Sheep Yard brainstorm!

Hey all, I’m looking for some ideas as I plan a sheep yard for next season. I know what your thinking….. “a sheep yard, oh no, don’t do that! Rotational grazing is the only way to go!”  and yes, in the future that’s my plan, but not possible next year.

Let me lay out my situation:
I’ve got a small 3.5 acre wooded lot, 2 years ago I began clearing a small part of it, built a small greenhouse and planted 1/4 acre food forest. This year I cleared another 1/4 acre and planted a small market garden. I sell the veggies to a restaurant and the extra to my community.
The soil I’m working with is sandy, with little fertility or organic matter in it. So to fix this I need a bunch of compost, and I’m not talking a yard or 2 of compost. I live on a small island where compost is not available to purchase and importing it from the mainland is just not sustainable, so I need to make it.
There is no better way to make a bunch of compost than with animals and their manure, that’s where the sheep come in. I am in the process of setting up a chicken composting run where I can throw in bulk amounts of food waste, weeds/ garden waste, wood chips, leaves, seaweed and any other organic material I can get my hands on. I’m modeling this after Edible Acres chicken system. On the north side of this fenced chicken area I would like to build my sheep yard.

My hopes:
I am thinking that I would like to start with between 2 and 4 lambs in the spring. I envision an approximately 20’x40’ yard with a 8’x16’ shed. I would use a deep litter bedding made of unrolled hay bales for both yard and shed. The sheep would be constantly adding to this with their waste hay from the feeder. I would have a gate between the sheep yard and chicken run that I would be able to move sheep bedding to the chickens for further processing.

My questions:
Is this enough space for up to 4 lambs to happily live for the grow out season? Maybe more in the future?
Is this too much space that their won’t be enough manure in the deep bedding to make it worth the effort?
If chickens are able to access the area will they bother the sheep too much?
Will lambs put on weight fast enough to harvest in the fall eating only hay? Will I need to supplement with grain?
What size mesh is appropriate to keep lambs in?

I’m sure that more questions will arise and I’d love to hear suggestions from others.

From webpage

You need
- 1/5 acre per sheep
- It is important to note that Sheep are vulnerable to difficulties with parasites, disease and predators and good
planning and management to avoid these difficulties is recommended.
- Shelter needs to be provided.

Hi Rob,
The chickens mixing in with the sheep shouldn't be a problem. They might scratch a bit and leave holes and the sheep might trip... but the chickens won't bother the sheep themselves. I don't have enough experience to answer any of your other questions.

It might be a bit small depending on your breed,  if you want them to be able to play and run a bit.   This space was about 80 x 20.    Winter housing.   Week old babies with ewes.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcVw1cwwU-A

And another video of 4-5 week old lambs running in a bigger field, just for an idea of how much space they like to "grow their muscles" lol.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xolrkDcgmxQ

What I might do instead of all over bedding, is have deep bedding in the shed only, and put them in for the night, and let them out in the morning.   You'll still need to rake out the yard probably, but the bulk of your clean out and compost material will be concentrated in the shed and under feeder.  You might put your feeder in the shed.  

I don't think chickens would bother them, but keeping feed separate might be difficult if that were a thing.  

Are you thinking a clean out with power equipment?    When my sheep were in their winter pen/shed,  I could not clean out the deep pack with hand tools, it was like a foot thick and seriously packed down.   Pigs could dig it out and turn/fluff it though.   But I had considerably more sheep than 4 lambs and I lambed in there as well before spring pasturing, so it was a lot of compaction and waste.  

My sheep and chickens have some sort of strange symbiotic relationship, the sheep will lay around and let the chickens peck the sticky seeds and bugs out of their wool. ( mine are hair sheep, but I don’t know what else to call it)

I’m doing a similar thing to you, basically I’m building a 12x50 pen that is deep wood mulch. Sheep get locked in at night and offers a place to catch them and work them. Multiple gates off of said pen to rotate to a different space every day.  Very corner of the pen will have a chicken house accessible from the outside to collect eggs.  

I was going to layer straw underneath the chicken roost, drag that out into the 12x50 pen after a month and start a compost pile with kitchen scraps. Let the chickens scratch through it and repeat, move pile down make another pile. By the time I get to the end of the 50 foot I should have at least 5 or 6 piles and it should be broken down pretty well.

John C Daley wrote:From webpage

You need
- 1/5 acre per sheep
- It is important to note that Sheep are vulnerable to difficulties with parasites, disease and predators and good
planning and management to avoid these difficulties is recommended.
- Shelter needs to be provided.

John,

Thanks for the link, I am familiar with that guide!

The 1/5 acre per sheep is for pasture. I currently have very limited pasture, with sparse forage at the moment. It’s a formerly wooded area that was just cleared last year and planted to rows of food forest with 30’ alleys between the fruit/ nut trees. I sowed the alleys to a perennial grass and legume mix last spring and fall. It came back rather sparse but a lot of the grasses made seed this year and I plan to broadcast more seed once I see a few days of rain in the weather forecast. I plan to clear another 1/2 acre this winter to add to my food forest/ alleys.
I hope to use electric netting to move sheep through this system in the future, but at this point it is too immature.

I plan to have a 16’x8’ shed for shelter.

I am also very lucky to live on an island which has no predators, with only the possibility of a rogue neighborhood dog causing trouble. I plan to use 5’ tall fencing for protection/ containment.

Thanks for the reply!

Heather Staas wrote:

What I might do instead of all over bedding, is have deep bedding in the shed only, and put them in for the night, and let them out in the morning.   You'll still need to rake out the yard probably, but the bulk of your clean out and compost material will be concentrated in the shed and under feeder.  You might put your feeder in the shed.  

Are you thinking a clean out with power equipment?    When my sheep were in their winter pen/shed,  I could not clean out the deep pack with hand tools, it was like a foot thick and seriously packed down.   Pigs could dig it out and turn/fluff it though.   But I had considerably more sheep than 4 lambs and I lambed in there as well before spring pasturing, so it was a lot of compaction and waste.  

Heather,

I have been going back and forth between having the feeder in the shed or right beside the gate that I will use to send bedding/ waste hay to the chicken area.

I do have access to a small tractor that I could use to clean out the bedding from the shed, but I would prefer to use a wheelbarrow and hay fork.

I was thinking about unrolling round hay bales outside the shed also mainly to soak up urine and catch nutrients. Round bales are fairly cheap and I desperately need the organic matter.

I think I may have used the wrong term when I said ‘deep bedding’ in the shed. I plan to clean the soiled bedding out of the shed every 3-4 weeks and move it to the chicken area. I currently use the deep bedding method in my chicken run, I constantly add carbon to it and usually only rake back the top layers and screen the rich compost from underneath once a year.

Thanks for the reply!

Eric Hammond wrote:

I’m doing a similar thing to you, basically I’m building a 12x50 pen that is deep wood mulch. Sheep get locked in at night and offers a place to catch them and work them. Multiple gates off of said pen to rotate to a different space every day.  Very corner of the pen will have a chicken house accessible from the outside to collect eggs.  

Eric,

I like your idea, you should be able to make a good amount of compost that way. How many sheep and how many chickens do you plan to have use the pen?

The reason I want a separate area for the sheep, is because I’ll be planting the chicken compost area with shrubs, bushes and small trees that will provide some supplemental food for the chickens as well as providing propagation material for my small nursery. Mostly things like cultivar elderberry, mulberry, aronia, haskap, sea buckthorn, cherry shrub, blueberries. It will be fairly easy to protect the plants from the chickens, but not so easy to keep sheep off them.

BTW:
I’m stealing the chicken compost system from Edible Acres. They do a lot of useful, practical, mostly human scale work and document it on their YouTube channel, i highly recommend checking it out!

Rob Clinch wrote:

Eric Hammond wrote:

I’m doing a similar thing to you, basically I’m building a 12x50 pen that is deep wood mulch. Sheep get locked in at night and offers a place to catch them and work them. Multiple gates off of said pen to rotate to a different space every day.  Very corner of the pen will have a chicken house accessible from the outside to collect eggs.  

Eric,

I like your idea, you should be able to make a good amount of compost that way. How many sheep and how many chickens do you plan to have use the pen?

The reason I want a separate area for the sheep, is because I’ll be planting the chicken compost area with shrubs, bushes and small trees that will provide some supplemental food for the chickens as well as providing propagation material for my small nursery. Mostly things like cultivar elderberry, mulberry, aronia, haskap, sea buckthorn, cherry shrub, blueberries. It will be fairly easy to protect the plants from the chickens, but not so easy to keep sheep off them.

BTW:
I’m stealing the chicken compost system from Edible Acres. They do a lot of useful, practical, mostly human scale work and document it on their YouTube channel, i highly recommend checking it out!

The plan is for 5 ewes and 1 ram year round( I have 10 acres I can use) I want to keep a minimum amount of sheep for summer droughts when grass isn’t plentiful.  5 sheep could turn into 20-25 sheep in two years so if I start to get overwhelmed I will cut back on the numbers.

The sheep will only sleep In this pen and be rotated through the 10 acres every day.

I plan to keep 10 chickens year round and add meat birds when the system is growing good in the spring and there is lots of forage. I will keep the meat birds alive for the most part and butcher as needed so quick growth isn’t needed. Each chicken pen off of this main pen with be 7000 sq ft or larger.

This isn’t something I’m dreaming about doing, im actually building it right now. The 12x 50 pen is almost done and I have one 7000 sq ft paddock finished already.

Building fence is tough work

Rob. when spreading grass seed, have you thought to use seed balls to prevent the birds eating the grass seeds?

John C Daley wrote:Rob. when spreading grass seed, have you thought to use seed balls to prevent the birds eating the grass seeds?

Hi John,

I have thought about it, but at this point time is my limiting factor. I could put making seed balls on my to do list but it would be 3 years from now before I got to it!

I believe my main problem is getting good seed/soil contact, as the land was mainly spruce/ birch/ maple 30ish year old forest with a few 200+ year old pines, the ground was mostly covered in a couple inches of leaf litter/ pine needles. In the past I’ve tried following Joel Salatins advice and towed a bunch of old, dry spruce branches behind an atv to tear up the thatch. This had limited success, probably due to the uneven ground and possibly also due to not enough weight on the branches. This fall I’m going to take a rake and tear up the ground better before broadcasting the seed.

Have you had good success with seed balls?
How long does it take you to make a large bunch of them? I would need enough to do atleast 1/4 acre.

Eric Hammond wrote:

The plan is for 5 ewes and 1 ram year round( I have 10 acres I can use) I want to keep a minimum amount of sheep for summer droughts when grass isn’t plentiful.  5 sheep could turn into 20-25 sheep in two years so if I start to get overwhelmed I will cut back on the numbers.

The sheep will only sleep In this pen and be rotated through the 10 acres every day.

I plan to keep 10 chickens year round and add meat birds when the system is growing good in the spring and there is lots of forage. I will keep the meat birds alive for the most part and butcher as needed so quick growth isn’t needed. Each chicken pen off of this main pen with be 7000 sq ft or larger.

This isn’t something I’m dreaming about doing, im actually building it right now. The 12x 50 pen is almost done and I have one 7000 sq ft paddock finished already.

Building fence is tough work

Eric,

I agree, fencing is a pain in the ass! I am lucky that really my only predator to worry about is a snowy owl that seems to have taken up summer residence on the hillside that I’m working. My chickens are currently living under heavy tree cover, so I don’t really worry about them. But having no digging predators is a blessing!

Does anyone have any experience with raising weaned lambs on grass hay only? Can I expect to get a decent carcass in 6-7 months or should I expect to have to feed a small amount of grain?

I have nothing practical to add, except to ask if you had considered raising pigs instead?

There's a group or regenerative agric farmers at Primal Web. There's lots of info on there.

I live in Scandinavia. Our sheep varieties need an acre per ewe and her babies. Little less for the males. They eat leaves  grass, flowers and even bark.  A spacous forest with grass and meadow on the bottom is ideal.

Sheep are very wasteful grazers: they roam around eating the tastiest bits while trampling on everything else.

So if you will be keeping them in limited quarters - you will have to feed them. A lot. And perfectly planned feed.  Costs more. If you can afford it, fine.

Sheep do like having pasture to roam around.  Not having space will not kill them, but they do like to have space.

I hope you can find a perfect solution ❤ We always have to make compromises. We know what the ideal is, but you just cannot reach that.

Kaarina Kreus wrote:
So if you will be keeping them in limited quarters - you will have to feed them. A lot. And perfectly planned feed.  Costs more. If you can afford it, fine.

Where I live, a round bale of hay cost less than half the price of a yard of compost and the hay is much easier to acquire also. So my plan is to use the waste hay and manure from their yard to help feed my chicken compost system, which in turn will feed the soil in my market garden. 🤞

I’ve also been considering a covered area like what Joel Salatin or Justin Rhodes use for winter quarters for their animals. Basically a covered area with a deep bedding that keeps the animals dry and would make a large amount of compost when cleaned out at the end of the season. It would also require a large amount of carbon material to set up in the beginning and wouldn’t be able to regularly feed the chicken compost crew like muckin out a shed every week or 2 would. So I’m currently weighing my options. Any advice will certainly be considered!

Lucky you if you can feed them cheaply.
Here in Scandinavia we have to think about protein content of the pasture feed and calcium and other things and all that costs money 🙄. Having a good pasture means it has to be pretty huge so that they do not trample it into a muddy slush.

All my best wishes!!!