Grow Sheep

Growing Sheep

by Ann Garner

I grow my own wool fleeces for handspinning. I have 38 head of sheep, but only a couple produce fine enough fleeces to be worth the labor of handspinning. Many of my sheep grow natural-colored fleeces. I have several that make a heathery oatmeal colored yarn that is very pretty.

However, all the sheep receive the same amount of care. My sheep are kept clean and shaded with fresh water and healthy grass in the meadow for part of the year and then they are fed hay during the hot dry Summer when the grasses go dormant for lack of rain in our region.

My own meadow is not sprayed or fertilized with chemicals. So for part of the year, the sheep are fed on organically grown grass. They do not receive innoculations of any kind, are not fed any antibiotics or parasite control poisons.

The sheep get grain occasionally and they have mineral licks to supplement our mineral-depleted grasses in the West. But they consume only the amount they want, and are not penned up and force-fed in order to put weight on quickly. They are allowed to grow at Nature’s pace, and generally are not fully grown until they are about 3 years old.

In general, they live fairly long lives unless they meet with an accident.

The sheep love cool -- even cold -- weather, but they do not thrive with wet feet, so in the rainy season, they spend a good deal of time in the shelter of the barn with dry straw underfoot.

When a sheep gets so old that it begins to lose condition because of lack of teeth, or it is too tired to walk around and graze, we call the butcher and the sheep goes into the freezer to provide very health raw meaty bones for the dog. We do not wait until a sheep actually gets sick with old age, because that would not be merciful to the sheep or healthy for the dogs.

I have had two sheep live to be around 15 years old; others usually last about 9 years before they start going downhill.

From the time they are lambs, they are occasionally taken out to graze by the dogs and me, off the property along country roads, where the Spring grass is very rich and fresh. They love their outings, and graze greedily while my German Shepherd Dogs keep them out of the road.

You can read more about my sheep and my dogs at http://herdingdogs.com