my bottle lambs.

But, I have never had sheep, no one in my family has had sheep, or anyone that I know... we’re all cow people ar

So I’m having a bit of trouble with their pen.

What space requirements should they have? We have 360 acres for our cows, and I’ll be fencing off an area close to the house for my sheep.

I plan on not having more than 10 sheep at any given time, but, I would like to have some breathing room, too.

I have Katahdin/Dorper crosses, should I separate my ram, or would it be okay to run him with the ewes year round? If I separate, would his pen have to be way off from the ladies?

Just a few of my questions,.. any tips you guys can give a newbie would be GREATLY appreciated!

 

[Baymule]

Welcome to the forum, glad to have you here. Yes, separate your ram. He will need a friend, sheep don’t like being alone. Wethers do quite well for this purpose.

Fence with sheep and goat wire. I used non climb horse wire. Either is good, the non climb is more expensive. How big or how many pastures depends on your grass, you have cows, so you already know that. Roughly, 5 sheep are 1 animal units or equal 1 cow. So how many acres does it take for one cow/calf?

What is your predator load? What are your predators? We are near Tyler, Texas. Coyotes are terrible. We also have bobcats and the occasional cougar. Eagles will carry off newborns. They are put up in the barn and lot


We have livestock guard dogs or we would have no sheep. We are on 8 acres. We have 2 Great Pyrenees, 2 Anatolians and 1 black Labrador and Great Dane cross. Maybe overkill on the number of dogs, it just kinda happened. LOL

My ewes are Dorper/Katahdin mix with a registered Katahdin ram. They love browse and weeds. If your fences were up for it, you could rotate your cattle, follow with sheep, clean up the pastures and break the worm and parasite cycle for both species. Something to think about.

They need shelter to get out of the weather if they desire. A simple hoop shelter of bowed over cow panels with a tarp covering will work. Or build a shelter on 4x4 skids. The ideas are endless.

Most of all, READ. Take it topic by topic and read the posts in the forums. Come up for air and ask questions. We will be glad to help.

where are you located and please put it on your avatar if you haven’t already. Can’t tell, on my phone. Satellite TV and internet, both off due to 100 year record breaking snow and ice storms. BTW it got to -3F here, new lambs in unheated open sided barn and all survived. Got one more ewe to lamb.

 

[Alaskan]

If your fences were up for it, you could rotate your cattle, follow with sheep, clean up the pastures and break the worm and parasite cycle for both species.

That is a great way to manage land.

 

[kamdenb436]

We raise Navajo Churro ewes, and our ram is a Black Mountain welsh. We have 14 sheep that are separated into two pens. We have a butcher pen, a breeding pen, and our ram pen. Our ram was in with 2 of our mature ewes in early January, but they are already pregnant. Right now we have our ram in with our girl lambs and the pregnant ewes. If your girls are pregnant you can keep him in, you just don't want babies from the time frame of say June-October, so that's why people tend to separate them from each other.

You don't need giant sheep pens, but you always need to make sure they have enough room to exercise. They will get fat very easily if they don't have to walk far to their food + water. Our pens aren't wide, but they are fairly long. We have their hay feeder in the middle of their pen, water by the gate, and grain troughs close to the gate.

His pen doesn't have to be far from the ladies, you just have to make sure he can't breed through the fence.. that would be an oopsie!! We have our ram pen just across from our butcher pen, we put him in with one of our wethers. We had him in there on his own for a little while, but he was getting sick of having no buddies in there with him.

I hope this helps you a bit!! Sheep are an amazing animal

 

[Baymule]

Welcome to the forum @kamdenb436 glad to have you here!