The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: lou13 on March 08, 2014, 01:35:38 pm
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As a side venture I was wondering about raising about 15 cade lambs. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on being able to actually make a profit on this. I was planning on rearing them inside and then possibly selling as weaned lambs (they wont be outside as i need the grass for the rest of my flock.) I was thinking of getting a shepherdess lamb feeder rather than bottle feeding. Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
lou13
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You may as well be throwing tenners out of your window, cade lambs = loss.
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unless you get them free or cheap then sell them asap for a good price - still on the bottle.
rearing them inside will mean they eat their heads off, raising them on good grass would be more economical.
are you selling at finishing or weaning?
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Cade lambs come with a lot of unknowns, like the health status of the flock, whether the ewes have been vaccinated and fed correctly, how much colostrum they received immediately after birth and so on. If you can get a few robust lambs from a farmer you know that can answer these questions satisfactorily then it might be worth having a try to see how it goes and whether you can make a profit. A Shepherdess feeder is pretty expensive - Fearing do a good selection of multiple suckling buckets for lambs which would cut down on the endless sterilising and filling of individual bottles - the buckets hook over a hurdle so, once the lambs got the idea, you could just put in the bucket and go rather than hang around holding bottles.
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You may as well be throwing tenners out of your window, cade lambs = loss.
Not necessarily.
I'm doing pretty much the same as you want to do, with 18 in at the moment. I rear them on a shepherdess until about 3-4 weeks old, then onto bottles for the last couple of weeks before weaning abruptly at 6 weeks. It costs us roughly £60 to buy, feed, kill and cut each lamb, and sell to friends and family. So if you're planning on just taking them to weaning, I can't see you making much profit if any. Last year we lost a couple fairly late on for different reasons so bought some 3 mth old stores for £50 each.
They aren't easy and do take up a lot of time, they will drop dead with no notice, a lot of people won't want to buy tame lambs as they can be a bit of a nightmare.
Once they've come off the milk they need to go out really, they need to get out and learn to be lambs and not so dependent on you. My oldest group are 5 weeks and are starting to be a bit of a nightmare at feed times. So no, if you're thinking of selling at weaning, don't bother.