Have you any ideas and suggestions for making a quick, inexpensive, shelter for sheep

[Ridgetop]

Thank you. I have a painting at the foot of my bed showing an forest with a path winding through it. Before I go to sleep and when I wake I visualize riding my dear friends through the cool woods and into the sunlit meadow beyond. My idea of heaven! (Well that, and making a difficult 7 no trump grand slam in bridge, bid, doubled and redoubled or wait, new kids/lambs nursing after a difficult birth - no wait, my dogs gamboling around me as I do chores . . . . I see I will have to refine my ideas of heaven - there are so many! LOL Hugs back to you.

 

[Ridgetop]

Looking at the stock panel shelter with tarps, I think it might be a good idea to fill in the ground area with sand or DG to help absorb any pee. The more I look at it I am tempted to try one to see if the tarps stay on in our heavy winds. It certainly would be inexpensive to make. I have seen them used as greenhouses before, also hydroponic garden with rabbits and chickens in it somewhere (Alaska maybe?) where the temps were super cold. I think it was in an organic farming magazine years ago but can't remember.

 

[Ridgetop]

Here is a shelter my DS designed from 2 unused 8' x 12' corral shelter roof panels. At first DH thought they were all destroyed in giant windstorm years ago that flipped our 72' line of 12x24 corrals upside down and ended up about 30 feet downhill but read on . . . . Luckily, the wind had woken us up and we ran out and turned the horses out loose on the field about 2 hours previously! We were lucky there. We had removed all the shelters so we could take the corrals apart. We reinstalled the corrals, but never put the shelters back up because we were afraid they would blow off again and injure the horses. The shelters had been stacked for years, and the top panel was pretty ragged. It needs to be completely reroofed. We went down to Lowes and priced the PVC and metal roofing to recover it. To do 1 roof would be at least $100. We couldn't even remember how many panels we had so came home to decide if using them made sense. The dirt had blown up over the stack in the past 14 years, so we dug them out and were thrilled to find about 8 of these corral shelters. When we removed the top panel we found that all the panels underneath were actually in excellent condition. The corrugated metal sheets were not torn, just a few sheet metal screws needed to be replaced per panel. The support poles had all broken off when the wind flipped the corrals upside down, but many of the brackets were still attached to the frames. They were easy to remove. We got the first 2 panels out and DS washed them down.
DS, DH, DD and I (in my knee brace) built the whole thing relatively quickly - a few hours! First, DH and DS measured out where to put the bottom edges and drove 18" metal building stakes in to hold the outside edges of the panels. We put the top edges together and DS used butterfly corral clamps to attach them together. To keep the structure stable in case of heavy winds we tied the bottom pipe rail to the metal stakes. DS wants to make several more of these but we have to plan where they can go where the horses can't rub against them. He also has an idea to use the support brackets (we saved them) on the bottom of the structures to drive additional metal construction stakes through for anchors. It was quick, fairly easy, and will give some shelter to our sheep.



Here you can see the sheep being chased into the picture - they will treat this as some kind of hideous danger for a while but DS says he will feed them inside for a few days. The shelter is in the round pen where we are penning them currently for safety. It has no shade so they needed some shelter from the sun. This is angled north south so will give shade outside in early am and late afternoon as well as inside. There is enough headroom for my 6' DS to walk through, and we think enough room for most of the sheep to get in if necessary. The panels were heavy, but the 4 of us were able to carry them and lift them into place even with my bad knee in a brace. We clamped the top together with pipe corral butterfly clamps and DS says that if the shelters work out, he will put a roof cap over the top seam before the rains come. We are trying to decide if we should bother spraying the panels with galvanizing compound to cover the tiny rust spots.
We were very happy about the end result, and even happier that it looked like rain so was cool enough to work (June Gloom is what it is known as here in So Cal).

 

[Baymule]

That is awesome! And you already had them, that's the best part! I love being able to reuse something and saving money. Good job!

 

[Ridgetop]

Me too! We really thought we would have to replace the corrugated metal on most of them since the top panel (which was only 6' x'10' for some reason) was so torn up. What a great surprise to find that we had about 6-8 of the8' x12' underneath that were in great condition! All we had to do was find the bucket of butterfly clamps in the lower shed and we were set up. The entire cost for this was $30 for the 18' construction stakes we had to buy since the constructions stakes we already have are 30" long. We attached the bottom pipe of the panels to the stakes with left over nylon webbing tie downs from the grandkids' trampoline. We are going to replace the corrugated metal on the 6' x 10' roof panel and install it on the 10'x18' dog kennel. It will give shelter to the dogs if we have to kennel them in hot or rainy weather, and we often use it for special uses for the sheep, lamb in a cast one time that wasn't supposed to move much, etc.

I saw some pallets on the street on the way home from church and would have stopped but they wouldn't fit in the car. Could go back with the truck but it's Father's Day so DH is off the hook on this one! LOL