The Beginner’s Guide to Raising Sheep
From providing them with adequate housing to making sure they're maintaining the proper diet, discover how to care for sheep.
Learn how to properly care for sheep.
Raising sheep can be a fulfilling and enriching experience. If you’re considering sheep farming as a new venture, we’re here to provide you with the guidance you need to succeed in raising healthy sheep.
From providing them with the proper housing to ensuring their health and well-being, Agrimaster is here to help you take the first step towards caring for your sheep and creating a thriving environment for your flock.
Housing
You’ll want to provide your sheep with some sort of shelter all year round. This shelter should protect them from all the elements, including the wind, rain, sun, and snow.
You have a couple options for the type of shelter you use. It can be a regular barn or just a simple three-sided structure.
Make sure your shelter has a decent amount of airflow. This will allow the sheep to stay cool and keep flies away. To get better airflow, we suggest installing a fan and keeping the barn doors open. This is especially important if you live somewhere that gets hot.
In addition to having a shelter, you should also provide your sheep with some sort of shaded area outside, whether that’s under an awning off the barn or near a group of trees. This way, your sheep will have somewhere cool to graze when it’s sunny outside.
Make sure you’re also providing your sheep with some sort of bedding. If you live in a colder area, you’ll want to have a pretty thick layer of it. Bedding will keep sheep both warm and clean.
We recommend using straw as your bedding. Don’t use sawdust, as it can ruin their wool. You can use pine shavings, but they will stick to their wool much easier than straw will, and this makes shearing more difficult.
Fencing
It’s essential that you provide your sheep with lots of pasture, as they spend much of their time grazing. You’ll need to set up fencing around the pasture. The fencing not only keeps the sheep in, but it will also help prevent predators from getting to them.
To keep your sheep inside, the fence should be at least five feet tall. However, if you want it to do a good job at keeping predators out, you may need one even higher. You could also consider using an electric fence for even stronger protection.
Pasture and Feed
Much of your sheep feed should come from grazing. Plants found in pastures, such as clover and grass, should make up most of your sheep’s diet.
Most sheep spend around seven hours each day grazing a pasture. So you’ll want to make sure your pasture is large enough to feed all your sheep. You should have about one acre of pasture for every 10 sheep.
If there isn’t enough pasture for all your sheep, provide them with hay. Just make sure the hay you feed them stays dry. If it gets wet, re-dry it, and use it as a bedding instead. Never feed your sheep moldy hay.
Try to avoid supplementing your sheep’s feed with grain as much as possible. Pre-mixed grain feeds typically contain too much copper for sheep. If they eat too much of this, they tend to bloat, and could even die.
You should also make sure your sheep have access to salt and other minerals they might need. You can get this from Agrimaster Sheep and Goat Mineral Blocks.
Water
Always make sure your sheep have fresh, clean water available. Sheep will typically consume a couple gallons of water each day, but sometimes even more than that when it’s hot outside.
You can give them water in a long trough. But make sure you change it daily, or they will get sick. If you don’t want to refill it that often, you can also use an automatic waterer, which will refill itself. If you go that route, you’ll just need to clean the waterer once a week.
Hoof Care
There a few health issues more common among sheep that you’ll need to take preventative measures against. One that’s often found in both sheep and goats is foot rot.
To help prevent foot rot in your sheep, make sure they have a dry surface to walk on the majority of the day. If this isn’t possible, you’ll need to clip off excess horn (otherwise known as hoof).
When clipping the dead horn, make sure you’re not cutting too deep. Otherwise, you could hit sensitive tissue, which can bleed and become infected.
In dry conditions, you should trim your sheep’s hooves about every six weeks. If it’s wet out, you’ll need to trim them even more than that.
Shearing
You will also need to shear your sheep at least once a year. However, if you have longer-haired sheep, you may need to up that to twice a year. The best time to shear them is before warm weather hits. Do not shear them before cold weather.
You want your sheep to be comfortable while you shear them. To do this, you should keep them from grazing the pasture for at least 10 hours before you’re going to shear them. So they won’t be going into it on a full stomach.
You should also make sure your sheep are dry when you shear them. Shearing wet sheep can lead to health issues. If you don’t shear your sheep, they’ll be more likely to get flystrike.
It’s also a good idea to regularly remove the wool from around your sheep’s tail, hindlegs, and underside. Feces and urine can get trapped in these areas if they’re not well maintained.
They can also get clumps of feces and mud in their wool, called dags. If you notice these, use a pair of shears to cut them off as soon as possible. If you don’t remove them, they’ll attract blowflies.
You’ll also want to make sure your sheep don’t get worms. To do this, have your veterinarian check their stool for worms periodically.
For more tips on caring for your sheep and other farm animals, visit our Blog.