These guide lines are for those of you thinking about having livestock for the first time and are based on our own experiences - we are not vets so please take only as input - not gospel. We have written this because this is what we have told 20 or 30 people who have bought sheep from us.

Things to consider before you get your sheep, primitive sheep in particular

Sheep are flock animals and should not be kept on their own. Do you have enough land to keep at least 3 animals? Half an acre minimum. Will you be able to check on them at least twice every day? Although hardy, they may need shelter in bad weather and if they are ill. (A field shelter, lean-to or old barn will do) If you have never kept them before do you have en experienced friend or neighbour to consult until you are confident yourself? Even if you have plenty of land it may be wise to start off with a small flock and build up as you become confident.

If you still want to keep sheep there are two essentials to sort out before you rush off to choose your animals. First, you must have an agricultural holding number for your land. If you don’t have one already, contact the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) Customer Service Centre on 0845 6037777 to sort this out.

Next you will need to register with your local animal health office. You can find this from the state veterinary service website www.svs.gov.uk. (You will also find lots of useful information on the main DEFRA website www.defra.gov.uk but don’t try to take in too much at a time!)Someone will come to check out your premises and guide you through the other things you need to do. You will need good fencing and secure gates, a means of providing water and appropriate shelter for the animals. It will be useful to have a few hurdles so you can create a pen for holding the animals. The record keeping really isn’t too onerous with a small flock. Basically you need to keep a record of the animals on your land, when they arrive or leave or if they die, and any medicines they are given. You need to know what to do if an animal dies (you can’t bury them on site). You also need to be registered with a vet who deals with sheep. It is also worth attending a short sheep husbandry course – agricultural colleges and smallholder groups may offer these.

Choosing your sheep

Don’t rush this. There are so many breeds to choose from, some easier care than others. We get a lot of enquires about Hebridean sheep because Prince Charles has some and the National Trust mention them, but please be aware that all of the primitive rare breed sheep can do the same job, are as just as charming, taste as good, but will be different colours and markings. Smaller breeds may be easier on the back when you have to handle them, but they can be a whole lot more wriggly and harder to catch in the first place. A visit to your county agricultural show is a good place to see some of the great variety of sheep – they are by no means all simply white, woolly and not very wise. Also have a look at the RBST web site. Seeing them on the land gives a better idea of their true character. You may want to get your first sheep delivered to you by the seller or by a professional livestock haulier so you don’t have to deal with the animal transport rules and requirements just yet. Make sure to ask for details of any medicines, vaccinations or other treatments the animals you are getting have had in the last few months.

You don’t have to keep a breeding flock. Some people keep wethers (castrated males) for grazing a plot of land or for their fleeces. Others buy a few weaned lambs and keep them until they are ready to go for meat (you can always keep them longer as have them as mutton). Ewes can be quite happy not having to have lambs each year and older ones may be happy to retire!

Routine care of the sheep

With only a few sheep, you won’t need to have a trained sheepdog. You train the sheep instead. Offer them a few sheep nuts in a bucket each day and carry a few in your pocket as well to offer the more inquisitive animals, and soon they will come every time they see you or hear you call. (Well most of them will.)

Don’t be afraid to use your vet for advice. Your vet may also be willing to show you how to give treatments such as oral wormers (drenching) and injections under the skin or into a muscle so you can do it yourself in future.

Worming: farming organically we don’t worm as a matter of course, but monitor the status of the sheep and use a clean grazing policy. If your land has had no sheep on it for a year or more it should be fairly clean already, but you may want to worm the sheep before you let them loose on it to keep it really clean. Worm the sheep and keep them indoors overnight, so any worms or eggs too far down the gut to be killed by the wormer don’t go on to the pasture (compost the droppings). At other times it is worth getting the vet to check the droppings if you are concerned because an animal has the runs or looks in poor condition. Check with your vet about fluke – if it is prevalent in your area get your vet to advise you on what to use and when. A drenching gun can be quite expensive and with only a few animals you can use a plastic syringe (without a needle obviously) to administer oral treatment.

Vaccinations: we treat all our animals with a vaccine called HeptaVacP. This gives protection against 7 clostridial diseases including tetanus and some common forms of a type of pneumonia that sheep get. Animals that have already had a full primary course of two injections 4 to 6 weeks apart get an annual booster thereafter. If you have a breeding flock the pregnant ewes should be given a booster a month before lambing. Vaccination any closer to lambing can cause health problems in the ewe, done much too soon is fine for the ewe but the lamb doesn’t get a few weeks protection then from maternal antibodies. It is good to treat all the lambs when they are over a few weeks old, but remember to give them an early booster before their first birthday with the older animals prelambing time if you are keeping them on for future breeding.

Lambing: for animal welfare reasons you should get some training or get some help before you try lambing. The period of gestation is about 147 days - easy way to remember is if a ram serves a ewe on 5th November, the lamb/s are due 1st April. Just like humans, this can be a week either way without a problem. Ewes cycle every 17 days during the mating season, and sometimes you expect a lamb at one date and the ewe doesn’t hold to that mating and the lamb appears a couple of weeks later. Primitive sheep breeds seem to have fewer problems than some of the commercial breeds and the lambs are normally very lively, but there is always the risk of a malpresentation or a lamb that has a hard time getting going. Set up your lambing area in good time and get some strong iodine solution for spraying the navel. Check the sheep frequently during this period and if a ewe starts lambing but nothing has happened within an hour of her trying to push off a lamb or half an hour of a water bag showing get help. Until you are experienced it is better to ask for help than risk the life of the lambs or the ewe. Some ewes choose their spot to lamb well in advance, and check it out several times a day, but they always rejoin the main group after a little while until the actual lambing is getting close. A day or two before lambing most ewes develop a pink and slightly plump looking vulva and some have a bit of clear mucous discharge before the real thing starts. Most of them show signs of uddering up – but first timers may not have much to show until just before lambing and older sheep who have lambing many times can udder up several days early, so it isn’t a good guide to pinpointing the day for giving birth.

People with small flocks often don’t castrate the ram lambs, but do separate them from the females when they are about 5 months old. As our sheep are smallish animals and are good to eat as hogget (1-2 years old) and as mutton, you may find it useful to learn how to castrate them. We kept the ram lambs all entire with our first crop of rams and feeding them became an extreme sport by the time they were 10 months old. We now castrate with rubber rings in the first week. They don’t have their tails docked.

Shepherding: most people keeping our breeds have smallish flocks so the animals will be used to a more personal touch than commercial sheep. They like to be talked too and visited, but one benefit of this is they are less stressed when they have to be handled. The opposite effect is that if they don’t have much contact with people they will become very wild, will be a challenge to round up and will be very stressed by handling. Most commercial sheep are sent off for culling at about 6 or 7 year’s old when they can start to lose their front teeth. Occasionally a good ewe will have a year when she doesn’t have a lamb or may only have a single instead of twins if she is a bit out of condition, which may be because she is losing some teeth. But they get over this and lots of ewes manage very well with no front teeth and lamb until they 11 or 12. They might keep going but I retire them then.

Feet: you will need to trim their hooves occasionally and if your ground tends to be damp you may want to stand them in a footbath now and then The fine clippers for lambs are good to use on any size sheep. If you are not sure how to do them get someone else who is proficient to show you and then have them watch you do a few feet, or go on a training course. We think zinc sulphate is the best substance to use in a footbath. We avoid products containing foot hardeners and don’t believe run-through products work – they need to stand in the solution for ten to fifteen minutes, and then dry off on a hard surface. There is a good publication on lameness in sheep from DEFRA (and lots more useful booklets as well on aspects of sheep keeping).

Nutrition: ask your vet if there are any particular mineral deficiencies in your area. If you aren’t certain, you can use a general purpose molassed mineral tub for sheep from e.g. Mole Valley. High zinc tubs are good for foot health. Do make sure you don’t use cattle tubs by mistake: cattle need more copper in their diet than sheep, and some sheep breeds are so efficient at extracting copper from their food they can be easily poisoned by copper. A bag of sheep nuts so you can give them a little bit of feed a couple of times a week throughout the year gets you in the sheep’s good books! But as ewes get close to lambing and for the first month to 6 week’s of lactation they should have extra food – about 500g of ewe nuts or some such per animal per day. In winter you will also need to offer them hay every day.

Shearing: try and get someone else to do it or get some training. If that fails wait till mid-June when the primitives are casting their fleeces naturally and clip carefully to help it detach (don’t try cutting into the new stuff coming up beneath) or gently pull it off. The sheep might look a bit tatty for a few days if you do gradual hand rouging but you will get there in the end.

Flies: in summer if you notice a lot of flies bothering your sheep spray them with something like Vetrazin, but not until 3 weeks minimum after shearing. This is a safe product to handle – it doesn’t kill flies or maggots but it stops the eggs from hatching out. In the unlikely event that you do get fly strike, clip out the area affected and apply a product such as Spot On (which is an insecticide) to the primary area of attack. You can use Maggot Oil as well, working this into the fleece just beyond that main spot until you feel you have got all the maggots out. The sheep will go bald where you have done this, but the wool will regrow in time.

Eartagging: sheep currently should have an eartag with two numbers on it. One will be the flock number of the flock they were born into, a six figure number with the letters UK at the start. All the lambs born in that flock with have that as part of their full number. Think of it as a surname. Then the other bit is their first name – their own personal number, which can’t be used for anyone else in that flock. Sheep do occasionally lose their tags and if you know which sheep has lost its tag you can get a replacement with the same number. Tagging rules have changed a number of times in the last few years and may change again, but that’s enough to get you started.

 

Advice from the Grazing animals Project. They have an interesting document 'A Guide to Animal Welfare in Nature Conservation Grazing' which you might find a useful checklist - click here to download a version as of June 2008, or visit the GAP web site

The rest comes with practice, chatting to others and looking on the DEFRA web site. Also have a look at some of the related web sites - click here for our links page . Good luck.