Beep sheep for service. So what are sheep doing on a pig farm you ask! Well, first of all the sheep are responsible for having originally taught our pigs to eat grass so many years ago. Now our piglets learn from their mothers but the sheep are still great to have around for co-grazing with the pigs. Sheep mow brush down, even taking down small saplings and regen. Together with the pigs and poultry they make for diversified grazing that improves the soil and pastures.
Walter Jeffries
Tinker, Tailor... I'm a bit eccentric & rather eclectic. My talented wife Holly drew our pictures.
“I always wanted to be a farm mom!” -Holly
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Love what you’re doing and keep up the good work!
Let me know if you ever have any stillborn lambs or old sheep for sale.
Cheers!
The problem is fighting the dogs for it. :} They love their raw meat diets and complain if I ever get them dry food. Katya signed to me “That not meat!” when I gave her some dry food the other day. She was quite emphatic.
Actually, right now we are sheepless although I hope to get a new flock next year. I am thinking to fence the new east field along the road and put the sheep in there first. We’ve been working on getting the grasses growing there this year after logging it to open up the old pastures last year. It is a process.
Hey Guys
Great info on the website. I was just wondering if you pasture your pigs and sheep in the same paddock at the same time or if they are rotated before or after each other? I have had pigs the past couple years and am looking at getting sheep this year. I was hoping that I would be able to pasture them together but someone mentioned to me that the pigs may become aggressive towards the lambs at lambing, what do you think?
Thanks!
We run the pigs and sheep together most of the time. During lambing it is important to separate the ewes so the pigs leave the lambs alone. A new lamb, covered in placenta, is too tempting to taste. Lambing is just a very short season in the late winter or spring. Once the lambs are spry and up and running everyone is fine. In fact, they can like each other a bit too much at times. We joke about ending up with wooling shigs.
Love your website and all the info. Very inspiring. We raise chickens, duck, geese and nubian goats for milk. Want to add pigs, sheep and rabbits. Would like to order 3 piglets from you. What type of sheep do you recommend? I’m leaning towards shetlands. I had olde english southdown babydolls and had awful luck with them.
We had Cheviot sheep and I liked them. Visually I like the horned sheep – our Cheviots were polled sheep (no horns). I’ve read about the Shetland sheep – they sound good and hearty.
For piglets see the piglet page.