#Running sheep kicks man in barn full

If youвЂ™re wondering what to feed sheep, sheep eat most anything that will grow (even houseplants if given the opportunity). I donвЂ™t worry about my family getting squashed by sheep either, there is the occasional stomping and bumping, but on a whole, they are pretty safe to work with. A light alley of chicken wire, duct tape, and baler twine will corral sheep and allow you to work them. On top of that, a 1 x 4 board will control sheep. At 3:00 a.m., and she isnвЂ™t wanting to mother or watch her babies, being able to carry her into the barn and jug her is a true luxury. With a sheep, I can grab her and pretty much manhandle the olвЂ™ hide in any way I need to. If I have to move an obstinate cow, I have to go back to the ranch and get a horse saddled (or a bike) go back to the cow and get my job done. There are some other advantages to switching from cattle farmingВ to raising sheep for profit as well. ItвЂ™s the same with sheep: If youвЂ™re going to watch any of them for problems and wrecks, you might as well watch them all. If you are going to calve 10 heifers you might as well calve out 200.

I figure that lambing a flock of sheep is like calving a herd of heifers: It doesnвЂ™t matter how many you have, you have to put in the same amount of time. ItвЂ™s only a couple months out of the year, so it is tolerable вЂ“ for the rest of the year, the sheep are pretty self-sufficient. When youвЂ™re raising sheep for profit, lambing is very labor intensive. If I werenвЂ™t ranching, IвЂ™d probably be a multi-billionaire, so I try not to run my numbers around opportunity costs and the like because it depresses me a little.

#Running sheep kicks man in barn full

We ranch full time and have no вЂњoff-farmвЂќ incomes. Labor is a bit difficult to figure on our operation. ThatвЂ™s $2,100 a year, not a bad little wage increase for going from a big critter to a little critter. For a sheep this is down to $1.50 a year per head, multiplied by 6, and is a savings of $6 an animal unit. We figure about $15 a year in a cow, this covers worming, vaccines, ear tags, salt and that sort of thing. Vet costs are a large difference as well. There are trucking, check-off fees (pay that with a smile), yardage, and shrink costs to figure out too, but those are pretty much the same per species. If I lose a sheep, itвЂ™s about a $100 loss. Of course on the dark side, if I lose a cow, I am out $1,200. That is a pretty big difference right off the wagon. That comes out to $1,000 per animal unit for sheep and $500 an AU for cattle. Those six sheep should bring in 10 lambs, which sell at $100 apiece. That cow should average $500 a year income. ThatвЂ™s an average, but about what we run. So six sheep should bring in 10 lambs, and one cow brings in one calf. Currently, one cow should bring in one calf, and one ewe should bring in 1.6 lambs. It flexes with grass/forb ratios, terrain, and grazing management, but it is pretty close.Д¬urrently cattle prices are very high, as are sheep prices, but with the border closure who knows what the market will do? My numbers are going to be somewhat lower than current sale prices, but I am a bit of a pessimist. This is an average for our place and seems to be fairly accurate. For our purposes we use six sheep to the cow. There is some discrepancy between government agencies, textbooks and sheepmen (sheeppersons?) about how many sheep equal an AU (animal unit 1,000-pound cow with 500-pound calf at her side). To get any true working numbers you have to compare apples to apples. This included cost of production, expenses, labor costs of sheep against cattle, and profit margins. Doing the Math on Costs of Raising Sheep for ProfitДЄt my wifeвЂ™s encouragement (and threats) I sat down with pencil and calculator and started to figure the difference betwixt raising sheep for profit and raising cattle for beef. That put us up to 43 sheep, the cows, and the farming. Well, she kept three of the bums as replacement lambs and then bought a trailer load of sheep. So we converted the old hog barn into a lamb barn: Eight jugs, a nice dry pen, clean and out of the wind. This was when my better half decided we should have a lamb barn. In a storm, lambs can fit through a doggie door. We came home on the 4th of July and found the lambs in the house grazing contently on the plants. Well, that didnвЂ™t last long as lambs grow rapidly and turn into sheep. They were cute as little buttons, bouncy, friendly and just plain lovable. We were farming about 2,500 acres, running around 350 cows and had these tiny little adorable creatures. A few years ago my wife started us raising sheep for profit with eight bum lambs.