Good morning, Tim, excellent video. Gavin was spot on when he discussed worming. When I buy steers, they stay in the extended part of my yards for as long as two weeks. They get wormed on arrival and then before they get into the yard paddock. I also give them a dose of a multivitamin or just B12, this stimulates their rumen, and they forget their mothers and put their heads into the feed trough. Gavin sounds like someone I would love to watch at a field day. Tim, you also have the most compliant sheep I have seen in years, and they are also very pretty. Cheers
Great video. Thanks. The tip I would give Tim, is get self shedders, eg Wiltipoll or similar. Takes the hassle of shearing, and finding shearers our of the equation. Mind you, with the price of sheep at the moment inputs certainly outweigh outputs!
Awesome to see this video - I'll be sharing it everywhere I've been called out to so many listless, down sheep thanks to barbers pole. Lay eyes on your sheep every day so you get to know them - then you'll recognize if one is feeling not right - not with the others, droopy ears and eyes that aren't alert. Lots of barbers pole will make them anemic - pale gums and pale inner eyelids. Rotational grazing is great for observing your sheep too. I allow access to a dish of bicarb so if I'm bribing them to listen to me with a little grain (one was raised by the Maremma and is confused and spoilt) they can settle their stomachs although this is mostly because I'm putting some out for goats anyway. Finally I really struggle to find decent quality hay and so when quarantining or feed is limited I use a mix of oat and lucerne chaff.
Absolutely brilliant videos on sheep. Being a new hobby farmer, this information is so valuable. Thank you. I’d love to see a lot more videos like this sheep series Cheers
Thankyou Tim learning so much from you. Sad story today that others might learn from is i found this morning my perfectly healthy mumma goat dead. The only change was i gave them some bread 2 days ago for 2 days just for a treat at night. Obviously stopped now, yesterday i noticed some diarrhoea when cleaning the stables but couldn't tell which goat it came from, they all ran from the stables to the paddocks as usual. Last night back in the stables mumma goat didn't want her dinner but i thought it was because we were having sever thunderstorms. I patted her for calming of the storm then locked them in for the night. Was it the bread? Watching your video with introducing new grains to their sensitive stomachs tells me probably yes. City boy doing my best and getting it wrong really needs guys like you to learn from. I hope this helps others from making such a sad decision with feeding. Thankyou Tim and I'm so sorry mumma goat.
I'd be urgently checking for Barbers Pole. Take some fresh manure (direct from the butt) to your vet and ask for a worm count. Video on how to do that yourself in the pipeline.
