Is there any money raising sheep?

[buzz]

Just wondering

[freewheat]

twice as much as cattle.

[kato]

Seriously?? I would also like to know.

Because we've been having the "sheep discussion" for a while now, and just have to wrap our heads around the fence issue.

[jensend]

you can almost always pencil a profit in sheep but your management has to be as sharp as your pencil. Predators are a big issue. Require more handson but more manageable than a 1400 lb cow that's having trouble calving and high on hormones.

[freewheat]

1 cow = 6 sheep in feed needs. 1 sheep should get you 1.6 lambs to sell. Lamb prices are 1.80 ish a lb for 100 lbers. And that lamb, if spring born, will be market weight by fall if you do your job. Ewe lambs can be bred in to lamb at one year, you can do accelerated lambing, 3 lamb crops in 2 years, etc. So if you do the math, it is an eye opener.

Fencing is holding me back as well, but I have been planning for them for about 8 years, it just has not worked out yet...

[kato]

Predators aren't an issue here. I raise donkeys. I've got 7 right now. LOL. The local coyotes are trained to repect the outside of the fence better than the cattle sometimes respect the inside.

I think we're going to try and get a handful of ewes in another month or so, after the calving slows down and I can steal a shed. We'll see if we like working with them before we jump in deeper.

I'm thinking something along the lines of Dorset, Arcott, Suffolk or Cheviot or such. Not hair sheep. Not with two spinning wheels in the house!

Has anybody got an experience with Targhee? I like the look of their fleeces, but don't know much else about them.

[agate]

Hello, this is Agate, I am new to this
forum. I recently came across your post
and have been reading along.

[kato]

Just an update.. bred ewes of any quality are pretty hard to find right now, at least around here, so I've got 10 lambs coming first week of May. Planning on transferring my calf raising skills to lambs, and see how it goes.

I will report back on how it goes.

[Smithy]

Hard not to make money on them this year. I am selling started bottle lambs for about the same price as 80 lbers 10 years ago!

Aside from a couple of horrid years a decade or so ago I have made more on the sheep than the cows. That is comparing expenses to income. If I accurately had a way to track labour the sheep are a little more time consuming, but who counts our own wages, lol.

[DogPatch]

Kato.......

I'll start with 2 words of wisdom,

Don't use ground grain. Sheep like it hold, and ground grain will kill them like a big truck.

Sheep hate copper, so don't feed them cattle minerals. Kills them too.

Lots of other things I could say, but that would only make them sick.

Good Luck

[Smithy]

Dogpatch you are sure right! My very worst day of farming was the 24 hrs following my sheep getting into a minibag of ground barley my son had delivered for his turkeys. It had got set up against a fence the sheep had access to and there was a hole in the bag. I lost about 6 of my best ewes along with a couple of lambs and a purebred ram that was my pride and joy. That was at the end of a very grim 24 hrs. of treating sick and dying animals.

[DogPatch]

pretty much what happened to us. A small amount leaked out of our mixmill, and we both know how little it takes to kill a few ewes. We've learned, but it hurts

[tweaker101]

What type of fence works the best to keep in sheep...electric or good old page wire?, currently we are fenced for cattle( 3 barbed and 1 electric) was just thinking of adding some additional electric wires to the fence?. And also any thoughts on which breed works the best and would it be possible to run sheep with our cattle?.

[kato]

I knew about the grain. It's actually a good thing for us that they eat whole grain. Simplifies things a lot. We don't have a mixmill any more. For this go round though, my lambs are going to get a proper creep ration from the feedmill.

We're still debating the fencing issue too. We have a friend who has good luck with three strands of high tensile electric fence topped by one of barb wire, for the cows. We're thinking that's probably the way to go. It just means adding more wires to existing fence. For now there's no rush, since it's little guys we're getting. We can take it as it comes.