Creep grazing lambs

johngalway

Anyone tried it? Am just starting to look into it. First signs aren't encouraging "it is almost impossible to build a creep gate which will separate ewes and lambs", typical sheep!

Username John

johngalway wrote: »

Anyone tried it? Am just starting to look into it. First signs aren't encouraging "it is almost impossible to build a creep gate which will separate ewes and lambs", typical sheep!

Never tried it, looked into it there before for next year as did reseeding this year and would like to let the lambs have access to this first. (When I say looked into it, I mean did a bit of googling, did a few sums on fencing costs, and time)
But I discounted it, as
1) It would mean more fencing (and it would have to be good fencing if its potentially seperating sheep from their lambs...)
2) Its something else to deal with, when lambs cant get back and get half stuck in the wire or something
3) You would want to be heavily enough stocked to get the biggest benefit. From looking at it before, I think it was lighter parasite build up in the 'lamb creep only grass' produced more lamb thrive was the biggest element. This wasnt what I was planning - I was just going to run the lambs ahead of the sheep. So the 'creep grazing' would have the same parasites eventually, so that gain wouldnt be there.

Plus - did I mention that I'm feckin sick of fencing

Sorry John, not much help to you there am afraid.

5live

Saw a creep gate a few years ago. It was based on the front of a commercial creep feeder where you slide a gate across another with vertical bars and squeeze 2 bolts together to fix in place. Then he cut away 2 bars at the bottom and welded the creep feeder front onto the gate. As the lambs got older he could adjust the gates and eventually seperate both groups by minimising the spaces between. I hope thats some help

sako 85

My uncle used to turn the gate (standard agricultural gate) between two fields upside down. The lambs could fit through but Ewes could not. Lambs were therefore grazing ahead of the ewes.

5live

Good idea but not for 16ft gates i suppose. Would the bars not be under pressure from nosey ewes and bend?

sako 85

The gates were only 12ft. I'm not sure what the measurement between the top two bars (that were the bottom two when the gate was turned upside down) was but i know it worked fairly well.