Interactive lesson

Planning a sheep flock, step by step

Interactive lesson: what you want from sheep, a hardy hill breed or a commercial one, how many, the ram, a healthy ewe, the night pen and paperwork before the first sheep.

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The whole lesson as text

1. What you want from sheep

Before you look at a single advert, decide what your main goal is.

Three sheep are a flock — Sheep are flock animals. A lone sheep suffers, bleats and escapes, so you buy at least 3 head.
Choose your goal — Lambs for meat: 3–6 ewes. Milk and cheese: 4–8 ewes. Wool: 3–5 ewes. A bit of everything: 3–5 ewes of a hardy hill or native breed.
A wether for the paddock — A wether is a castrated ram. He is quiet, cheap to keep and good company for a ram out of season, or for a flock that "mows" a paddock or orchard.
Sheep or goats — Sheep graze grass short and close to the ground, goats browse shrubs and leaves higher up. If you have grassland, choose sheep; if you have scrub, choose goats.

Why: The breed, numbers, housing and the work through the year all depend on it. A sheep is calmer than a goat, doesn't jump fences, and in a year gives meat, milk, wool and muck for the garden.

Before you buy, spend one day in spring and one in autumn with someone who keeps sheep.
Catch a sheep, turn her over, look at her feet and teeth. In two days you will learn more than from ten adverts.

2. Breeds for your land

Britain and Ireland have hill, longwool, lowland and rare breeds; in North America Suffolk, Dorset and hair sheep are common.

Hill breeds — Welsh Mountain, Cheviot and other hill sheep, roughly 35–60 kg. Wiry, sure-footed on steep ground, they survive winter on modest hay. The safest choice for a beginner on a hilly holding.
Blackface, Shetland, Jacob — Scottish Blackface and Swaledale are horned, dark-faced hill sheep. The Shetland is small with fine wool in many shades, the Jacob piebald and often four-horned.
Texel and Suffolk — The common meat breeds, with fast-growing lambs. On a smallholding a Texel or Suffolk ram on hardier crossbred ewes gives good lambs for the freezer while the ewes stay thrifty.
East Friesian — The top dairy sheep, with a thin, woolless tail: 300–500 L with the best hay and a dry shed. On poor grazing she goes downhill, so a cross with a hardier breed is more common.

Why: Hill and native breeds are thrifty and hardy, but give little milk and coarser wool. Commercial and dairy breeds give more, but need better feed and housing.

All figures are rough: the same breed gives twice as much on good grazing and hay as on poor.
Old shepherds say a ewe is "chosen by her mother and by her teeth": ask which ewe a lamb came from and how she milked.