Sheep Incinerators
Lambing losses and fallen sheep destroyed on the holding, through the peak when collection rounds help least.
Sheep mortality is not spread across the year — it arrives in three weeks of lambing, at night, in weather, often on hill ground a long way from a collection point. AniBurn units let a flock deal with lambing losses on the holding, in the window they actually occur, rather than storing them until a round comes past.
Three Models,
One Solution
150 kg per charge for veterinary practices, small farms and pet cremation. The chamber is tall relative to its load rating because carcass waste is bulky and wet — volume, not weight, is the binding constraint.
250 kg per charge with a 2880 mm chamber. The usual specification for a working livestock farm that needs fallen stock dealt with on site under biosecurity rules rather than held for collection.
The largest AniBurn: 300 kg per charge in a 3180 mm chamber. Sized for commercial pet crematoria and larger livestock units where a single daily cycle has to clear everything held in cold storage.
Which Model
Fits Your Volume
Pick a model to see what it clears in a day of sheep.
A lambing week on a smaller flock. The peak, not the average, is what the unit is for: most of the year's charges fall inside that window.
TSE sampling over 18 months
Fallen sheep over 18 months fall into a TSE surveillance class that may require a sample. It has to be taken before destruction — once the carcass is charged the surveillance obligation cannot be met.
Zoonotic risk in abortion material
Enzootic abortion and toxoplasma are transmissible to people and are a specific risk to anyone pregnant on the holding. Handle abortion material with that in mind, and get a diagnosis before destroying the evidence.
APHA approval and environmental permit
Sheep carcasses are animal by-products: the plant needs APHA approval under the retained ABP Regulation alongside an environmental permit from the Environment Agency, SEPA or NIEA.
Burial is unlawful, including in the hills
On-farm burial has been prohibited since 2003 except in designated remote areas, and the designation is narrower than most people assume. Check whether your holding is actually in one before relying on it.
Why Burn It
On Site
4 things change on the day this stream stops leaving the site.
The lambing peak is absorbed on site
Most of a flock's annual mortality falls in a few weeks, and every flock nearby hits it at once. That is precisely when a collection round is least able to fit you in and most able to charge for trying.
Nothing left out for scavengers
A carcass left in the field is unlawful and draws foxes, corvids and loose dogs onto ground where lambs are being born. Same-day destruction removes the attractant rather than relocating it.
No long carry to a collection point
On hill and upland ground the collection point is a long way from the lambing field. A unit at the steading turns a cross-holding carry into a short one.
Night losses do not wait for Monday
Lambing is a 24-hour operation and collection rounds are not. On-site capacity means a loss at 3am is dealt with in the morning rather than stored for days.
Dual-chamber unit
Primary chamber running 850–1,200°C with a secondary chamber holding flue gas above 850°C for two seconds. For animal by-products this is not a preference: it is the combustion condition an APHA-approved incineration plant has to meet.
Two-burner set and fuel train
All three AniBurn models carry two burners, configured for natural gas, LPG, diesel, biofuel or hydrogen. Carcass waste is wet, so burner duty on this stream is doing more evaporation than on any other — fuel choice is a site decision, the combustion condition is not.
What Ships
With The Unit
Identical whichever stream it is specified for. The operating procedure changes; the machine does not.
Dual-chamber unit
Primary chamber running 850–1,200°C with a secondary chamber holding flue gas above 850°C for two seconds. For animal by-products this is not a preference: it is the combustion condition an APHA-approved incineration plant has to meet.
Two-burner set and fuel train
All three AniBurn models carry two burners, configured for natural gas, LPG, diesel, biofuel or hydrogen. Carcass waste is wet, so burner duty on this stream is doing more evaporation than on any other — fuel choice is a site decision, the combustion condition is not.
Top-loading charge door
Carcasses are dead weight and awkward to handle. Top loading means a carcass goes in from above with a hoist, loader or teleporter rather than being dragged through a door at chest height, which is the difference between a two-person job and a one-person one.
IP6X control panel
PLC control with cycle logging and chamber thermocouples. The cycle log is the record that a fallen-stock disposal, an APHA-directed cull or an individual pet cremation actually happened, and when.
Coretex refractory lining
Monolithic castable lining rated for the full temperature range, replaceable in service. Wet, fatty loads are the hardest duty a refractory sees, which makes lining quality the thing that decides service life on this stream rather than on any other.
Stack, dispersion data and commissioning
Stack supplied to the height your site-specific dispersion assessment calls for, with the emissions data the permit application references, plus on-site commissioning and operator training. On a livestock unit the neighbours are the reason the assessment matters.
How One Burn Runs,
Start To Finish
One charge is one countable event. That is what makes a batch unit auditable and a continuous one not.
One Cycle,
Start To Finish
Adds the TSE question for sheep over 18 months and a seasonal rather than steady cycle: most of the year's charges fall inside the lambing window.
Fallen sheep over 18 months sit in a TSE surveillance class that may require a sample before destruction. Establish this before the charge — the sample cannot be taken afterwards.
Losses come back with the daily round rather than being left where they fell. The biosecurity and scavenger case for this stream depends on the interval being hours, not days.
Lambs are light and ewes are dead weight; both go in from above rather than through a door. A mixed charge of several lambs and a ewe is a normal lambing-week load.
Primary combustion at 850–1,200°C with two seconds above 850°C in the secondary chamber. Fleece and fat both burn; the wet early phase is shorter on a lamb than on a larger carcass.
3–5% sterile ash. Log the cycle against the flock record — lambing percentage and mortality are figures the holding is keeping anyway, and the disposal record should match them.
What You Can Burn —
And What You Can't
One charge takes the whole stream without pre-sorting. What must never enter it is a short, hard list.
Yes: accepted in a charge
No pre-sorting between these
- Lambing lossesLambs lost at or shortly after birth, with stillborn lambs and abortion material once any required sampling has been done.
- Ewe losses at lambingEwes lost to lambing complications, prolapse or twin-lamb disease. This is the peak-week stream the unit is sized against.
- Fallen sheep through the yearLosses from the other eleven months within the charge rating, plus tup losses and cull animals that died before movement.
- Lambing pen wasteAfterbirth and pen waste, with the bedding and straw recovered alongside a carcass.
- Outbreak casualtiesLosses from a fly strike or clostridial outbreak, where the volume arrives faster than a collection can be booked.
- Veterinary and handling wastePost-mortem remains from an on-farm examination, and wool or dags taken off a carcass at handling.
No: never charged
Not a permit question — these stay out
- Fallen sheep over 18 months that have not been sampledTSE surveillance may require a sample from that age class, and destruction ends the possibility. Sample first, then dispose — this is the single most common sequencing error on the stream.
- Abortion material before a diagnosisOvine abortion has zoonotic causes — enzootic abortion and toxoplasma among them — and a diagnosis matters both for the flock and for anyone pregnant working with it. Get the sample before the material is destroyed.
- Animals under an APHA directionWhere a direction covers the animal, it specifies the disposal route. That includes notifiable disease events, where the direction outranks the standing farm procedure.
- Sheep dip, chemical containers and residuesDip is hazardous waste with a dedicated disposal route and a groundwater risk. It has no place in a carcass charge and is a separate regulatory problem in its own right.
- Veterinary sharps and medicine bottlesClinical waste from a flock has its own container and route, particularly at lambing when injectable use is high.
- Field burial as a fallbackNot a charge-door exclusion but the one worth repeating: burial has been unlawful since 2003 outside designated remote areas. If the unit is down, the alternative is an approved collector.
Can you legally burn sheep on site?
Technically, yes: the chamber destroys almost everything on the accepted list at 850–1,200°C, and capability is rarely the constraint. Legally is a separate question. What your site is allowed to burn is set by your environmental permit from the Environment Agency, SEPA or NIEA and the waste codes written into it, plus APHA approval, because animal by-products are regulated under their own rules. The never-charged list is different again: those materials are out of scope for the unit or governed by a direction, and no permit wording brings them back in. Send us the codes you hold, or the ones you expect to apply for, and we will tell you which of this list they cover before anything is specified.
Send us your waste codesWhat size incinerator for a lambing-week mortality peak?
Arithmetic on published model figures, not a customer reference. Your numbers go through the same steps.
How This
Was Worked Out
12 lambs at ≈8 kg = 96 kg, plus 2 ewes at ≈70 kg = 140 kg — ≈236 kg, or one ABI-250 charge, leaving 7–12 kg of ash at 3–5%. Liveweights here are typical rather than measured. Size on the lambing week, not the annual average — a flock that sails through eleven months can lose more in one week than in all of them together.
ABI-250
1
7–12 kg
Send your daily or weekly arisings and we will confirm the model, the charge count and the permit route.
Related Products
& Services
Complementary equipment and engineering services for your process.
Sheep Questions
Answered against the published figures for the models specified for this stream, not a generic range sheet.
A sheep incinerator is an APHA-approved dual-chamber unit sized for flock mortality: lambs lost at or shortly after birth, ewes lost to lambing complications, prolapse and twin-lamb disease, and the fallen sheep a flock produces through the rest of the year. Lambs at 5–20 kg and ewes at 60–90 kg all sit comfortably inside a 150, 250 or 300 kg charge. What makes this stream different from cattle or poultry is its shape in time. A flock's mortality is concentrated into the lambing period — a few weeks in which the majority of the year's losses occur, often several in a night. Collection economics work on rounds and predictable volumes; a lambing peak is neither, and it happens to every flock in the district at the same time. Distance compounds it. A large share of UK sheep sits on hill and upland ground where a collection round is a long detour, and where the collection point ends up being a considerable distance from where the ewes actually are. Carcasses then either sit in the field, which is unlawful and attracts foxes, corvids and dogs, or get carried across the holding to wait somewhere else. Two compliance points sit on this stream. Fallen sheep over 18 months fall into a TSE surveillance class that may require sampling before destruction, so the age question is asked before the charge. And burial in the field, still the informal habit in some places, has been unlawful since 2003 — it is not a fallback when the incinerator is cold.
12 lambs at ≈8 kg = 96 kg, plus 2 ewes at ≈70 kg = 140 kg — ≈236 kg, or one ABI-250 charge, leaving 7–12 kg of ash at 3–5%. Liveweights here are typical rather than measured. Size on the lambing week, not the annual average — a flock that sails through eleven months can lose more in one week than in all of them together.
No, outside designated remote areas — burial of fallen stock has been prohibited since 2003, and the remote-area designation is narrower than the habit suggests. The lawful routes are an approved collector or an APHA-approved incinerator on the holding.
Sheep over 18 months fall into a surveillance class that may require sampling, and the sample has to be taken before destruction. Check age and current requirement at the charge door — afterwards there is nothing to test.
A great many. At 5–20 kg a lamb is a small fraction of a 150, 250 or 300 kg rating, so a lambing-week charge is typically a mixed load of several lambs and a ewe. The rating, not the chamber, is usually the limit on this stream.
Yes. A ewe at 60–90 kg is comfortably inside every model in the range — unlike a mature cow or a horse, which are not. Sheep are the species where the AniBurn charge rating fits the adult animal.
Get a diagnosis first. Ovine abortion has zoonotic causes including enzootic abortion and toxoplasma, both of which matter for the flock and for anyone pregnant working with it. Once sampled, the material is destroyed in a routine charge.
It depends where you are more than how many you keep. A hill flock a long way from a collection round, lambing outdoors, gets more from an on-site unit than a larger lowland flock beside a main road. Distance and lambing pattern drive the case, not headcount alone.
Yes — wool burns and adds nothing awkward to the cycle. Dags and soiled fleece removed at handling go in with the charge rather than needing a separate route.
The fallback is an approved collector, not the field. That is worth arranging before lambing rather than during it, because the peak is exactly when everyone else in the district is calling the same number.
Ready to
Incinerate?
Send the stream, the volume and the site constraints. We will confirm the model, the permit route, and what the specification has to say to satisfy the regulator.
- The lambing peak is absorbed on site
- Nothing left out for scavengers
- No long carry to a collection point
- Night losses do not wait for Monday