[heyhay1984]

I am trying to work out the maintenance cost of a non-breeding, 'normal' (ie not primitive or long-wool) sheep over the course of a year. I am assuming I am:

heptavac-ing annually at £1 per dose

worming twice per year at about £1 annually (though in reality am embarking on an FEC programme),

feeding hay for three moths of the year, so about 10 bales per sheep costing about £40 (again worst-case scenario)

and a handful of bucket food per day in order to gather so say 50p a week all year so about £25

shearing £5 per sheep using my small flock guy

flystrike prevention at about £1 per sheep

Which is £73 so say £75 annually per sheep as a worst case costing? What have I missed? I know I haven't put a vet bill float in there- should I? I should say long and complicated story as to why I'm costing this and it's a totally separate enterprise to my little Ronnie brigade!

[Tim W]

Public liability insurance
Labour
Grass keep/rent
Diesel/machinery?
dead disposal
Water?

[SallyintNorth]

Hay use seems high.  I'd feed 20 sheep a bale a day, so 10 bales would feed a single sheep for 200 days.  You do get proportionately more wastage with smaller numbers, but not more than double.

You also don't need to give feed every day all year round.  And a non-working wether may well not need so much in the way of meds.

Depending on breed, location, weather / climate and how often you'll see them, you may find you don't need flystrike prevention after the first year - many farmers in the north of England routinely treat lambs only and rarely get any problems with ewes.

Also depending on breed, if he has a nice fleece (which with all that care lavished upon him, he jolly well should do ), you may be able to sell his fleece for handspinning or other crafting, so you may be able to recover that fiver for shearing, or even a bit more.

All of which said...  maybe add a spray or two of the magic blue spray.  And, if yours is a fluke area, a flukicide dose or two.

[heyhay1984]

Good points Tim- without going into too much detail this little project would be an unexpected offshoot of our school farm so insurance and labour are covered, as is the rent. However they are major considerations for anyone searching this sort of thread in future ( future searchers!) so well worth discussing.

Dead costs is a good point- £18 a go round here! These are ageing sheep so definitely likely to be required in future. So maybe add on £150 for a group of 10 to cover two deadstock visits and one (hopefully successful) vet intervention a year, maybe?

This does make you wonder how anybody makes any money keeping sheep, of course 

[heyhay1984]

And thanks Sally- good points. I'll scale back the hay in my costings. I'm also hoping not to pay £4 a bale next winter but being in a new area I went with the first reliable supply of decent hay I found! I haven't kept very good records of how much hay the Ronnies had this year as I just chucked a few extra slabs out when I put the horse's in the field- I must be more organised in that regard next year.

Good point about the fleeces though I'm not up on how well commercial sheep fleeces come out but as you say they should be the best they can be if they aren't doing much else with their nutrients!

I'm not sure of the gender make-up of the group at the moment (it's an existing small (pet) flock in need of someone taking them on, and there's a benefit for me and the students if we end up doing it) so I'll probably leave the medication side as is and reassess as we go along as I guess it'll even itself out. It's a totally different prospect to our hoggett/pedigree breeding/fleece enterprise but it's all good learning for the kids isn't it 

[SallyintNorth]

This does make you wonder how anybody makes any money keeping sheep, of course 

Err...  most people don't keep ageing wethers and expect to make a profit.  They either produce 1.5 to 2 lambs per ewe, or buy animals to grow on and sell to a finisher or as finished, or as breeding ewes, within 12 months.

On your deadcart costs, if there are 10 wethers and, given their age, you'd expect them to all have died in, say, 4 years, then there would be 10/4 deadcart visits per annum.  If that's the right guess for how long they might go on, the average annual bill would be £45. 

On vet visits, it depends on what the protocol would be.  If an animal ails, it gets the vet, then it's likely that at least half of them will see the vet at least once, as we're expecting them all to die, even if of old age, in the time period.  But if the protocol would be only vet if appears to be treatable illness, then maybe less.

In general, sadly, the outcome of most veterinary visits to sheep is not good.  Partly because the sheep don't show a problem until it's serious.  So you probably get to pay the dead cart as well as the vet at least half the time.

[SallyintNorth]

Don't assume a commercial fleece won't be nice to spin.  Some of my ex's commercials had wonderful spinning fleeces, much sought after, which sold for £10-£15 apiece.  You may well find that one or two of the boys have nice fleeces.

[heyhay1984]

I think I will have to discuss the vet protocol with the owner- as it's a collection of pets I reckon the expectation will be that the vet comes out as often as required-but then it would make sense for me to specifically exclude vet bills from my costings I guess  and leave that to the owner. Though I'm hoping that a mix of good husbandry and "natural causes" will keep that to a minimum anyway, especially as there won't be any lambs or lambing to contend with in this group.

Thanks again for the discussion- all input much appreciated!

[farmers wife]

In Wales they produce a yearly booklet based on low, mid, high land sheep within that there are costings broken down for commercial flocks. Binned it but sure its in the net somewhere.


I would say its numbers as margins are so tight even going into minus figures. With small margins you need higher numbers.  Keeping a small flock is never efficient as its the same overheads but you recover back better returns on keeping a larger number.


Labour costs are extremely high there is a lot of messing with sheep compared with cattle.


This reverts back to keeping the right breed with low inputs.


Sheep farmers are usually not the most profitable I question how you can make a living without subsidy on just sheep (in small numbers) It wont keep the family for def.  Taking lambs to market £55 - £70.  Culls can be more.   Same cost as filling up the car with fuel once a week. Its poor. 

[Black Sheep]

Not sure how critical the costings are but worth bearing in mind minimum order effects - so for example you may have to buy a whole bottle of vaccine even if you can only use half of it which would double the cost per sheep for you. Not everything can be worked out at marginal cost.

I assume you already have any capital items you would need, e.g. troughs, hay racks, foot shears, feed storage, etc.

[heyhay1984]

That's one of the side benefits of taking this group on (if we do), I have 'half a bottle' sized flock at the moment and this extra group will make it 'full bottle' so kind of mitigate some of the costs with our productive flock- like you say at the minute it's either faff about sharing or getting small doses from the vets, or wasting stuff!

Just trying to work out what to tell the owner they would need to pay to cover the costs of their sheep if we were to fully take on their care for them (sadly the owner has no previous figures to go on, that would have been too easy!) but I think with the guidance from you guys I have got a figure sorted now

[Tim W]

http://beefandlamb.ahdb.org.uk/returns/stocktake/

Yu can download the AHDB stocktake report here^^^

It will give you an idea of average costs etc on a commercial basis, sobering reading if you are contemplating the end/drastic change to landowners dole in the next few years

[Marches Farmer]

Would it be possible to ring fence the veterinary bills and get them funded by the owner?  They're the most unpredictable cost and you can't rely on the old sheep dying neatly in the field overnight without any fuss. 

[landroverroy]

Presumably you're keeping these "pet" sheep for someone.
So I personally would charge a set fee as with full livery for horses.
So - so much for grazing in summer, so much for hay in winter, and extra for all other costs - shearing, vaccinations, vet etc as they arise.   

[heyhay1984]

Could well do that, I'm not sure how reliable they will be though unfortunately!

I daren't look at the stock take values! God bless my Ronnies that would rather eat hawthorn buds than any grass-based diet at the moment ??