keeping sheep/chickens

I know nothing about sheep, sorry, other then its nice if there are more then a couple of them. Goats are better at keeping grass down but not as delicious!

Chooks are easy as, can't say i ever had a vet to the chickens, actually? They do well if they can free range in your yard (as opposed to being in a coop full time) and they like a big dust patch to roll around in. Though that can lead to egg hunts and if they're free ranging and you find an egg be aware it may not be fresh!! We kept ours locked up (predators!!) but let them out for a few hours a day to forrage. Rounding up chickens is a fun game.

As for vet care some people worm and some people don't. Some people also chose to give sodium (we gave kelp) We brought grit for them as they werent free ranging enough to be confident that got it naturally but that was about it.

Depending on how much forage time they get they might need pellets to supplement, and they will eat pretty much all kitchen scraps (including chicken scraps, though its not recommended to feed chicken to chickens!)

However, while i had healthy chickens i didnt have particularly productive ones, mine never really came into their lay properly. I have no idea why, but i was more amused by them as pets then keeping them as food so i wasnt too bothered. So i might be missing some vital part of chicken care that = eggs. I think when you buy them you need to ensure they are in lay. Oh and some area zones prohibit more then a certain amount of chickens and some places allow you a rooster, some don't.

We have 23 chickens, one rooster and 3 babies *sigh. They are my auntys chickens, and are a bloody nuisance! Anyway we have a self feeder in their pen for pellets and every morning they get grain and the kitchen scraps. They are locked up during the day and get let out at about 6pm every night to have a forage around and roost in the trees/ hen house overnight. We feed them at 7.30am every morning, and if you are early or too late they wont come in and spend the day out doing bad chicken things (like scratching up my garden and nesting where you cant find them)

A warning if you have a vege garden- they think its THEIRS, and will go in there and dig and scratch away and rip all your plants out- so my vege garden is chicken proof by having bird netting all over it to keep them out.

Our are quite productive, producing one a day each- but some are older and only do a couple a week and some are too young so we go from anywhere between 5-11 a day, however there are a couple that always escape and we regularly need to go on a egg hunt to find the nests, however they are usually not to hard to find as when they lay an egg they tell the whole world- i wonder how they have managed to survive so long!

You need to have good high sides on your chicken pen, with wooden boards around the bottom so they dont scratch a way out, a nice low container for water and some shade from the sun. A decent hen house with roosting is good- means they dont roost in the trees. Nesting box's with some hay in them for them to lay eggs.

A rooster is not essential, however if you want babies some time in the future then get one. If you dont want a hen to sit on the eggs then we kick her out of the nesting box's for the day until she stops- she just free ranges around. If you do want babies make sure you mark the eggs that you want to keep, and limit it to half a dozen or so. Older chickens make better mothers, as the young ones are prone to leaving the babies to themselves while they are still young.

When we have babies we seperate them from the rest of the chickens and keep them in their own small pen on our lawn- you dont have to do this- its just my auntys thing (horrible cause the lawn gets rooted from the chickens scratching). lol its quite a novel but if you have any more questions then ask away. oh and i know nothing about sheep- i think they are stinky stupid creatures

goats are escape artists and will eat anything they get near including stuff on your clothesline if you manage to get a really naughty one, and they stink

Get the sheep pre shawn and at the end of summer. Nothing like fly blown sheep dags on their bottoms. Gross. That was the first and last time we had sheep as kids. I would get a pig and have it free range. Or a cow. Much easier.

Love chooks. They are great.

Yeah with chickens any potato/pumpkin peelings need to be cooked. mum would cook them up every morning and mix in layers mash and feed them in the winter so they had a warm brekkie.

^^ Or you graze 4 - 5 sheep for him in return for one to eat when the time comes. Good thought and worth checking out.

Im pleased someone said pig - KuneKune pigs are good mowers. We looked into getting one ourselves but it would become a pet and we didnt have quite enough room. Friends have some and they're friendly as. They will need a sty and will probably make themselves somewhere to wallow.

Goats are fantastic but i wouldnt recommend one for eating. Unless you're into goats milk? My mom used to have a pet one that rode around in the car with her. Before me, of course but still...

A really helpful website is lifestyleblock.co.nz You'll get a tonne of helpful info there. Even better, depending on what is surrounding your block, is to talk to your new neighbours. If they are rookie lifestylers too then you can learn together, if you are surrounded by larger farms then you have some excellent info right on your doorstep. We are helped endlessly by the farmers surrounding our block.

Whatever you get, good fencing is a must. We have some deer fencing and have replaced some sheep fencing but our kunekune regards it all as something of a challenge and can force her way under anything except post and rail or electric. So don't get a pig unless your fencing is awesome or your neighbours (like ours) tolerant.

We have spent a fortune in building a chook-proof vege garden. Even with clipped wings they can flutter over an ordinary fence. And one year, prior to new fencing, I lost the lot in one morning to rampaging sheep.

However, all that said, we love keeping sheep and have anywhere between a couple and a dozen at any one time. It helps that DH used to shear and that our neighbours farm them in big numbers. But there are mobile shearers and drenching is easy. I wouldn't be without our chooks, and although they are free range as long as you pen them up of an evening and let them out mid/late morning they will mostly lay in their nest boxes. However, they will crap all over your lawn.....

We have 1 and 1/4 acres. We keep 2 sheep from weaner lambs until 10-11mnths old. We use moveable hot-tape with a solar charged battery to fence them in and this works well. We have 2 pigs that we have in a pigsty and another paddock off that also in hot-tape with a solar electric fence and battery. We have a goat that we have been using to clear the gorse and scrub from the land (mighty fine job she has done too!). She is on a tether and had always been tethered, in fact she does not know what to do if she is not tethered, she just goes and stands by her house looking worried. We also have a dozen hens and a rooster in their own pen, and we breed rabbits for meat so have 2 hutches that are towed around the lawn for fresh grass daily. Add the veg garden to this melee and the land is pretty much full up.

I love sheep, they are real lawnmowers and if you just have them for this length of time before chucking them in the freezer then there is no need for drenching or shearing (bonus is a sheepskin at the end too). Our goat is legendary at clearing scrub, but terrible at eating grass, she will only eat grass if nothing else is on offer. She will ringbark any tree that she comes in contact with. Also goats need a shelter, sheep don't but they need shade.