First sheep in the new shed!

Just about to make up the first rations of the sheep. So I've got one bale of what they've been on for the past few weeks and then I've got one bale of the really good quality stuff. So I'm gonna, for the first few days, I'm gonna mix the two and get them on to the better quality stuff because it is much higher in protein. So it'll take a few days to transition them onto that but I think that's the best way to do it as opposed to like a complete swap. So because the really good quality silage is so dry I'm putting a wee bit of molasses in to combine it all and hopefully that way the pellets will mix in a bit so yeah let's give it a bash and see what happens. So obviously we've had our silage analysed as I've mentioned before and also I've got advice on rations here for the sheep so this is not just me making up what I think will work. So this is the the really good stuff that is so dry as you can see it's still very green too so I'm putting half the quantity of that in and then the other half of the bales that they have been getting for the past couple weeks. So what I need to make sure is that the quantities are as they've been instructed. So I'm looking at the clock here and I'm just about to put scrap full in and we'll see how much that is if I need putting a wee bit of time if I need more if I need slightly less if that's enough. I am stressed at this I am very stressed at this because this could completely mess things up. It'll be much easier once the yows are on just the one type of silage so in a few days time as opposed to trying to make sure that I've got half and half of one type. So I'm just putting a wee bit more in here. Good stuff. This next bale's chopped so it's a lot finer. I'm just going to take a grab tool and I'll just slowly do the same put however much I need in over and see if it's enough too much. So that's it mixing up just now you can see it's very dry so I'm just going to add in a wee drop of molasses just now. So this is the pellets I'm just about to add into the mix. I'm chuffed with that that was a total fluke I think. I had the bags of pellets because I can't weigh them at the moment so I just sort of guessed but that feels like my five kilos. I'm just about bloody bang on. Stage one complete let's go take a look at it and then we'll fire it out to the house. So there's so much going on today that I'm having to put the mix out to the yowls before the yowls are even in the shed just so it's there for when I do get them in. So this is how it's looking just looks like silage to be totally honest. So in there we've got high quality silage, molasses and yowl pellets. So it smells incredible so I'm going to go fire this out to the yowls just now. Yeah wish me luck. That's just a mix for my early yowls. So we've got 170 of them coming into the shed so obviously as the shed is filled for the main lambing the mix will be more. So yeah I'm going to give this a bash and see hopefully hopefully they eat it, hopefully they like it, hopefully it's okay. Yeah there's a lot riding on this so yeah pressure is high, stress levels are high. Just split the sheep up into their singles, twins, triplets. So obviously the majority are twins and then we've got 64 triplets and 14 singles. So I think we're going to put the majority of triplets in one pen and and then put the rest of the triplets and the singles together and then just split the twins up half and a half. I think's the plan but we're going to see how tight it looks in a minute. So this is the first batch of twins coming across. Will they go straight in? That didn't work they definitely looked at the shed and were like uh what's this? First sheep into the shed, first batch are in. Good height for the drinkers. Welcome to your new home girls. Got the triplets now, This is the silage out in front of the house. You can see here it's still quite dry but it's really nice. That's a pellet there, it's got a wee drop of molasses through it. I don't know if it's quite enough, maybe not quite enough um but that's a mixture of the bale that they were on outside so it's slightly stockier, that lighter stuff and then the finer stuff is the really good quality other silage that I'm going to get them onto. So they will go just onto this fine stuff, pellets and molasses but I'm just going to gradually change them over. So the earlies are in, the shed is nowhere near full. We were worried that um we weren't sure how many we're going to fit per section so we've got two bays in one section um and we weren't sure how it was going to work but you can see here the yows are eating the tmr so that's a total mixed ration. So as I was saying it's got the two different types of silage through it, cake but in pellet form uh which is 18 percent rolls from harborough um and a wee touch of molasses through it as well just to try and combine it slightly better. We fed molasses as you know outside so I felt it was important to keep molasses in the mix especially this year because it does significantly reduce our lambing sickness issues. Touchwood, it'll do the same here inside in this system. So benefits to tmr, it's consistent, every mouthful is the same and for example because this shed can hold will be over 400 yows they can't all feed at once so it's important that they can come and go as they please. The stronger yows will come and feed and then the you know the ones that are maybe not the dominant yows will come in about then and feed and it also means that we can give them their cake so in the pellet form is through this so there's no fighting there's no pushing shoving potential loss of lambs um from them coming in about rushing to try and get about and get a bit of cake so they should be more content they should be more settled um that's the plan anyway this as I say is a trial year so we could find something that we really like this year or we could find something they absolutely hate so yeah it's all this is all learning curve for us um so yeah any tips advice anything is very welcome um because I do feel it's important we can all learn off each other. That being said I feel an overwhelming mix of emotions just standing watching these sheep here this would just have made mum so happy and it absolutely breaks me to know that she didn't see this she was so excited she was one of the biggest driving forces behind this shed I'm getting so emotional over sheep in a shed I think on that emotional note that'll do for this one I hope you enjoyed it any questions please feel free to pop them in the comments below thank you again for watching and we'll see you for the next one