Lambs for winter grazing

squinn2912

I have 20-25 acres that won’t be grazed and there’s grass on it. I’m considering options. At this point buying cattle likely won’t get it eaten off. I was thinking of buying 20 or so sheep or renting it out. I don’t know much about sheep but I’d love to try it out. Would it be a runner?

Looking for advice. Thanks

Hard Knocks

squinn2912 wrote: »

I have 20-25 acres that won’t be grazed and there’s grass on it. I’m considering options. At this point buying cattle likely won’t get it eaten off. I was thinking of buying 20 or so sheep or renting it out. I don’t know much about sheep but I’d love to try it out. Would it be a runner?

Looking for advice. Thanks

Nothing ventured
What’s your fences like?
Sheep will find holes which are more visible this time of year.
If you have electric fence 1-2 strands of white tape wire once trained
Personally don’t give full run, if you could give 4/5ac at a time and sell off in Feb, you should have nice grass coming on

Bass Reeves

A small bit of hand feeding will help to keep them from straying. A 20-30' piece of guttering will do to put a bit of barley in 2-3 kgs between the lot of them every 2-3 days will help to keep them around. It also is a help when you want to get them into a yard in February/March for loading. 2-3 kgs every two days would be about a 20kg bag of barley every 16-18 days. Try to get whole Barley as opposed to rolled if you can.

Try to get mountain stores as they are lighter and you can carry them longer. 20-23kgs LW would be heavy enough if good grass and keeping until March. Dose them on arrival and again at Christmas if you can.

Robson99

Personally I would buy 28kgs + if buying mountain stores
Weather lambs are easier fatten than mountain ram lambs. As Bass said a small bit of meal will keep them from straying however you will need to up it for 4 weeks prior to killing next March / April
Also Cobalt B12 every 3 weeks or so

Bass Reeves

Robson99 wrote: »

Personally I would buy 28kgs + if buying mountain stores
Weather lambs are easier fatten than mountain ram lambs. As Bass said a small bit of meal will keep them from straying however you will need to up it for 4 weeks prior to killing next March / April
Also Cobalt B12 every 3 weeks or so

Bought mountain stores mostly half crosses when I got them ( mid October) they were 20-25kgs and I send them to the butcher Mid March. They always killed about 26-28 kgs. The hand feeding changed to daily for the last 3-4 weeks about 400 grams/head/day. If Op is sending some of these to a factory he have plenty of weigh on them by late February for them to kill 22/23kgs

Robson99

Bass Reeves wrote: »

Bought mountain stores mostly half crosses when I got them ( mid October) they were 20-25kgs and I send them to the butcher Mid March. They always killed about 26-28 kgs. The hand feeding changed to daily for the last 3-4 weeks about 400 grams/head/day. If Op is sending some of these to a factory he have plenty of weigh on them by late February for them to kill 22/23kgs

There would want to be a cross in them. Straight mountain hard to finish in Feb without lot of meal