The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: crimson on March 23, 2015, 12:35:56 am
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Small flock of lets say 30 ewes, i already know the answer but i want someone to convince me otherwise :-\. Lets say mule and suffolks. Upland ground with some lowland.
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I'd also like convincing, though I can't see me making much in the first few years with start upbcosts , buying the flock, renting, equipment etc. I also have 30 ewes, hoping to be at 50 in a years time
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120 views but no replies probably is your answer! Flocks of 100's don't make much!
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To my mind the only way to make a profit, if any, with small flocks is to breed outstanding pedigree stock and sell on breeding stock to other people.
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Or take the lambs to slaughter yourself and sell the meat direct to the consumer.
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or fiddle your books so it looks like you have made a profit and then your OH doesn't complain so much about the long hours you spend with your sheep!!!! :roflanim: :roflanim:
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Or breed a terminal sire breed, but they'll need careful management to turn out top quality stock on upland pasture.
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Niche market - direct sales using the meat, skins and wool. Lots of work to market your product though.
And hide the extra feed bought for cash from the OH :innocent:
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It depends what you pay for rent, what breed you have, how much you pay for the ewes, what tup you are going to use and what market you have for your lambs. Also how good you health plan is so you use just the right treatments at exactly the time you need them and how good your sheparding skills are when it comes to spotting and treating problems.
Having the right sheep on the right ground is a major factor.
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So, lots of 'it depends' answers so far. However, is anybody willing to stick their neck out and say "Yes, I make a small profit on my flock of X ewes, and this is how I do it"? That would be a much more interesting read!
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You can mange a small flock so that your £inputs exceed your £outputs, but the amount of profit you make is probably going to be small, unless as others have said you work very hard to market your goods with value-added services like meat boxes, skins etc.
Plus, if you have a bad year and you need a vet's help then that can wipe out profit in a heartbeat.
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Butermilk is spot on .We do 250 ewes up till 2010 whith ordanarey ewes very small prophit .I then went the other way and bought 2 First class rams .That made the difarance .The better the stock the better the price .I don't no long term whot will happen wombul pigs geese fowl sheep will be brought over seas gm fed no taist very soon the milk and eggs will be from france and that will be a nother bit gone . Long term fill the fields whith christmas trees and you will show a prophit .
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Its do-able but Plan carefuly and keep your costs down -
You may make more money out of fewer sheep spread thinner on the ground than more, and having to buy in food
The trick small scale is the same as the big boys - Maximise your useage of good grass. Rotate pasture, use the right mineral licks and minimise feed brought in - Grass grows free mostly, Its better to spent £25 an acre on clover seed to increase the quality of the grazing than it is to spend £25 on ewe nuts for a small flock for a week.
It will also last longer!
From 30 sheep managed well, lets say Mules put to an easy terminal sire, no reason why if you had 8-10 acres of average ground you should not make £1500 operating profit, selling butchers lambs - Ignoring the cost of starting the flock.
You could make more if you bred Pure beltex of texels etc....
Less if you feed them ewe nuts every week.
Maximise your grass quality and usage and you will save :)
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Ok this is our second year with a small increasing flock of hebrideans and we've managed to sell our meet to 2 local foody pubs who like to sell local produce and fingers crossed supplying a farm shop with meat in the near future. We've also managed to get a buyer for all the fleeces for a spinners and felting shop so it can be done. We should make enough to cover vets bills and feed. We are in the lucky position that we own the land and all set up costs are covered, so fingers crossed we should now make enough to cover the running costs but if your in this game to make a living forget it, cost neutral on a small scale is possible. Needles to say I have a full time paid job and my husbby does the small holding work full time now
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I just have the 5 pet sheep. But what could be more bracing than my walk to pet them and give them a breakfast treat.. a gale strng eough that one gust actually knocked me backwards, rain lashing horizontally, the stream a total torrent and the mud through the last gate suddenly ankle deep.
Yes the sheep all came for a morning pet but didn't want their concentrate once it got rained on, won't use the shelter i spent money and time building and don't appreciate quite how soaked through i was on the trip back.. or that the dogs need towelling dry and I'm sat here in skimpies while the rest hangs on radiators.
Good character building stuff! A bracing way to start the day - as i tell OH. Oh, and most of thir plastic feed bowls had got blown away. They don't like metal troughs - too cold on the muzzle in winter.
OH suggests I redecorate thier shelter, a few pictures on the walls and some scatter cushions to make it more inviting. She isn't really into country stuff.......
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The principle is the same for any size flock, keep the inputs down and maximise the outputs
minimise the inputs means grass /fodder only and minimum labour ---get a ewe that will look after itself and a lamb that will fatten off grass
Maximise outputs does not necessarily mean lots of lambs ----it means market what you have well
I run 1000 ewes but have a local lad that helps me sometimes ---he has 40 ewes and runs them on grass only, sells 80% of the lambs direct to customers and makes a profit . No hay costs, no vaccinations, no antibiotics, no wormers (clean grazing policy) very low labour (he costs his at £11/hr which is what he charges for labour elsewhere) Marketing done mostly by word of mouth
Keep it simple
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I think the secret to profit is to invest in a BREED that suits your location / facilities. Once you've agreed on what type of sheep suits your facility, then research your commercial outlets & refine your choice of breed from their.
I have bred the standard white faced texel x / cheviot type for over 12 years which was ok, but lambing always had it challenges. When we moved to a new farm I decided we should move into pedigrees. My highest priority was an easy lambing breed, but with commercial qualities.
So, I kept some of my best tex/beltex cross ewes and invested in a small starter flock of pedigree Bleu Du Maines. Ive crossed the BDM on the tex/beltex ewes, the offspring are SUPER, and as it is all the cross ewes have been gimmers, and I've not had to intervene once, so the BDM is a true easy lamb breed even over a big bulky gimmer. The cross lambs are certainty commercial, but eventually the ewe lambs will go back to a Beltex to provide a superior carcass lamb. Of course the pure breds are incredibly easy lambing, milky and exceptional good mothering. The pure lambs can be a bit soft, but our farm can easily adapt as we are lowland with big barns and very sheltered paddocks. it is working out quite well so far. After I have paid all my bills, I cant tell you how profitable it will be, but so far, my lambing percentages are running at 230% with 0% losses :)
I am linking to the most recent sale report, http://www.bleudumaine.co.uk/sales/sale-reports/ (http://www.bleudumaine.co.uk/sales/sale-reports/)
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I keep Hebrideans & mules and expect on 15 acres to Net £1k profit this year after all costs - including new gates and 100meters of fencing, without those capital costs - £1600.
I've purchased 5 lick buckets in total (£110) - 2 Tonnes of fodder beet (£50) and 25 bales of hay (£25 for all) Worming foot gear etc etc etc (£200).
I sold 32 lambs, with (6) hebrideans sold to butchers, getting about £4.20 avg deadweight (so about £80 a lamb) and mule x suffolks getting between £65-80 depending on quality and weight.
All fed off grass apart from fodderbeets provided ad lib during December and January. Only really eaten when their was snow on the ground.
Small flocks CAN and ARE profitable - just as everyone says - choose the right breed. You can still sell in the market and make a profit - just dont buy in food. If your land only supports 10 ewes without extra feed, then you will make more money off those 10, than if you had 15-20 and brought in food.
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This is going to sound a very naive question but..... How do you know how many sheep your land will support?
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experience and take alook at your neighbours....
On good grass my area locals can take 3-5 an acre depending on the size of the sheep breed.
Upland areas less - on the moors in yorkshire most seem to stock 1-2 an acre, mountains 1 an acre.
You can creep this up by rotating so say 10 on 1 acre for week or so then on another acre etc... and get your stocking rate on the whole farm to 1 ewe/acre more.
Best bet is to see what works.... My neghbours said Id get 60 on my 15 acres, But i dont use fertlizers and find 40-50 is about right, and possible 60 if they were all hebrideans.
If I kept all mules or Texels etc I would be able to keep 30-40 max.
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Yes I know you can make a profit from a small flock but not every year ,you need luck as well , if nothing dies or you have min vet bills and the prices which you can't control are good ( not that long ago I was selling cull ewes for a £5 note and lambs into a welfare scheme for £15 ) ( my neighbour sold mule gims in the late 90's for £120 next year £40 !! ) For a small flock costs are hard to cover a vet bill of £100 costs a flock of 30 £3.33 a ewe for me it would cost 8.9p
I think the secret to profit is to invest in a BREED that suits your location / facilities. Once you've agreed on what type of sheep suits your facility, then research your commercial outlets & refine your choice of breed from their.
I have bred the standard white faced texel x / cheviot type for over 12 years which was ok, but lambing always had it challenges. When we moved to a new farm I decided we should move into pedigrees. My highest priority was an easy lambing breed, but with commercial qualities.
So, I kept some of my best tex/beltex cross ewes and invested in a small starter flock of pedigree Bleu Du Maines. Ive crossed the BDM on the tex/beltex ewes, the offspring are SUPER, and as it is all the cross ewes have been gimmers, and I've not had to intervene once, so the BDM is a true easy lamb breed even over a big bulky gimmer. The cross lambs are certainty commercial, but eventually the ewe lambs will go back to a Beltex to provide a superior carcass lamb. Of course the pure breds are incredibly easy lambing, milky and exceptional good mothering. The pure lambs can be a bit soft, but our farm can easily adapt as we are lowland with big barns and very sheltered paddocks. it is working out quite well so far. After I have paid all my bills, I cant tell you how profitable it will be, but so far, my lambing percentages are running at 230% with 0% losses :)
I am linking to the most recent sale report, http://www.bleudumaine.co.uk/sales/sale-reports/ (http://www.bleudumaine.co.uk/sales/sale-reports/)
While I totally agree , not that easy ( in the mid 80's the BDM was said to be the new BFL and at kelso sales farmers fought over them and paid big money for 2yrs then you couldn't give them away ) local breeds have been bred for a reason , often trial and error to get it right
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This is really interesting reading - thank you all for being so up front and sharing from your experience.... very much helps on the 'reality testing' side of our dreams!!!!
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Coximus. Thank you! The example you have give is helpful as I have 15 acres and intend keeping Hebrideans.
Good advice, thanks.
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Glad my experience helps.
I hope this is useful too;
two 4 acre fields, almost identical - same aspect, soil etc, (They were one larger origionally but I split it).
Neither receives any fertilizer other than the sheeps own droppings and clover in the sward.
12 Hebs cannot eat the grass as fast as it grows in summer - and they can out winter on it all winter and come April their is still grass ahead of them - No supliment feeding unless its snow covered.
The same field can take 10 mules but they eat the grass faster than it grows and I need to take them out to another field after 6-8 weeks. In winter, they finish the grass by Mid Jan.
If I fertilized the fields I could up production by 30-40% however I intend to use Clover to up production by 20% instead, as I consider it more sustainable.
Hebs are lightweight and if you find buyers for the meat, they are good.
I have also found if you tell the market your taking them they let buyers know, so you actually get good prices for them :)
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bump
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Yes you can make a profit but you need to think outside of the box and be creative, get yourself organised and be prepared to put the hours in. Look long term not short term and expect the unexpected. As far as I'm concerned there is no such thing as an easycare sheep they all need looking after properly or it will bite you on the backside.