[Kevee]

Hello,

I would like to introduce myself and ask for some pointers if I may. We have purchased some land for a smallholding and built a house on some of it, luckily I can work from home the majority of the time.

We were thinking of pig ownership and\or sheep (I will also post in the pig forum so maybe see some of you over there too), we have horses so do not think we would have suitable space for bigger livestock.

I stumbled across this site and started reading the sections on sheep. However I am struggling with finding someone to sheer the sheep and who to sell wool too as well as a local abattoir that would help me, the ones I have contacted are only interested in commercial contracts dealing with higher volumes. We are based in Norfolk. Is anyone else based in this area that has some contacts?

Any advice you can give would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Fleecewife]

Hi Kevin
Are you fit and strong? Shearing your own sheep is both easy and free.  The Wool Marketing Board and some Agricultural colleges run sheep shearing courses or if you are up for a challenge you can teach yourself by watching the pros at the RNS or on You tube clips. Shearers tend not to want to travel and set up for just a few animals so will have to charge accordingly.  We have about 30 sheep nowadays and my husband shears them with hand shears, a few at a time (being ancient and decrepit now) and out in the field, so instead of a mad and noisy affair, shearing is calm and quiet for our flock and the lambs don't lose their mums. You can buy battery powered electric shears if you wish.


How to find a purchaser for your clip is an endless story.  If you have more than a few sheep you are supposed to sell to the Wool Board, but at current market values it can almost seem that you are paying them to take it.  Depending on your breed and the quality of your fleeces, you may be able to sell to craft workers such as hand spinners and felters. When I first knew about buying fleeces, you would expect to pay about £5 for a good one, in the 1970's.  Today?  Perhaps as much as twice that for a good  quality fleece, but you could aim higher at perhaps £40-50 for a top end product.  Before you get carried away, it would take a while to learn enough to produce a fleece to that standard and then a whole lot of effort to find someone prepared to pay that much.  Many spinners seem to still expect to pay the price of 50 years ago.
The thing to do is to learn about fleece, what makes a 'good' spinner's fleece, what are the pitfalls, where are the markets and how to make a name for yourself.  The last question would include learning to work with wool yourself so you can walk the walk and talk the talk, enter fleece and handicrafts competitions and routinely WIN them and then start offering your fleeces for sale.
An alternative would be to discover a niche market for yourself, the holy grail 
What I'm trying to say is, you might be better with pigs    if you want to make a profit.


For an abattoir in Norfolk, has the main one closed?  I can't remember if it was in Attleborough or Norwich but I do remember taking my brother's sheep there when he couldn't be bothered  . At other slaughterhouses, there is often one day when they are happy to take in small groups.  The way to find out is from other smallholders rather than contacting the slaughterhouses direct.

[SallyintNorth]

As you haven't chosen your sheep yet, have a look for your local Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers, or other handspinning groups, and ask them what fleeces they'd like!  Norfolk Horn is your local rare breed, fab sheep and one of my absolute favourite fleeces.

Or you could look into Wiltshire Horns, they self-shed and save you the bother of shearing and finding an outlet for your fleeces.  It should be warm and dry enough for them where you are.

[Richmond]

I live in North Norfolk - near Holt. We keep sheep, pigs and a variety of poultry . Our sheep are shedders - ie require no shearing - Wiltshire Horns and Soays. However I know of shearers who do small numbers of sheep in this area.
Abattoir-wise there is a very small abattoir at Wells (Arthur Howell) which only caters for smallholders due to limited access, and a large one just outside of Norwich (Blakes). The abattoir near Kings Lynn closed last year??? or maybe before that.
Also why not join the Norfolk Smallholders Training Group? Lots of info on the website. If you are interested in crafting, spinning etc we offer courses for those and much more. If you have not kept livestock before I would recommend the beginners courses for pig and sheep keeping.

[Penninehillbilly]

With sheep on a small scale of seems the main problem is shearing.
So you could go 2 routes, a quality fleeced sheep which would make it worthwhile learning to sheari properly, or an Easycare/similar breed.
Most of my ewes (14) seem to shed off their throats to bellies, I cannot turn sheep, so I hand shear them tied to a gate. Some will shed completely. Last year I bought an 'Easycare' tup, hoping in future there will be less to shear. He had completely shed his fleece by end of April.
A bit of patience you can shear them yourself 

[SallyintNorth]

.

What I'm trying to say is, you might be better with pigs    if you want to make a profit.

Sorry to disagree, but it's been very hard to make money out of pigs for a long time, the restrictions on feeding other than bought feeds make it impossible for many to do other than buy their feed, and feed prices have rocketed up even more recently.

Having done both, I'd say do pigs to produce amazing meat for yourselves and expect to do a lot of work to get a contribution to the costs by selling surplus meat.  Similar with sheep really, use sheep as part of your land management, get amazing meat for yourselves, and get a good contribution to costs by producing nice fleeces and fabulous meat - but again, all a lot of hard work to get the contribution to costs by selling the spare produce. 

Another option I've not tried myself but might work would be some sort of CSA, get people to pay into a co-operative and do some of the work to produce the meat, fleece and sheepskins, which is then shared.  Cue other members jumping on to tell horror stories about doing this and being left with all the work / constant arguments about ethics / yadayada! 

[BenBhoy]

Easycares or exlana?

[Backinwellies]

Firsly neither sheep nor pigs will net you a profit .... what they will do is supply you with fab meat and give you some left over to sell .... initially friends and relations are happy to buy from you but by the third year you need to have a bigger outlet as family are by then back to buying from supermarket! ( I hope you have room for 3 freezers!)

Sheep can cost a lot in vet meds .... vaccine, fly strike, foot treatments, wormer and fluke  all add up ... especially as most things cant be bought in small amounts.   You need to be able to manage grass ... ie be able to top it at a minimum.... sheep dont like long grass ... and grass  like lawns grows better when trimmed.

Pigs cost are feed costs which have sky rocketed with the grain price .....  no you cant feed anything which has been in your kitchen ... even outer cabbage leaves must be removed before going indoors if you want to feed them to stock.

Both need ear tagging

Everyone will tell you to start with 2-3 males ( weaners or wether lambs)....  rear them and learn on them .... they go to the abattoir and you decide whether you want to continue ..... dont start with breeding females ...