[Oly]

Morning,

Between us and our neighbour we have 3 to 4 acres of grass in rural South Cheshire. Given its mostly massive dairy farms around us we struggle to find someone to put their sheep on it or cut our hay... and last year we were let down,  meaning I spent 3 days on a mower in September and our neighbours the same this spring getting it off.

We've got this year covered (fingers crossed), but we're thinking about buying lambs around April 2019 to put straight on the grass to keep it down and sell them in the September, presumably straight to butcher. If all goes well we will continue to do this.

Our main question is how many lambs would we need? And can we buy that quantity at market (if a small number).

Other questions along breed (just thinking mules may be easiest), cost, likely slaughter/butcher price etc.

Hoping for low/easy maintenance. Presumably just sheep trailer and electric fencing needs to be bought.

All advice welcomed!

[twizzel]

Buying store lambs in April is a bit out of season really unless you find an early lambing Dorset breeder who has weaned by April. You could buy store hogs at market in April (last years lambs) but by the time you kill them in the autumn they will have cut their first adult teeth and lose considerable value as they aren’t considered lamb anymore. Sheep aren’t really low maintenance, they need checking once a day as a minimum, need pour on for fly strike prevention, somewhere to keep them overnight prior to slaughter to keep them clean dry and empty their stomachs. Mules aren’t really bred for their meat (more as a maternal sheep, to make breeding ewes), mule lambs tend to take longer to finish and don’t grade out as well as other meat bred lambs.

[shep53]

As twizzle says lambs in april are at their highest price and by the time you kill them they would have lost a lot of value same with year old hoggets . You could buy 5-10 old hill ewes with lambs at foot in april and then sell them all fat in the autumn .  You may need ear tags / pliers to replace any lost ones , some way or someone to clip the ewes  ,pour -on for ticks/blowfly , some way to handle /hold sheep .   While you may have no worms or fluke on your land at the moment it would be safer to dose any new sheep and keep off your grass for 24hrs .  You could also take the gamble and not give a clostridial vaccine .  Not mules !!    texel ,Suffolk , charolais , Hampshire this is the type of lamb you need to finish by the autumn

[bj_cardiff]

I'm very surprised your having problems letting out the land. Could you offer it as free grazing for sheep and get the owner to 'train you up' on sheep keeping in exchange? Then next year you could buy in some ewes with lambs at foot?

[firther]

buy some cade lambs, some years there are quite a lot around and for reasonable money too

[twizzel]

buy some cade lambs, some years there are quite a lot around and for reasonable money too

They are far from low management though and need special care for the first 8 weeks of their lives. Whilst they are cheap to buy the cost of milk powder makes them a very expensive way of rearing lambs and they never grow as well as normal lambs.

[firther]

i have to disagree there twizz, we reared some stunning cade lambs last year and one managed to get in with a tup and reared a lamb her self this time. agree on milk being expensive but its still cheaper than buying a 5 month old lamb for £80

[twizzel]

I’ve got a pet lamb in my flock now- she grew well and has reared 2 good single lambs for the last 2 years. But the triplet I lifted from her siblings this year was about 5kg lighter at 9 weeks than the other 2. Going to weigh again next week at 13 weeks and look at growth rates again. They will catch up given time but do have reduced growth rates. We used to rear 15 or so pet lambs every year but the cost of rearing them was prohibitive in the end. When you add up the cost of buying them, milk powder, creep feed, time, medication, losing the odd couple to bloat, I bet there’s not much change left from 50-60. So for 20-30 more you could get a better grown lamb that’s not had all the challenges that a pet lamb has had in the first few months of life.

[bj_cardiff]

i have to disagree there twizz, we reared some stunning cade lambs last year and one managed to get in with a tup and reared a lamb her self this time. agree on milk being expensive but its still cheaper than buying a 5 month old lamb for £80

I tend to keep my better cade ewe lambs in flock as they make moving and handling the flock easy. I think how good they will be depends on so many factors, how good the parents were, why they are cade lambs, if they had colostrum etc etc.

To buy them at a few days old they will be around £20, they will drink around £30 worth of milk powder, so they will cost you around £50 and a lot of time and you have no idea what they will turn out like! I'd much rather buy a really good 5 month old ewe lamb for £80!

[firther]

milks part of the problem, you watch a 4 week old lamb in the field it will take very little milk off the ewe in 1feed but feed more frequently, where as a cade lamb will be getting large amounts 3 or 4 times a day so they don't go nibbling grass like they should which then takes longer the for digestion system to develop,

remember the original poster is wanting to buy in spring and sell as fat in september, so your £80 lambs won'tmake much of a profit if any

[twizzel]

milks part of the problem, you watch a 4 week old lamb in the field it will take very little milk off the ewe in 1feed but feed more frequently, where as a cade lamb will be getting large amounts 3 or 4 times a day so they don't go nibbling grass like they should which then takes longer the for digestion system to develop,

remember the original poster is wanting to buy in spring and sell as fat in september, so your £80 lambs won'tmake much of a profit if any

Agree, I don't think any short keep lambs would be worth buying if they need to be gone by September, and long keep lambs would probably need the winter to slowly grow and then be sold in the new year. What about buying some smart, maternal bred ewe hogs, running them on for 6 months, shearing them and then selling as shearlings for breeding in the Autumn 

[shep53]

Mule ewe hoggs ave £130  last weeks sale

[firther]

Mule ewe hoggs ave £130  last weeks sale

yep an as you know shep you could easily end up selling them for £120 as shearlings, no guarantee with sheep or livestock in general for that matter, that's why for someone starting out I suggested cade lambs. At least they will be tame for handling etc

[twizzel]

Pet lambs come with their own risks though, as does buying hogs and selling as shearlings. I think the time of year and here is the problem and the amount of time between buying and selling is quite small really.

[firther]

maybe there best sticking to pigs then or buy some sheep off me