Grazing Sheep and Cattle Together Has Multiple Advantages By Greg Judy

CLARK, Missouri

Before I go any further into how we manage our two different species, cattle and sheep, I want to cover adaptability and obtaining a good starter sheep flock. When sourcing breeding stock, do not go to the sale barn and buy a group of cheap looking ewes. They don’t look so cheap after a month or two and you see what they really are. You may bring something back to your farm that will ruin your chances of having a good flock of sheep - primarily foot rot, parasites, pampered grain-fed sheep, wild sheep, etc.

Buy your starter flock from a reputable breeder who has been in the sheep grazing business for many years. Not every sheep you bring onto your farm will adapt in most cases. Get rid of the sheep that don’t adapt and keep the ones that do. Breed your best, sell the rest. If you stick to this regiment in your early years, pretty soon you will have a profitable set of ewes that will make a great living from solely grazing forage.

When we first got into sheep, I was pretty convinced that our fences needed to be substantial to keep them home. What I found out was that the sheep we bought, which came from San Angelo, Texas, did not care for their new surroundings. The fence jumpers found a new home and the ewes that stayed home we kept.

Our original sheep farms were made up of two combined farms that were located across a gravel road from each other. We built 16 permanent paddocks out of hi-tensile electric wire that had four strands attached to fiberglass posts.

It was a ton of infrastructure to put in to keep sheep on a constant rotation. The permanent paddocks took a lot of our flexibility away from us in rotating and changing up paddock sizes according to the daily growing conditions. A lot of money and labor could have been saved by implementing a fence training regimen with the newly purchased sheep instead of building permanent paddocks.

So what are the advantages of grazing sheep and cattle on the same farm? Sheep parasites can be ingested by cattle and it ends the cycle of that parasite, dead end host! Cow parasites ingested by sheep, same thing, dead end host. So each species is acting as a vacuum cleaner sucking up each other’s parasites. With the additional species added to your farm you have another income source besides cattle.

Weeds are a favorite target of sheep. Basically any broadleaf plant is preferred over grass with sheep. Thorny type forage like multiflora rose bush, honey locust, autumn olive, thorny briars all are devoured by sheep. Huge advantages are gained when you have a crop of lambs to sell that were raised on forbs that cattle would not eat. Cattle may nip at the ends of some of those plants, but sheep make a living at it!

Sheep make pasture better for cattle by removing a lot of nuisance plants that compete for valuable nutrients and moisture. Sheep are much easier to manage in the winter dormant non-growing season. They require no hay and do not need water at temperatures below 32 degrees F as long as they are grazing winter stockpile. There is enough moisture in the plants to meet the sheep needs for water. If you run out of winter stockpile for your sheep and have to supplement with hay, then water is required.

What does it take to get started with a good flock of sheep that you can add to your cattle operation? If starting from scratch, buy 8-10 ewes and a ram to get started from someone who is raising sheep solely on forage with a rotational grazing operation. Sheep need to respect electric fence so that you can rotate them.

By far the best way to graze sheep is to combine them with your cow herd if possible. We have multiple public road cattle drives from one farm to the next about once or twice per month. This prevents us from grazing our sheep with our cow mob due to the fact that our guardian dogs would kill or injure every neighbor dog that comes out to bark at us as we travel by their yard. We would need to catch every guard dog before we made each cattle drive down public roads. On those occasions the sheep are left behind when we walk the cattle to a new farm.

Some of our guardian dogs are not people friendly enough to allow you to catch them. They are great at protecting the sheep flock, they just don’t want you touching them. So our normal rotation is the cow mob grazes the paddock first followed shortly by our sheep flock.

There is one time period in the year that we combine our bull herd with the sheep to form a flerd. Our bull herd numbers range from 70-80 bulls each year and are removed from the cow mob March 1st. The bull herd is placed with our pregnant ewe flock at that time. This is a huge advantage for several reasons. The bull herd placed with the sheep flock only gives us two groups of animals to rotate instead of three groups. With winter forage at a premium, you sure don’t want an extra group of animals to rotate or manage separately.

The first year we placed our bull herd in with the sheep I had several doubts that it would work. What if the dogs chased and harassed the bulls? The dogs did chase the bulls for five min- utes, then they accepted each other after that. What if the bulls harassed the sheep or dogs? The bulls never paid any attention to the dogs.

What if the temporary one poly-braid wire sheep fencing did not contain the bulls? I mean after all, our sheep are trained to be rotated with one poly-braid that is 10” off the ground. The bulls could easily step over it and go wherever they wanted. This was a major concern that did not turn out to be a problem at all. Pretty hard to believe, but we have never had a bull go over the 10” wire.

The bull herd is kept with the sheep flock until we are two weeks into lambing. Once we have 150 or so new lambs on the ground it is extremely hard to move them fast enough to keep the bulls from running out of forage with daily strip grazing moves. At this point, the bulls move forward at larger grazing strips and the sheep flock follows while they finish up lamb- ing. Once the lambs are a month old, we rejoin the bull herd back to the sheep flock simply because the baby lambs are very mobile by this time.

One of my favorite times of the year is when we have baby lambs bouncing around the pasture. It is one of the most entertaining sights on the farm. It is quite remarkable how our herd of bulls, guardian dogs, baby lambs, ewes and rams all get along so well. I believe the ultimate grazing operation is grazing everything together as many days of the year as possible.

In wrapping up I would highly recommend that you consider looking at adding sheep to your present cattle operation. Add a few and see how you get along with them before you jump in with larger numbers. Select good hardy breeding stock that are adapted to your area. Focus on parasite resistant sheep seedstock. Be patient and you can turn weeds into cash while your pastures get better each year! Go for it. ■

Greg and Jan Judy graze South Poll beef cattle, parasite-resistant hair sheep, pastured hogs, and layers on 1620 acres in Clark, Missouri. The farm includes 10 leased farms and four owned. All animals are direct marketed as meat and seed stock sales. Contact Greg at gtjudy4099@ gmail.com or visit greenpasturesfarm.net.

His books are available from the SGF Bookshelf and SGF’s Multi-Species School with Greg Judy streaming and on DVD.