There are various ways to manage a commercial sheep herd. A lot of management practices depends on the situation, the number of ewes, set up, weather and other conditions. Here are a number of guidelines that have worked for us and which we feel is good management practice. All information is copywriter and cannot be used without out explicit permission!

General

If you are serious about running a commercial sheep herd you will need to consider the following points. These points will also be discussed amongst the study group for sheep.

number of sheep
breed
marketing
housing
feeding
lambing set up
transport
fencing
predators
pasture management
diseases/sickness
finances
feeding systems
working dogs

Make a FARM PLAN to address all these issues and help to focus on what works in your situation!

Record keeping

Keeping records is the only way to know if and what you are doing is commercially interesting. Not only is record keeping important to know what is happening in your flock but is becoming legally binding to record things such as medications, withdrawal dates and animal movements. Worldwide consumers want to know that what they are eating is safe and properly produced. Tracking and tracing is not a passing phase, we need to keep our records in order and up to date to avoid any future problems and liability issues. Record keeping is an extra job however when done and kept up to date can result in a wealth of information for the producer. There are various ways to keep track of what is happening on your sheep farm from a simple note book to elaborate electronic identification and registration using handheld computers. If you have never maintained any form of record keeping start simple and just note down all that is happening.

Essential information
 
Before any information can be recorded, one needs to be able to identify either the individual animal or the management group that it is in, for example ram lambs, breeding ewes, culls etc . We like to ear tag all the animals individually so that we can record all information on an individual basis. When one buys or transports sheep in Alberta they all have to have a government approved ear tag. Use this tag to start registering information.

For example:

or more detailed information:

Make a card filing system and file on ear number, do replace numbers if the sheep lose them just write down what you do know such as age, breed, sex etc. if you do know the number change it on our card to the new number.

For feedlots or people keeping sheep in groups keep the following information:

By maintaining these records you can track how many animals you have, the losses, costs, movements and treatments of the animals. This information will help you plan future tactic such as: high medical costs, low weight gains, death rates, breeds that do not do well in a feedlot system, profits, losses.

At lambing time the information gathered there will not only help with future selection of breeding animals but will also track you lambing percentages, death rates, after weaning losses, bad udders, poor milkers, problems with lambs, weight gains etc. Here is an example of the information we record at lambing time:

Lambing 2008

What does this information tell me?

I have 5 ewes that lambed in total 10 lambs

One lamb has entropion, problem with breeding rams/ewe? This is in genetic problem.

One ewe needs to be culled because of a bad udder.

A really good mother with two nice ram lambs, potentially a breeding ram?

1 dead lamb and 1 bottle lamb that was mothered to another ewe.

all animals can be traced back to the mother and lost lambs can be easily identified by the spray mark.
When looking through this information I can make a planning for the next breeding season such as buy a new ram, keep a replacement ewe, try to maintain good birth weights and lambing percentage.

Another system of record keeping is to use the computer and design a simple spread sheet that will make these calculations for you such as lambing percentage, average weight, growth, losses etc. However, you will still need some form of written records in the barn before you can place this information into the computer. I think that the better option would then be to invest in a management program specifically designed for sheep. Most companies have demo programs which you can try out, do this and see if the program suits your needs. Do remember when one does choose to go to software programs there are often big learning curves involved and time involved with the initial data input. A computer program is only as good as the information that gets put in and registered. For information about different software programs please feel free to contact us about this.

Economic Book keeping

Another important fact to note down is of course the economics of your enterprise. Once again keep things simple. Note down all the financial costs related to the sheep side of the business. Write down the following information and the date. If you don't make note of these costs you can never figure out a true production cost. If you don't know what you are spending you also don't know what you are making!

Electronic Identification and Registration (eI&R)

We have been using the electronic identification RF (radio frequency) ear tags and boluses for sheep for a number of years. We have fully automated our information management using electronic ear tags, handheld readers and a good software management program on the farm computer. We were very involved with a very large study done in the Netherlands as regards eI&R , tracking and tracing. We tried out various types of tags from different companies, noted which were stayed best in the ears, least infections, fall out and readability. We tested various pieces of hardware such as handheld readers, stick readers and race readers. We looked at what was functional, the mobility, easy to use, weather exposure, consistency in reading tags, errors in reading or not reading sheep and time it takes. Lastly, we needed to see how user friendly the software was, how functional the information was presented, time needed to put data mutations in and of course the accuracy of information input. the trial in the Netherlands also tested how good the system of tracking and tracing worked using a central data computer to track all animal movements, from producer to transporter, to feeder to slaughter facility. Not only was this system a very accurate and constant way to keep track of animal movements and food safety but it was excellent to be able to track animals when a disease outbreak occurred such as foot and mouth, blue tongue, q- fever, pig and avian flu. With a quick and accurate identification of all animals and there movements appropriate action could be taken to isolate problem areas and to prevent any animals entering and leaving the quarantine area The costs of these systems is definitely a big point to consider. We liked the system the most that enabled us to "grow" into the system as regards the use of the system as well as slowly investing into more and more equipment as one can afford it, not needing to make a very big initial investment. We concluded for our situation, that the extra cost does warrant the informational feedback, time savings and accuracy in our record keeping. the information gained from this system helps us track our inputs, costs and animals in such a way that we can make quicker and better decisions regarding our flock and farm.

Pregnancy Scanning the ewes

Another management tool we like to use is to pregnancy scan our ewes. By scanning the ewes we can make the following adjustments to the management.
Select the non pregnant ewes and either re expose them to the ram, cull them or move them to another breeding or later lambing group.

make a better feeding plan for the pregnant ewes and the empty ones. Feed appropriately according to group.

better preparation for lambing, number of lambing pens (jugs), shearing and barn space needed.

By pregnancy scanning the ewes problems such as early abortion and non fertile rams can be detected sooner and the appropriate solution can be implemented sooner.

We have our own scanner to test our ewes.

Not only is the scanner handy for the sheep but we also can test our dogs from 28 days after breeding, to see whether a bitch is in pup or not. Very handy! Here is a scan form one of our pregnant bitches.