A bit of practical sheep-keeping

Before I get onto sheepy things, I did say I would make more effort ot be aware of Awareness Weeks. This week is National Obesity Awareness week.
There are so many reasons for the rise of this issue. Processed food. Inactive lifestyles. Processed food. Inactive lifestyles. Processed food...
I know that some people have genuine food issues and that is a separate matter.

But most of our (well, not mine) food is manufactured by huge companies who will add anything from sugars and fats to misleading descriptions and marketing, all to make us crave more so they can make more profits. And most of it produced as cheaply as possible with some shocking practices going on, at enormous cost to our Earth and its fauna and flora.

Sermon over.
There is one answer. Grow you own! The food s infinitely better and kinder to the environment and you get free exercise. Win. Win.

Onto the main subject. Sheep. Growing your own sheep is fraught with complications. In general sheep are determined to get ill, keel over and die.
But don't let me put you off. Go for a native breed and they will mostly look after themselves.

I don't do 100% organic with our sheep, only in that I do occasionally worm them with proprietary products and I do spray them for flystrike in the spring. Not to do so would be irresponsible.
I keep these things to a minimum. In the past people used to routinely worm their sheep whether or not there was an issue. Unsurprisingly the worms have become resistant to some of the chemicals.
I don't rely on garlic or homeopathy or anything like that - these are possibly of slight benefit, but not enough to cover the problem properly.
Instead good grazing management is my main weapon. The sheep move pasture on a regular basis and the ground they have been on is given as long as possible to rest. This helps break the life cycle of the worm species.
I plan to move some chickens into the sheep fields too with a mobile chicken coop. Their scratching and pecking will help expose the worm eggs to the elements.

I tend to worm when there are possible indicators of a problem. The main sign is runny poo - known as scours. I am pleased to say that my sheep have very good poo! They can get runny poo from a change of diet too, such as suddenly going on to very lush grass, so it is not always a sig of worms.

At this time of year some of the sheep develop coughs too, which can be a sign of worms. The coughs usually disappear of their own accord, but if it seems to be persistent then I generally take the opportunity to worm the whole flock.
This is just a matter of pouring a small syringe of fluid down their throats. I hold them up while Sue administers.
First task is to get the sheep penned into a small space.
Today was the turn of the five ram lambs who are down the bottom of the land where there is no convenient way to pen them.
So I set up some sheep hurdles, sprinkled some sheep nuts (pelleted food) on the ground inside and waited for them to walk in. It didn't take long. Fortunately the ram lambs are not so wary as their mothers. This is helped by the fact that Rambutan and Flash were bottle fed as babies.

This gives a good opportunity to check their condition too, though I am pretty sure from their running and bouncing and frolicking around the field that there are no major issues.
Flash is all skin and bone, but he has always been the runt and has never put on good growth since he nearly died twice as a young lamb.

Tomorrow we shall repeat this operation with the adults. I hope they behave!