If you’re considering getting dairy sheep, you might be wondering how many you can comfortably keep in your backyard homestead or small farm?
I’ll be explaining the best sheep stocking rate, and how to calculate how many sheep you can safely keep.
We live on a 17 acre farm but we also board horses, and we are planting part of the pasture to trees. So the sheep and horses are going to be excluded until the trees mature enough.
That leaves us with about 3.5 acres to graze our sheep. We have 7 adult sheep with lambs on the way. Our goal is to keep fewer than 10 sheep over the winter, when we feed hay.
With our resources, I feel like we can comfortably keep 10 adult sheep and rotate them from smaller fenced areas every day. When we run into issues we have extra hay that we can supplement the forage with, or take them off the pasture to give it time to catch up.
First, it’s important to note that you can keep sheep in a barn or other contained area as long as you’re keeping their bedding clean and offering hay for feed.
That means, you don’t need a lot of acreage to keep dairy sheep if you’re keeping them confined and taking care of them properly.
The stocking rate comes in when you want to do rotational grazing.
The rule of thumb is 5 sheep per acre on good grass pasture, with intensive rotational grazing.
But… here is what will affect this number (whether it can go higher or lower):
* The quality of the forage growing in your pasture - and the quality of the soil itself
* The variety of forage growing: is it grass, a mix of weeds and flowers like clovers, etc.
* How large your sheep are - the heavier they are, the more they will eat.
For example, rams will require more forage so if you have more ewes you could stock more of them.
* How long your pasture is available for grazing - for our farm we tend to graze from May to November - so around 7 months per year
* How quickly forage grows back - in our region the grass really slows down in July and August if we don’t get a lot of rain
With rotational grazing, you don’t want to have your sheep back on the same pasture too soon otherwise your sheep will pick up more parasitic worms. Ideally, sheep don’t return to the same place for 60 days, but 30 days is more commonly observed.
A rotational grazing small acreage is possible, especially if you're rotational grazing sheep. In looking at rotational grazing systems, we know that the amount of forage available is the key to success.
If you have really poor pasture, then having more space to graze is better.
Actually, having more space to graze is always better because it mimics what sheep would do in nature - which is to find new grass.
There are plenty of mathematical models you can use to calculate how much forage your land provides and how many animals this can support.
I recommend Woody Lane’s book “Capturing Sunlight” to learn how to cut a sample of your grass so you can find out how much forage your land is providing.
#dairysheep #grazing #sheepfarm #sheepfarming #sheep #permaculture #permaculturelife #rotationalgrazing
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