Resources • Food sectors • Livestock • Sheep • Establishing a sheep farm

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Sheep

From initial registering your sheep through to the final product packaging and labelling.

Updated 9 May 2024

Establishing a sheep farm

When setting up your sheep farm, you should consider what kind of production your land will sustain. Not all land will be suitable for a farm business producing sheep meat, for example.

Site selection

When selecting your site, you need to consider the animals’ welfare needs (e.g., water source, shelter from weather) and should think about logistics such as proximity to an abattoir.

Location

When starting out your sheep farm, you should think about how your farm location affects whether it’s more viable to keep sheep for meat production or for breeding.

Many Scottish sheep farms are part of a ‘stratified system’ which is divided into three tiers based on their location:

Hills (above 500m), sheep mostly sold on for breeding.
Uplands (above 300m), sheep mostly sold on for breeding.
Lowlands (under 300m), sheep mostly used for meat production.

Farms can have land in more than one tier and move sheep between them, and not all farms participate in the stratified system.

Size

You are legally required to ensure that your sheep have enough space, so their welfare is not compromised (see ‘Managing flock health’). The amount of land you need therefore depends on multiple factors, including:

Flock size (how many sheep you have in total)
Grassland quality (how nutritious the pasture is and whether you also feed the sheep)
Stocking density (how many sheep you have on a piece of land)
What land and flock size you have capacity to manage well

Organic certification

Both your land and animals must be managed to organic standards. If the farmland you buy is not organic, you need to go through a two-year conversion process.

Organic sheep must be fed mostly from your farm, and there are additional conditions for grassland and stocking rate to consider when deciding your farm size and location (see ‘Grassland management’).

Find out more:

Facilities

You must have adequate facilities to provide your sheep access to shelter, food and water, as well as manage their health and production.

Housing & shelter

The code of practice on sheep welfare requires you to provide adequate shelter to your flock. You might need to house your sheep during harsh winter conditions or choose to bring ewes in for lambing (see, ‘Lambing’), depending on the requirements of your sheep breed.

Indoor housing for livestock has legal minimum requirements, including what materials you can use and recommended stocking densities. Read about legal requirements for sheep housing. Adequate space is particularly important for lambing ewes.

Outdoor shelter might be necessary depending on what natural shelter (e.g., trees) your land has.

Organic standards also often set additional rules for housing, such as minimum lying areas for animals. Organic sheep cannot be housed indoors permanently.

Handling

You will need facilities to handle sheep health (e.g., vaccinations) and production (e.g., shearing or weighing). In designing these systems, you must consider stress caused to the animals.

Water

If you take water for your farm from natural sources, such as a river or groundwater, you might need to register or get a permission from the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).

For taking 10m³-50m³water per day, you need to register with SEPA which is free.
For taking above 50m³water per day, you need a Controlled Activities Regulations (CAR) licence which has a fee.

You can register or apply for a water licence on SEPA’s website, which also has guidance available.

Helpful resources for understanding and planning your farm water requirements:

Your flock

When planning your flock, think about your sheep farming system – what you want to produce and how. Different sheep breeds have different qualities, and individual sheep have different purposes:

Breeding, either in your flock or selling onwards
Store lambs are bought from breeding farms for fattening and slaughter
Fat or prime sale sheep are fattened and slaughtered
Culling

Think about what part(s) of the stratified farming system your flock represents (see ‘Site selection’) and where you will source your stock from or sell it to. If you have a closed flock, think about how breeding sheep are kept alongside sale stock and consider how to prevent inbreeding (see ‘Breeding sheep’).

Plan what flock size you want to maintain, decide when your lambing ewes need replacing and where you will source your rams.

Breed selection

Different sheep breeds are adapted to different environments and many UK breeds fit either hill, upland, or lowland conditions. To safeguard animal welfare, you need to think about what attributes sheep need to do well at your farm.

Sheep breeds also have different attributes depending on whether they are intended for: lambs, meat, dairy, and wool. A breed can be used produce more than one output.

Ewes and rams can be selected from different breeds, depending on what you want to produce. Read more in the Sheep 101 guide on sheep selection.

Find out more about breed selection:

Purchasing sheep

You can purchase sheep directly from an established breeder or at an auction market (a mart). The Farm Advisory Service has a guide to buying livestock at the mart.

When buying sheep, you need to keep receipt of the sale and fill in a sheep movement document (see ‘Moving sheep’). You should also ask for health documentation, such as vaccination records. Animals from health schemes, such as HISHA, are certified to be free from specific diseases.

Read AHDB health guidance for what to look out for when buying sheep.

You should always do a health check and quarantine any new sheep for approximately four weeks before mixing them with your existing flock to prevent spreading disease (see ‘Maintaining flock health’). When moving sheep to your farm, your whole flock may be subject to a 13-day standstill – read more in ‘Sheep movement restrictions’.

Sheep