[crimson]

I am thinking of investing in sheep for a 109 acre farm, i am leaning towards sheep that are low maintenance and  easily lambed. I have never had sheep before, only cows. Although i have a fair knowledge of the in's and out's of rearing them. Grassland is mostly average pasture quality (not the most fertile but still not bad!). Mostly decent upland  grass makes up 3/4's of the farm. The rest is bogland. This venture will only be a part time hobby, im not expecting much profit (although some profit is always helpful). How much sheep could it graze, which breeds should i go for, should i keep sheep that produce lambs that will fattened up then sold on or some other way? I want this venture to be low maintenance as possible , considering it's only part time. All sheds, machinery, etc are there already. Any advice?

[SallyintNorth]

A lot depends on where you are and what climate you have.  I'm in north Cumbria with 50" rainfall a year, so the land you describe in my area would support roughly 1 breeding ewe per acre.  Further south, or somewhere drier, you may manage 3 or 5 times that number.

What breeds do the local farmers have on similar ground?  That would be a good place to start.  Do they sell  lambs as stores (not full grown, someone else will grow them on and sell them 'fat' - ready to slaughter) or do they fatten their lambs?  Fatten and away by autumn or are they kept on and finished and sold the following year?

If you have bog you will have midges and flies, unless you also have constant wind.  Flies could mean flystrike, so for low maintenance you may want to look to a self-shedding breed, but if you are somewhere inclement then the sheep will need more fleece than that.

Easily lambed is one thing, but you do need to be present when sheep lamb to help if there are problems and to ensure there's no mismothering, mixups, that the lambs get onto the teats and get their colostrum, etc, etc.  Will you be able - and willing - to take holiday from work for lambing time?  If not, then don't get breeding sheep, instead buy store lambs and fatten them.

[langfauld easycare]

  i agree with sally check out easycaresheep.com as long as you dont over stock them they will rear twins with very little input . i am about halfway through my lambing around 115 so far and i have lambed 3 sheep none of which were easycares . i put some of the older ones to the beltex and they are lambing fine with heaver lambs  but the lambs have no where near the same get up and go. best of luck 

[crimson]

instead buy store lambs and fatten them.

Is this profitable fattening lambs? , which breeds and what age would they be bought at?

[Marches Farmer]

To make life simple, at least to begin with, buy whatever breed usually appears at your local market - in our area it's most often lambs from Welsh Mule x Suffolk, which always find a ready market.  Buy a set of scales and ask the market which weight they prefer.  Cheapest to buy straight after weaning, but depending on which time of year that is in your area (July/August here), it might be well to worm with an orange drench and keep on concrete for 48 hours so as not to introduce a worm burden onto the ground and perhaps to vaccinate with Footvax or at least check and treat feet before they go onto the pasture, again to avoid introducing disease which will cause problems for years to come.  You may also wish to give Ovivac P Plus (2 shots 4-6 weeks apart) and use a pour-on against flystrike (Crovect has a shorter withdrawal time than Clik and should last until the flies disappear around September).   The majority of the lambs could well be away by the end of November, whch would save a lot of work over the WInter.

[twizzel]

instead buy store lambs and fatten them.

Is this profitable fattening lambs? , which breeds and what age would they be bought at?

I bought 6 store lambs last July for £50 each at 4 months old, kept them until November and sold them butchered for £140 each. All they ate was grass, we wormed and crovect'd them with what we had leftover from our other lambs and kill/cut was £25, so not huge margins but still made a profit. They were commercial types, all Texel crosses. If you were buying to sell back in the market at a later date I doubt there would be much of a profit margin.

[SallyintNorth]

You will generally make more profit if you buy the sort that will keep overwinter.

We reckon that buying stores in August/September, our costs per lamb will be about £10 per head to get them to finished.  This does not include costing the grass they are on, so if you were renting and / or looking for a return per acre, you'd need to cost this in.

Prices generally rise for fat lambs in the New Year, so for us a breed like a Cheviot, which is a wee bunny rabbit when we buy it in August but grows into a substantial fat lamb by January, can leave a profit some years. 

Some years we've bought at around £50-£55/head for Cheviots, Texel types may be a tenner less, then sold the hoggs for around £90 in January.  So it's not big bucks profit, and there is a risk - for instance the year we bought 64 Cheviots and it snowed in November, covering all that lush grass they should've been eating all winter, and we had to hay and cake them!

[Marches Farmer]

Weather is always going to be the unpredictable variable, which is why getting them away early can be useful.  We hadony about 10cm of snow one December but it then froze hard for seven weeks, so had to feed our lambing hay reserve.