General sheep thread

J.O. Farmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118926001#Comment_118926001

Think it means land grazed exclusively by sheep.

The worm burden will be higher and more specific to sheep than mixed grazing.

The national stud have some belted Galloways they keep to stop land getting horse sick. They reckon the cattle reduce the worms for horses if they rotate them round after the horses.

White Clover

How much milk are peoples pet lambs drinking? Mine are ad lib cold milk and are drinking around a litre each per day. I'd be happier if they were drinking a bit more.

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118932834#Comment_118932834

Our lambs are 2 -4 wks old and drinking 1.75 ltrs/day. what sort of feeder are you using, we've the Ewe 2

joe35

Dressing a ewe for sore feet yesterday and she had maggots in it.

We haven't finished lambing yet and maggots already

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118934136#Comment_118934136

I wouldn't mind that, you'd get maggots in dirty flesh any day of the year. they move in fairly quick in dead animals too

farawaygrass

Ewe too feeder here too and they drinking about 1.5 l of cold milk and picking at pencils. Great to get them on cold milk as not alone do they drink a lot of warm milk, which I wouldn’t worry about in the first few weeks, but the milk goes sour very quickly and a lot gets wasted because of. Find a lot more milk powder settles in the bottom too when it’s being heated

White Clover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118933866#Comment_118933866

My apologies Wrangler, I had forgotten about this. I'm using 3 teat buckets. In particular, it was one group of 4 that were only drinking a litre each. After posting above, I changed the teats and they have increased consumption up to about 1.5l now.

I think I might invest in a feeder like the ewe2 for next year.

I might have been leaving some lambs on the ewe for too long which resulted in being more difficult to train on to the bucket. This probably didn't help with consumption either.

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118945474#Comment_118945474

We used the buckets here for years with great success. Only dxisadvantage to them if they chew the teat off the whole bucket ful leaks out and we finally bought the ewe 2 when we had a batch particularily hard on teats.

It's much better to get them on the teats young, we've had some here that never need teaching especially when you put them into a trained batch, curiousity and hunger trains them

White Clover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118945556#Comment_118945556

Had one lamb chewing teats here last week. I put a small chunk of himalayan rock salt into their meal trough and he started licking it straight away, seems to have cured the chewing for now anyway.

MIKEKC

Would the ewe 2 feeder be suitable for lambs from two to five weeks old Want to put ewes back to hill but not with twins

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118948300#Comment_118948300

A lot of lads here will Donedeal a ram lamb out of twins for that same reason

MIKEKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118948478#Comment_118948478

Thought about that but didn't go with in the end. Last year left couples down until after sheering in July. Then weaned one lamb. Even though they were 12 weeks they needed meal to keep them moving. Thought feeder might be a solution

Young95

How are lads with grass situations ? Had to go back feeding ewes meal last two weeks and will be doing it for another week anyways. Growth is slow

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118956276#Comment_118956276

Not even slow, practically stopped

We're feeding here too for the last week, this weather could carryon for a good while

Young95

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118957170#Comment_118957170

How much are you feeding your twin rearing ewes wrangler?

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118957563#Comment_118957563

We're giving them half a kilo twice a day, We use an 18% cob in the snacker ,cobs are a great idea, even without the snacker you can just throw them around the field , no need for troughs.

they're getting it a week now and will be for another week at least.

it's not enough but they're in good condition so they can milk off their own reserves a bit too,

Young95

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118957707#Comment_118957707

Are the cobs much dearer per tonne to normal ration or meal ?

It's mostly been grand weather for working in but it's been consistently cold/cool and there's not much growth. Feeding 300g/ewe of an 18% crunch but ewes are busting with milk, had to catch a few and check as I was worried they might have had mastitis.

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118958528#Comment_118958528

about the same price

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118958700#Comment_118958700

Ewes can look packed alright, If they're not limping on the leg on the side of the suspected mastitis and in bad form I wouldn't bother catching them

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118958780#Comment_118958780

I had a fair good idea they were ok when they weren't limping alright, still caught some handy ones at the trough just to settle it. Nice lambs coming out of the Donegal rams.

Kevhog1988

Seem to be ok for grass here. Lambing outside on a bare enough patch and moving to a patch of good grass as soon as lambed. Ive 25 ewe lambs in a bare field on haylage though to give the ewes grass. Waiting to move house and will have a fair bit more grass to go at then.

farawaygrass

The last few years there seems to be a hard April and may for grass. That hard wind is a killer

Foxy visited to claim the rent last night, first set of twins reduced 50%

k mac

Have a hogget that lambed nearly 2 weeks ago and noticed today she seemed to be lying down alot. When you try to get her up you have to lift her.She gets up every so often walks a few steps and then drops down on her 2 front feet again. Rang the vet and he advised to give her 80ml of calcium for milk fever which I did but I thought they improvement is supposed to be fairly instant after injection of calcium but I see no change a couple of hours later so I'm wondering if its not milk fever. What else could it be

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118961165#Comment_118961165

It could be pnuemonia or an internal infection after lambing, has she a high temperature. I'm sure you checked her for mastitis.

Has she one or two lambs. Like the vet we'd only be guessing without seeing her

Tileman

Lost a nice young ewe with meningitis during the week. Fecking sicken u. A lovely 3 week old lamb to try softer/ rear now.

as the saying goes they find a new way of dying every day.

k mac

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118962134#Comment_118962134

Didn't make it unfortunately vet said it could have been fluke. Strange considering she was in serious condition thought they would be thin if bad with fluke. Were dosed mid November before going to the ram but its a lesson learned obviously needed to be done again its wet ground around here. Must dose the rest tomorrow

Sami23

At what age do ye normally give lambs their first dose at ?

Lambed here from 1st March on so thinking will be time soon.

Have Fenbenor here from last year - would that be ok or would something else be more suitable ?

Tia

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118963624#Comment_118963624

You'd be targetting nematodirus this time of year, white dose such as fenbenor is ideal for nemotodirus.

I think it's too cold for nemo but I'm going to dose now and again in three weeks in case they come when the weather warms up.White dose is cheap anyway

Doing FECs aren't ideal for nemo in that they have harm done by the time it shows up on the test so the advice is to dose when the weather warms and the lambs are eating grass ie. six weeks old plus