Why is it so difficult to raise sheep?

This was the first question posed to me after my speaking engagement with Farm Service Agency personnel in Kansas City on July 15.  It was after the fact because it wasn’t pertinent to my purpose of being there and we had a limited time frame.  Too bad on that, great group of people who truly seemed interested in the ‘boots on the ground’ aspect of farming and ranching.

Now, if you raise sheep and it is not difficult for you, then that is great.  But my take on it is that they are far too time-consuming for my lifestyle choices and from a cost effective viewpoint.  So bear with me.  You can tell your story in your blog and I would like to read it!

Taking the emotion out and just putting economics to it:

Right now, the biggest economic advantage that sheep have over cattle or even goats, is the initial purchase price.  Consider that a young bred cow costs $2500-$2800 compared to 5 bred ewes costing a total of $900-$1125.  A cow will produce one calf ready to sell in about 10 months.  Five ewes can potentially have 10 lambs to sell, but realistically, more like 7 lambs and they can be sold at about 7 months.  Now, bearing in mind, that calves and lambs can be sold earlier or later, weaned and unweaned, etc, etc.  So, I will try to compare the two the most fairly as possible, but market and weather conditions can often dictate a different scenario.

A 10 month old steer calf with no creep and unweaned, on average comes off momma at about 450 lbs, a heifer maybe 400 lbs.  The steer, at auction at today’s prices, will bring $280/cwt or $1260 per head.  The heifer about $1008 per head.  Since the calf crop is typically 50% steers and 50% heifers, the average will be $1134.

A 50 lb lamb will bring about $1.75/lb and there is no differentiation between wethers and ewes.  The average then would be $87.50/head.  Better lambs should weigh 80 lbs at seven months, resulting in $980 total – but most likely, not all seven head will do that well.

SO:

Seven lambs to sell per year – $612.50-$980

One calf to sell per year – $1134

Costs:

Labor – significantly more with sheep.  They need nearly daily inspection since they tend towards getting caught in brush, fences, ditches, whatever, and need extracting.  If not found at least in 24 hours, they will die.  Even grown ewes can fall prey, resulting in not only the death of the ewe, but her unborn lambs or orphaning the ones she may already have.  This means more work for you if you can figure out which ones are hers.  You get to be mom for however long you keep them, including feeding them multiple times per day.  The best investment for that task for me is a lamb milk bar with seven nipples.

Infrastructure (fence, water) – unless you are willing to install permanent type woven wire paddock fencing (very expensive), then the next choice is flexible fencing with electrified netting.  Cost effective to purchase, but time consuming.

Consider:  100 ewes and their lambs will consume about 3% of their body weight (similar to cows), so assuming ewes weighing 180 lbs times 3% equals about 6 lbs of grass per day or 600 for the entire flock.  If your pasture offers 200 lbs of forage per inch of growth and you have 7 inches of growth and want to leave a 3 inch residual (to facilitate regrowth), then there is 4 inches times 200 lbs or 800 lbs forage on offer.  Say you only want to move them every three days, then they should have at least 3 acres.  To fence 3 acres in a square takes 1450 feet.  Electric nettings are 164 feet long, so you are moving 9 nettings every three days.  Don’t be fooled by the advertising that touts that it only takes 10 minutes per net.  No way.  I’m pretty darn fast at it now, but by the time, you pull the posts, fanfold them, roll them up, tie them, walk to the next location (or load them all up and drive them to the new location), unload (but first you have to untangle them from each other if you stacked them), walk them back out, then step them into the ground (if it’s not frozen or the ground isn’t hard that is).  So, for each netting, taken down and reinstalled, you’ve logged at least 656 feet, not counting if you’ve had to pack it a long distance before setting up again.  I’m going to give a general 20 minutes per net.  This doesn’t really allow much for when you have to hammer the feet of the posts into the ground or unhooking from snags, removing sticks, and just general untangling.

Nine nets times 20 minutes is 3 hours!  that’s every three days for only 100 sheep!  Compare the equivalent of cows and calves moving everything three days – about 30 minutes and that’s if you have to find baby calves that were left behind. The difference becomes even more significant when one considers that i can shift 250 cows and calves in maybe 45 minutes.  These times are taking into consideration strip grazing in winter and taking out hay as well as the easier moves in the spring, summer, and fall.  However, ramping up the number of sheep would incur significantly more netting and thus considerable more time.  A single strand semi-permanent hi-tensile electrified wire is cheap and easy to install and wiill easily contain cattle and once the fencing is installed, it requires very little time to shift mobs of 1000 or more!  Interior paddock division fencing that will actually contain sheep is definitely doable, but is considerably more expensive in materials and labor to install and maintain.

So to compare on a larger scale with 5 ewes equalling 1 cow.

250 cows with 80% calf crop – $226,800 income per year.  Shifting every three days or 122 times per year at 45 minutes each for a total of 91.5 hours per year.

1250 sheep with 140% lamb crop – $183,750 (60 lbs times $1.75/lb).  Shifting every three days or 122 times per year (this is used for comparison only – realistically, winter time will require set stocking and unrolling hay.  The netting spikes cannot be pushed into and pulled out of frozen ground).  If 100 ewes needed three acres, then 1250 need 38 acres.  Perimeter at 5146 ft divided by 164 ft is 32 nets times 20 minutes per net equals 10.7 hours per move times 122 shifts.  Hours spent annual moving fence and/or taking out hay is 1305 hours.

If you have better forage and soil health, paddock sizes could be much smaller, thereby reducing the amount of acreage needed for each shift which would subsequently require less netting.

Other considerations:

Sheep in north Missouri must have good fences and excellent guard animals to keep them alive.  Coyotes, foxes, eagles, dogs, etc nab them with abandon to feed their young.  Sheep also have accidents – but so do cattle – but sheep seem to have a better knack for it.

The death of a sheep is a far less loss of investment than a calf or cow.

Sheep and cattle facilities are different, but if planned in advance there is a good opportunity to use the same corrals.

Some people do get along without netting.  From visiting with them, they raise hair sheep and/or use aluminum electric wire which delivers a more powerful shock than hi-tensile.  Wool sheep often cannot feel the shock at all, especially when in full wool.

Wool sheep are not ideal for range grazing since the wool clip can be practically ruint if they find a patch of cockleburrs or other clinging seeds.

Though i did not consider it in my time allotment, sheep, ideally, need checking everyday – that fence can be blown over or something chase the sheep into the fence and they get caught up or they flatten it.  Rain and flood can knock it over, too.  Animals can be caught up in it that need rescuing or they die and the rest will all get out and scatter!  If you have 1000 acres and 2 sheep, in five minutes they’ll be at the far corners and separated.  When the Scriptures talk about sheep going astray – there is the proof of it!

In my case, i have a 35 minute drive to my farm.  Sheep are not practical at all if they are so far away that they cannot be checked on easily.  With cattle, unless during calving season or unseasonably hot or cold weather, they don’t need attention anymore than once every three days or so.  This greatly reduces my time spent on the road.

Sheep can be used to better clear brush and prepare pastures for renovation and improvement as long as their grazing is strictly controlled.  Sheep get out a lot!  Perhaps not out of the perimeter fence, but they, like all livestock, must stay within their alloted grazing or they’ll destroy a pasture.  If you have beautiful, level pastures with no ditches, draws, dips, or washouts, yet shade in nearly all paddocks (sheep sunburn and get very hot in the summer), you may have an ideal situation for raising sheep.

The biggest advantage sheep have over cattle at least in today’s marketplace is the initial investment.  And it is substantial. Taking our above example:

250 bred cow purchase@ $2500 is $625,000   (Requires 6 bulls for breeding – $5000 each or $30,000)

1250 bred ewes purchase $281,250 (Requires 25 rams for breeding – $500 each or $12,500)

However, nets cost $120 each and used regularly MIGHT last 2 years.  And as shown the labor is much greater.

So there are advantages and disadvantages.  To me, the market dictates raising cattle, because of the reduced cost of infrastructure and reduced labor.  However, if one had 1250 ewes, in my opinion, the infrasture needs to be in place to eliminate the labor of netting.  This is lots of posts and woven wire.

So, this all begs the question, ‘why did i purchase sheep in the first place?’  To be sure, my plan was that the sheep would basically live with and graze with the cattle and shift with them.  However, this never came about since they would not be contained by the 3 wire hi-tensile electrified fencing I installed for this purpose.  They learnt to jump through the two top wires, so that even though the wires were ‘hot’ the sheep were not shocked since they weren’t touching the ground as they jumped through.  I don’t know if they learnt this by accident or watched the dogs do it.  Plus any dip in the ground would provide a large hole for them to duck under.  It honestly, is impossible, from a practical standpoint to make them stay within the enclosure.  So, until i started containing them with the electric netting, they became regular fodder for predators despite guard dogs simply because they scatter like, –well, sheep.  From then on, i have two groups of animals to shift, with the sheep requiring far too much time for what they were worth.

So, the sheep will be sold over the next couple of months to free up time for family matters, to improve my sanity, and give my poor old bones a needed rest.

PS:

There are other major expenses involved to have such a scheme.  Not the least of which is needing about 1000 acres, which at current prices in north central Missouri is about $2800 to $3400 per acre. (IF you can find it for sale) Some people are very fortunate to find pasture to rent, but consider whether or not you’d want to make $150 per acre in infrastructure on someone else’s property.  You’d need a lifetime lease to justify that and they can still sell the land and you’d be out.  Plus the owner may not be agreeable to crisscrossing his or her property with fencing.  Remember, too, the animals have health issues including treating for disease (albeit very seldom), vaccinations, castrating, as well as marketing and trucking expenses.

Yesterday was prime example. After the flash flood of early morning, I spent an hour and a half untangling and untwisting 30 feet of netting and resetting the remainder of the 164 foot net. The 30 feet had been sucked down the creek and twisted incredibly tight about itself.

Sheep are Corralled Once again!

This article had been written back in the winter, but could be said for today and many other days as well. Today i found a dead ewe and a dead lamb wrapped up in the electrified netting.  Why can’t they stay out of it!  Sheep were out, but corralled AGAIN.  This is just a regular problem.  Half of the sheep are scheduled for sale at Kirksville Livestock Market on August 3rd.  The rest will go when lambs are old enough to wean.

Those little woolly buggers!  They busted out for freedom, but freedom for sheep generally means something will go wrong and some of them will die.  Sheep must be kept in close and protected ALL the time.  Since I cannot be there as a full time shepherd,  I rely on guard dogs and electric sheep netting.  Together, those work about 95% of the time.

Alas, they did bust out at a bad time – the ground was extremely frozen and there was no way to replace the fence, so they ran amok on 320 acres.  During their freedom, one orphaned lamb was nabbed by a coyote and a young bred ewe had fallen into a muddy ditch and couldn’t get out – both died of course.

However, today I managed to reset ten nets to give them about 10 acres plus 8 big bales of hay – this should hold them for quite some time.  The ground along the ditch bank and out of the sun was still frozen, so I had to use the hammer on about 75 posts to drive them in!  Nevertheless, the sheep are now safe once again, so it was all worth the effort.

Stuck Ewes

Yesterday, I found two ewes and a young lamb stuck in the muddy ditch.  Of course, I had not worn my mud boots, so my short work shoes would suffice, though I was up to my shins in sticky clay.  They were a bit of a challenge to remove leg by leg out of the muck, but with their cooperation and effort, I made fairly short work of it.

Today, I drove up with the specific purpose of walking the ditches in case more had found themselves engulfed in mud, but none were thankfully.  However, the storm moved in and i was completely soaked from the thunderstorm.  Additionally, I counted seven live newborn lambs as well as two ewes were beginning to go into labor.

We have missed the worst of these passing storms, however, and for that we are grateful.

Stay safe!

tauna

Warming Up!

Wow, it is amazing how warm weather can energise a person into working and really enjoying it!

Monday morning started off a bit rough though since it had been quite cold the night before and my early morning check of the lambing situation found 5 dead (cold) but 7 thriving.  At this point, I’m beginning to think there is a vast difference in mothering ability of these ewes.   However, all get a pass until the weather stays warm.  With warmer weather this afternoon, the ground is thawing on top, so it’s very slick to have a pickup out in the pasture, so after nearly getting stuck in an area I had pulled into to load some gates, I decided to drop them off at their new location just inside the gate and later I would drag them down to the water tank with my Gator.  Additionally, in the afternoon, Dallas and I moved the cows and calves a half mile to fresh pasture.  A little bit of green showing, but mostly they are picking at old stockpile which will serve them fine as long as the weather is not stressful.

Apparently, through the excitement of moving the cows, the guard dogs flattened the electrified netting that held in the sheep and unfortunately, once we returned, all but 5 nursing ewes had escaped.  That’s the way it goes, of course, since I was planning to move them down the road the next day up to the corral.  However, too late for that, so we spent the next two hours  pushing the ewes more than quarter mile through two paddocks and across a ditch with deep running water.  I was so proud of them actually ploughing through that water!  Sheep can really be stubborn about getting their feet wet.  I was calling the sheep to follow and Dallas was pushing and so the little lambs that couldn’t cross, he grabbed and threw them across to their mums.

Once over the ditch and through the gate, the key was to give them access to the hay pile so they would be occupied while iIset up seven nettings quickly before they escaped the area. Meanwhile, Dallas went back around to shut the gates behind the cattle (two had come back because they forgot to take their calves with them!!!  aaargh!), so all were together, then he continued on through to Cord Road to drive all the way around the square mile by gravel road.  I then sent him down to gather the 5 ewes plus lambs into the corner by Morris Chapel cemetery and install a netting around behind them.  That way they would be safe until we could move them next morning to be with the rest of the flock.  It was pretty much dark by this time.

We had noticed hours earlier a ewe having difficulty with giving birth, so when Dallas came back, we walked through the flock with the torch and found her.  I walked her over to the hay bales, grabbed her hind leg while she was distracted by eating and flipped her over.  The first lamb was fairly easy to pull out, so it was a mystery why she was having trouble.  So, i reached inside her and way, deep inside was another lamb.  It came out easily, too, so not sure why she was having trouble.  Nevertheless, I laid them around to her head, but she would have nothing to do with them; not a good sign.  I let her up and she just walked away, lambs baaing and wet.  Stupid ewe.  Dallas and I tried to push her back towards the lambs, but she would have nothing of it, so we caught her and walked/dragged her to the corral.  I packed the two lambs up to her and we tried for half an hour to get those lambs to nurse, but the ewe didn’t want them and they didn’t want her.

Both Dallas and I were tired and hungry by now (about 9:30pm), so we headed home and 35 minutes later we were back and fixing a light supper.  While it was warming, I went out and fed my five bottle lambs, back in for supper, then, taking a big box, I drove back up to see if a miraculous love fest was happening.  Nope, not at all.  I left her shut in the corral, grabbed the lambs and brought them home for feeding.  At midnight I finally got a shower and headed to bed.

They were very unhappy lambs and cried nearly all night in the basement.  But by morning after multiple feedings, they were strong.

Sheep Shearing

May 8, 2014

I helped my mother with her sheep not too long ago. I worked alongside Christian, Mom’s hired hand. Jim Schaefer, the sheep shearer, and mom herself. Before we could start shearing of we needed to get them in the prepared place. Mom had long since mustered the sheep into the corral when Dad, Nathan, and I arrived, so we helped herd them across the road into the hay barn that was open to the south, for which were thankful later during shearing because it let in a nice cool breeze the whole two days we sheared.

Before we got the sheep lined up, Jim had to set up his equipment and Mom had set up a sort of makeshift corral in order to separate the white sheep from the black because we put the respective colored fleeces in their own bags for sale. I would arrive later with the back up generator and a barrel to throw the poopy wool into and by the time I had arrived, Jim had sheared half bags worth of sheep’s wool. Christian’s job had been to stuff the fleeces into the bag, but I took over his job and he bounced back and forth to help Mom and me. (Mom was sorting and keeping the sheep lined up in the race for shearing.) what my job entailed was waiting for Jim to shear off the belly wool and I’d throw it onto a special pile for the belly wool (the black belly wool wasn’t sorted as such; it sells along with the good colored wool). The second step involved taking the wool with poopy clumps tangled up in it and throwing it into the rubbish barrel I had brought up for that very purpose, although, when Christian wasn’t sorting sheep, he’d throw them in for me because he had gloves on. 

When Jim was almost done shearing a sheep, I’d start rolling the fleece up under itself so when I held it up so it  wouldn’t fall apart on me. When Jim finally sheared the sheep clean, I’d gather it up and go toss it in a bag.

Let me tell you about how this bag business is set up. The bag itself is nearly eight feet tall and narrow with a width of a foot. Jim brought along a structure to hold the bag that consisted of a ladder connected to a hopper that the bag goes on which, in turn, is connected to a panel that is wired onto a hastily-built corral panel of dubious integrity. You climb up the ladder and shove the fleece into it and then you jump into the bag and start stomping on it so we could get as many fleeces as we could in the bag because Jim had only brought six bags with him. Although I would suggest only jumping in there when it is four fleeces full, because it’s hard enough as it is getting out of there as it is nearly impossible without once fleece in there. I also suggest using a stick of something to press the first three down because when I land down into the bag to shove it, the ladder slid away and I became trapped with the upper half of my body in the bag with the hoop pinning me against the panel. Thankfully, they were able to hear my cries for help over the radio and got me out of there. Jim got a good laugh out that!

There were times when jumping down into the bag that I’d forget to raise my arms high enough and I knocked them against the hoop going down and let me tell you, getting out of a narrow, eight-foot bag, while only using your arms that were hurting like heck wasn’t half as funny as it sounds. Needless to say, I didn’t forget but one or thrice.

Pizza for lunch was a welcoming break to say the least. Cutting the sheep’s tails short proved interesting because Jim kept forgetting to hold onto every other sheep that needed its tail snipped; it was funny the first few times, but the novelty wore off rather quickly. After all of the shearing and snipping had been done, we moved the sheep and their lambs back across the road, leaving only the wethers slated for butcher and the rams behind to take up to the old homestead. We then began the arduous task of rolling the five and a half bags (one filled up halfway) to Jim’s pickup. It took two of us to stack all of the bags up on there and after that we loaded up Jim’s equipment and wished him on his merry way.

Two days of handling sheep fleece had made my hands all soft and ‘lotionally’ that weeks afterwards they were still like a babe’s bum and relieved that we were done with the sheep.

Stories by Dallas – May 2014