Raising Sheep

Because they provide wool, meat and milk.

Some Basic Sheep Info

• "No known wild sheep are wool bearing. The ancestors of the domestic sheep had long hair and a soft, downy undercoat that only under domestication gradually became wool."
• Male Sheep are known as Rams. Females as Ewes, young as Lambs.
• Lambs don't reach maturity until there 1 year old.
• Sheep live an average of 11 years
• Both Rams and Ewes produce Wool, only Ewes produce milk, and Lambs produce nothing. All can be slaughtered for meat.
• Sheep weigh on average about 190 lbs.. Rams a bit more Ewes a bit less
• A high percentage of lambs born are twins and triplets.

Feeding your Herd of Sheep

Like all animals, sheep need food and water. Sheep are great because water is easy to come by and they eat grass. This makes feeding them easy most of the time. However... during the fall and winter months they will not be able to graze and will have to be feed. They require 2 lbs of grain ( such as Wheat, Barley, Oats, Alfalfa or Corn) per day per sheep. Most of these grains weigh around 40 lbs per cubic ft ( unit), and we use units for everything in this system, so assume 1/20 th of a unit per sheep per day to feed over the fall and winter months.

Housing your Herd

All that Wool helps keep sheep warm in the winter, as does their tendency to huddle together. Shaving them in the summer helps keep them cool. A good pasture should have plenty of shade for summer and windblock for winter, but this requires no special preparation. Very bad winter storms can and have destroyed flocks before but are not particularly common. Civilizations that are very dependent upon sheep flocks in colder climates might very well consider protecting them with a housing of some sort. If so, Consider that each sheep is going to need about 7 square ft of floor space, and the building bust have some strength to resist dumb sheep repeatedly bumping into it.

Tending your Herd

First of all, any herd of sheep must ultimately be managed by a Rancher of at least adept rank. If not, the flock will not be tended to properly and will suffer in terms of mortality, illness, decreased birth rates, and lower wool, meat and milk yields. A Rancher can effectively manage a flock of up to 100 sheep per his rank as a rancher. In addition to managing the flock, it will have to be looked after, guided, kept together and protected as it grazes and suns in pasture. For this, you will need ranchers, shepherds or sheep dogs. Now keep in mind that flocks must be looked after 24/7 unless you have them housed in a building. Flocks not adequately tended will lose great numbers to predators and sheep wandering of and getting lost/hurt. To accomplish this, shifts will have to be worked which will translate into a lower sheep per shepherd ratio then you might think reasonable. For each rancher or shepherd for each rank they have, they may tend a flock of 20 sheep. Sheepdogs may be specially trained by animal trainers, and each rancher or shepherd may effectively utilize one. Each sheepdog adds 20 to the total flock size that can effectively be tended.

Longevity and Reproduction of Your Flock

First keep in mind the average life expectancy for a sheep is about 10 years with medieval conditions and medical care. This means that each year, 10% will die off due to natural factors ( about .8% per month). Butchering those that have died naturally or those on the brink of death is a bad practice. The meat is often foul and about half that of a healthy young sheep.

Research seems to indicate that the optimum male to female ratio in mating for sheep is 1 male per 30 females. Among sheep, quite high rates of multiple births such as twins and triplets occur. In various places I have seen annual prolificacy rates for sheep listed as everything from 100% to 200% of the Ewe population. Because were working in a medieval context, lacking sanitation and medical care of the modern rancher, we will use the lowest figure of 100%. This means that you can expect 1 lamb to be born for each Ewe each year. Of course not every Ewe bares lambs, and many birth two, that 100% is what it about averages out to. In our system, we will then expect that every month your flock will gain 8% of it's total Ewe population in new lambs. These will be about 50% 50% male and female. 29 of 30 males are generally slaughtered at 1 year for meat, where as all females are kept for milk, wool and lamb production.

Sheering your Sheep

One of the things this system attempts to avoid is timing of production. Technically, like farming, Sheering of sheep occurs once per year in a big harvest like crops. The last thing on earth I want to keep track of is the harvest dates of dozens of different types of crops, and I will lump the harvesting of wool in with that. What I do instead is find the yearly yield of a crop and spread it out evenly over the year. After wool is removed, it still needs to be cleaned which takes much longer than simply cutting it. In this system we will assume that a mass cutting only occurs once in spring, but the labor of cleaning the wool distributes the availability of the wool over the entire year. Any rancher or shepherd can effectively sheer a herd of sheep the size of which they can look after in the needed time. They do however need proper "sheering tools" which last most ranchers a lifetime with proper maintenance. After doing my research, I have found that the average American sheep produces 8.2 pounds of wool per year. Further research shows that a bale of cotton (a similar fiber) weighs about 8.3 pounds per square foot. How convenient! The average American sheep produces an estimated 1 unit (square foot) of bailed wool per year. Thus, each sheep in your flock can be assumed to produce 1/12 a unit of wool per month.

Butchering your Sheep

Aside from wool, sheep are a great source of meat. Generally the rams are killed because few of them are needed to promote the growth of the herd, and they are some what aggressive. Anybody can kill an animal and cut it up for meat. A butcher however will salvage far more than would an unskilled knife. First of all, we must realize that a unit of meat ( 1 cubic ft) weighs about 45 lbs. Each slaughtered sheep produces 50 lbs of meat, plus 2 lbs per rank of the butcher butchering it ( thus between 50 lbs and 60 lbs). Lambs produce only 5 lbs of meat when butchered.

Milking your Sheep

Milking animals is labor intensive and time consuming work. The services of a milk maid are in order here for more efficient milk production. According to sources I've read, at any given time you can expect about 1/3 of the Ewes in a flock to be producing milk. Those Ewes producing milk produce about 2 liters a day ( over several milkings). There are 28.32 liters in a standard unit ( 1 cubic ft). Thus the average milking sheep produces about 1/14 th a unit of milk per day (very convenient that we have 28 day months). So, how much milk per month. 2 units per month from each milking Ewe, or 2/3 unit of milk per Ewe in your herd.

How many Milkmaids do I need?

Well, the number of milkmaids you need is based upon two factors. First is the number Ewes in the flock ( not just the 1/3 lactating ewes), and the second is the skill of the milkmaids. The chart below denotes who many Ewes a milkmaid can tend to based on her profession rank.

Other sheep facts

• Body Temperature: 100.9° F-103.8° F
• Pulse/heart rate: 70 - 80 beats per minute
• Respiration rate: 12 - 20 breaths per minute
• Estrus ("heat") cycle: 18 days
• Length of each "heat": 28 hours
• Gestation (length of pregnancy): 145 days
• Breeding season: August through fall