Shed Used To Winter Ewe Flock

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31582, 20 January 1968, Page 8

Shed Used To Winter Ewe Flock

For two years now Mr J. Stephen and his son, Stewart, who farm 289 acres three miles from Kelso in west Otago, have been wintering their ewe flock inside to save pugging up their pastures and they are very pleased with the results. Mr Stephen only wishes they had started to do this much earlier.

Early in 1966 they had a shed built for the purpose, and ready for use it cost them about $9OOO.

They believe that they have benefited from the use of the shed in a number of ways. Their country is heavy and lies wet in the winter. It is also subject to frost Mr Stephen says that before they had the shed, with increases in stock numbers, the condition of pastures in the winter seemed to be getting progressively worse. Pastures were being chopped to pieces. One paddock, for instance, was ruined after being down only about four years. Even although quite a lot of draining has been done, the water is not able to get away very satisfactorily in the winter as there is not much fall on this country. Before they embarked on the inside wintering enterprise, the Stephens had started to look around for a property in Canterbury but were deterred by the prices being asked at the time.

In 1965 as an experiment some 35 sheep were carried inside for about eight weeks in an old shed on the property. The next year the wintering shed was built. It is 260 ft by 60ft and adjoins the shearing shed built in 1952. The existing sheep yards were included in the building. The supply and erection of the steel frame and pur-

tins was done by contract and thereafter the Stephens completed the shed, sheathing it in corrugated iron and installing the feeding arrangements.

There are six large windows about five feet square on either side of the shed. Last winter when the ewes were inside for about 14 weeks these were never closed and no problem has been encountered with condensation. A vent type ridging along the top of the roof also contributes to the ventilation. The shed is subdivided into 11 permanent pens and these are further split up so that the sheep are held in 14 pens with the biggest one holding 150. In the first winter up to 300 were held in one pen but it was found that the sheep became so quiet it was hard to get through them. Hay is fed out in racks which surround the pens. These are fronted with threeinch chain mesh. Below these racks are troughs for the oats which are fed uncrushed. With the sheep being shorn in late February and not carrying much wool at the time a foot of feeding space

an animal for the oats is provided. For the benefit of shy feeders troughs for oats are also placed in the middle of pens. For water troughs, a round concrete culvert type pipe is used, the base of these troughs being poured on the site. Ball-cocks control the supply.

Oat or wheat straw can be used on the dirt floor of the shed. The Stephens say that one is as good as the other. While the stock are in for the winter no attempt is made to clean out the straw. A little more is added about twice a week and last winter when the ewes were in for 14 weeks and the hoggets in afterwards for eight weeks about 600 bales were used. The refuse is cleared out at the end of the season. Mr Stephen says that the sheep do not seem to get dirty inside when they are being fed on dry rations. They seem to make most mess just after they come in off pasture.

The refuse is cleared out of the shed at the end of the season and spread out on the pasture. It is estimated that a ton is equivalent to about two hundredweight of sulphate of ammonia.

Mr Stephen likes to put his sheep into the shed so that pastures go into the winter with a covering of growth on them. Last year the ewe flock went in about May 9. A year earlier it was about a month later. In the winter of 1966 the sheep were put straight into the shed and they remained there for nine weeks. Last winter on the advice of overseas visitors with experience of wintering stock indoors the

sheep were introduced gradually, being given a run outside for two hours a day for the first week and then for two hours every second day in the next week until they were finally inside all of the time. At the other end of the wintering period they were also given a run out for a couple of hours a day in the last week of their confinement.

The ewes are fed a 601 b bale of hay to 50 and not more than a lib of oats per head a day. After about two weeks inside they are put through the drafting race and those putting on condition are penned separately and fed down to a {lb of oats a day. The aim is to keep them in good store condition. Mr Stephen said that this could never be done on a ration of this proportion outside. One of the advantages of the inside feeding is, of course, that a good measure of control is kept over the feeding of the stock and if some are not doing so well they can be drafted out and given an increased ration.

Feeding of the sheep occupies about an hour and a half a day. After they have been fed out Mr Stephen believes that they should best then be left alone. Last winter he believes that the ewes settled down better in their winter quarters. A factor in this could have been the quieter conditions. In the first wintering period the Stephen farm had 620 visitors in nine weeks including 116 in one day. In feeding the stock inside the hay is put into the various pens through the windows and bags containing the necessary amount of oats for each pen are also introduced in the same way. The hay is then spread around the racks manually and the oats are poured out around the troughs. A refinement for

feeding out the oats which Mr Stephen has in mind is to use a type of haversack with a hose to get the grain into the troughs. It has been found that it is essential to have rock salt in the pens and at cost of $5 for a season a mixture prepared by a local veterinarian is now added to the water supply to counter a suspected magnesium deficiency. The sheep go out to grass again when it is considered that pastures are in a condition to carry them again. This would be about three or four weeks before lambing. Mr Stephen considers that because their pastures are rested during the winter they come away a good- two to three weeks earlier than is the case with outside wintering. In the past season the Stephens had their biggest lambing percentage on record when most others in the district were having a lower than usual lambing and only two or three had an average sort of lambing. On this occasion they had a 130 per cent lambing as at weaning on the basis of ewes going to the ram, compared with a normal performance of 115 to 120.

They are now running 1600 Romney ewes and 370 hoggets, but in the days immediately before they had the shed when they had 1250 ewes and 300 hoggets, they normally lost 20 to 25 ewes before lambing from sleepy sickness. Mr Stephen thinks this was associated with ewes being “flogged to death getting through muddy gateways onto turnips,” and now their ewes are out on grass before lambing when otherwise they might still be on turnips. In the last two lambings they have had no deaths from sleepy sickness, and he says that slipped lambs now also seem to be a thing of the past. This season, by January 9, three-quarters of available lambs for slaughter had been

drafted to the works for an average of $5 a head after paying 25c a head for cartage. In earlier days Mr Stephen said that they would not have started drafting to January 20. Apart from the ewes that go to the Romney ram for flock replacements the South Suffolk ram is used for producing lambs for slaughter. The sheep are shorn in late February so that they do not go into the shed with a great deal of wool on them, and in the first full year in which inside wintering was practised they cut a pound more of wool than in the previous year. This was put down to grain feeding. Incidentally use of the shed in conjunction with shearing means that shearing can proceed uninterrupted in this rattier uncertain climate. Last February when they were shearing for seven days other shearers were able to get in only two half days. The shed, too, can be used to shelter shorn sheep after shearing If necessary. Similarly, the shed has been used to shelter lambing ewes. On one occasion during a snow storm at lambing the lambing ewes were put in overnight. By the next day 45 ewes had lambed. At the same time a neighbouring farmer, who has since built a shed, lost half of the lambs that were born that night. The shed is also used for “mothering up" ewes and lambs. Lambs are also drafted through the shed which has a drafting race and they consequently go away clean and dry. Holding sheep on gratings was tried but it was found that the feet of these sheep subsequently deteriorated when they were put outside again.

Since the shed has been used for wintering, the amount of agricultural work done on the property has been reduced by about a half. Some soft turnips and chou moellier are still grown for the hoggets and a paddock out of grass is sown with oats undersown with grass, with the oats being used for the wintering shed. It is estimated that about an acre of oats is neded to winter 100 ewes. Since the wintering shed has been in use the ewe flock has been increased from 1250 to 1600. Sixteen hundred is believed to be about the capacity of the shed. Mr Stephen says that in the past year they have increased their ewe flock by 100 and at the same time they have had 500

more lambs, and in spite of the fall in wool prices they have been able to hold their income for the last two or three years and should be able to do so again this year. It seems, too, that the useful life of the ewes might be extended for a year and even possibly two years. In the first winter that the shed was used one-year cast ewes were bought in to build up numbers and Mr Stephen says that there are still some of these in the flock.

A problem in the past has been to winter enough ewes to cope with the growth in the summer. Now they seem to be getting near doing this. Mr Stephen regards sheep as individuals very much like human beings. Not all take to the inside wintering. In the first winter it was found that there was something like 1 per cent that would not do inside. Last winter there would be less than this number. It has also been found that such ewes fed outside on the same ration as the sheep inside, together with some grass, can subsequently be brought inside and will adapt themselves to the routine. Although naturally there has been a lot of scepticism on the part of people about the system, the Stephens say that there are now another 15 sheds in Southland and Otago apart from their own, so the idea is taking on.