Sheep enterprises are regularly perceived as requiring a high labour input. There are major differences, however, with numerous factors such as farm layout and land fragmentation, farm infrastructure and even breed type all having an influence on the volume of labour required.A handling unit can deliver major labour savings, with research showing that a good handling unit can reduce the time worked with sheep by 1.28 hours per ewe. Over a 100-ewe flock, this amounts to 16 days work per year. This is a significant figure when you take into account many sheep enterprises are run on a part-time basis and for those that are not help is often limited.