For those that don’t go the hair sheep route there is an addled expense of shearing operations. On my farm that’s another $5/head next year. Another added expense is stud ram replacement every two years. The best deal I ever got was a ram at the annual sale in Sedalia Mo. He was easily a $3k registered ram that I got for $900. No matter what breed of sheep one favors to go with, never cheap out on your ram purchases. A ram is half your flock and the continued upgrading in ram power pays greater dividends every season vs. going with a cheap junk ram to save a few hundred bucks.

@swamp-yankee

Жыл бұрын

I’ve come to the belief that no ram I can buy will do as well as the ones born in my flock. I have been continually disappointed with ram purchases. I might never buy a ram again.

I’m about 5 years away from starting my own homestead, and your advice is gold! Thanks so much for relevant content - I know it’s not easy.

Thank you for providing educational content that is clean. You are a role model for my 7 year old daughter. All she wants for Christmas now is a baby lamb. I have her watch your videos and do a report at the end. I am learning a lot too.

@theShepherdess

Жыл бұрын

Wow, thank you for sharing this!

Hi, I'm a an agricultural graduate who'd about to farm next year 2024, been following most of you vidz on how to raise sheep on pasture this has been an amazing educational journey. And I hope to post something to you as soon as I get started.

Thank You for all the information

I'm in the tropics, but Grace is the best teacher I've had on yt.

Superb video, your content is awesome!

Many people clear out trees thinking they will get better pasture. However, I notice that areas shaded by trees in the afternoon have much thicker grass than other areas. I also installed septic systems that reuse wastewater (it gets treated with diluted bleach) and release it via sprinklers. These areas have thick grass! Since I have 14 people living on the land, this extra watering makes a huge difference. However, I haven't figured out a good way to seed cover crops and winter pasture without a tractor. I'm hoping to get a trained draft donkey or mule and Amish made equipment eventually. There are Amish in Beeville, Texas who can help you find or train draft animals. I prefer donkeys because they eat like goats and only require supplemental feed when pregnant or nursing.

Yeah,variability is the key for some parts of this list. It took me 3 years to find a vet that will even see sheep in my area. 90 day winter at worst, lmao. Southern living sure is mild. No grass grows where I live from November to mid-April. I always plan on 180 days of winter feed so I don't overgraze the spring flush too soon.

Love it. Another great video. I almost choked at the # of days you feed hay. We have about 6 months we have to feed (we make our own hay), and we just came out of almost a week of -40 temps.

I do most of my grazing in netting with solar chargers. We don’t have great tenure, so most of our fields im not looking to invest heavily in. Anyway, keeping the system fully portable and using solar chargers has been key to growing our business, and finding better land tenure. For someone starting out who may not be sure if they want to keep sheep long term netting and solar chargers are a low cost way to try grazing sheep. A lot of people say netting sucks to handle, and that’s true at first, but once you get good at it it’s a pretty amazing tool. Appreciate what ya do. Would be interested to see an update on your new lease.

Love you sheep channel

About off grid fence chargers. Store bought units may not provide enough power, yet if we have a small PV system using at least two100 watt panels charging a small deep cycle battery bank or one 220Ah 12 volt battery, we can power a high output 3 joule fence charger. This charger draws about 330mA and is enough power to deter Grizzly bear. And we would have a charging base for other appliances or devices.

@swamp-yankee

Жыл бұрын

I’ve been really happy with Gallagher fence chargers for applications where portability is mandatory. Their 1 and 2 joule units are great.

What kind of mineral system do you have

Good morning. Can you make a video on why not to start with registered stock? And the pros and cons? Thank you.

@theShepherdess

Жыл бұрын

Great suggestion!

@swamp-yankee

Жыл бұрын

Registration does guarantee them to be any good. An animal can have all the papers, and still be being propped up with medication and feed. None of the best flocks I’ve seen have papers.

Black heat , nice )

I have about 3 acres of yard. I want to get sheep to keep the grass mowed. I do have a barn for shelter. I have a 6 wire electric perimeter fence I installed for goats that I have sold. I do have a barn for shelter. I use this same land to produce 400 meat bird chickens every year. I am moving to sheep because keeping the chicken tractors away from the goats became a challenge. Do you think the sheep would leave the chicken tractors alone?

Luke 16:10 says it all. God bless Grace and her Harmony Farms.

Are you selling lamb online direct to customers? Where and how can I order from you?

I buy mineral blocks is that good enough for grass-fed sheep

@tripledividefarms2177

Жыл бұрын

First of all, and I’m sure you know this, sheep minerals should be formulated specifically for sheep only. You can feed sheep minerals to any ruminant, but you should never let another ruminants minerals near your sheep. Second, sheep minerals should be fed I loose form and not in compressed block form. The reason is, your cheep will file down their incisors. Eventually this will hamper their grazing and condition as the act or clipping grass and forbes is painful. HTH

@mcmerriman

Жыл бұрын

Where do you get your loose minerals?

dose this work for goats

Good video, but you Did forget about the advertising/instagram costs. That is not a joke my AG instructor cited INSTAGRAM as an advertising tool.

Could you make a video about overgrazing? How do you prevent sheep from wiping out the grass on your small plot?

@alliboogaloo

Жыл бұрын

I live in NE Indiana. Lots of rotations is key, watch your pasture like a hawk. I rotate my 7 base shetland/romanov sheep every day on about 1 acre with no real issues. When I need more rest during the dry summer months, I use the ditch and front lawn for an extra 4 days, the rest of my property is garden or already pasture. Putting in a garden cover crop and letting them graze it off before a freeze kills it helps with the fall/winter transition too. Winter grazing isn't a thing here, I just plan accordingly and buy in hay by selling off or harvesting my flock to get an affordable number over winter.

@jasondiaz6642

Жыл бұрын

Buy the book Salad Bar Beef by Joel Salatin...I know she sells this in her store and I believe she's mentioned his influence in rotational grazing and applying it to her own operation.

@ericjpricelawman

Жыл бұрын

Easy. You need to make the daily grazing area as small as possible by use of Electra net moveable fencing. Move them more, every day if possible, but make the area small.

For me

I’m a few years out on raising commercial sheep. If I have say 10 ewes how many rams should I get? I’d like to stay in the 60-80 range in sheep at some point

@theShepherdess

9 ай бұрын

1 ram can service up to 40 ewes. I keep 1 ram for every 30 ewes. 👍🏻

Well done as always Shepardess...really enjoyed it! I grew up with sheep on a small scale & have recently returned to the land. We will be adding some Dorpers shortly... 👍

How do you keep sheep in electric netting? We just got 3 khatadin lambs yesterday. They spooked and bolted through it in about 5 minutes despite the wires being hot. We are still trying to get them back today. We are new to all this and this was our first dip into livestock. The electric netting was an affordable way for us to start. The electric netting it also highly used and recommended so we are so stumped. I’d love some advice if anyone has any. We don’t have a barn to keep them in and we were expecting them to be mellow and stay in the electric netting fence 🤷🏼‍♀️

@theShepherdess

Жыл бұрын

Great question! I’d probably leave them in the barn until they calm down. Feed them everyday and train them to a call (call them whenever you put food in the trough). From there, put them back to pasture and try the electric again. Make sure the fence is hot!

@TwoBirchHomestead

Жыл бұрын

@@theShepherdess thank you! Any tips on how to catch them? Sadly they are still not coming back. We don’t have a barn as we were informed they’d be fine staying in the pasture until we butcher.

Link is broken

Hi 👋 sister long time, Do you deworm your sheep every 21days?

Given the extreme high cost of fencing these days, I might lease the land for several years in exchange for the installation of necessary fencing.

@swamp-yankee

Жыл бұрын

Or go with high tensile electric and timeless posts. One can pull that fence out as fast as it goes it, so any wire and post purchases become investments in your business instead of the land you first install them on.

@tunnelrabbit2625

Жыл бұрын

@@swamp-yankee Best idea yet.

@tunnelrabbit2625

Жыл бұрын

@@swamp-yankee They do this for cattle, but would it work for sheep. Probably.

15 % mortality..shocked to know this

I'm surprised you included shelter as an expense for sheep. I had always heard that shelter wasn't necessary for sheep, so long as they have access to windrows.

@lamplighterfarm

Жыл бұрын

I believe it all depends on where you live, and what kind of weather/predator challenges you have.

@swamp-yankee

Жыл бұрын

Shelter for predator protection is a lot more expensive then good dogs. I barn my sheep because we get a pretty hard winter, but I cannot imagine the stress of owning sheep without guardian dogs. Sheep are expensive, and when they die personally it hurts me beyond the financial loss.

I have rooming houses in mobile homes on my land to offset the cost off the land. There are many single people with fixed incomes or low paying jobs who can't afford apartments. However, you must have dependable labor to do repairs if you can't do the work yourself. Fortunately, I found an ex-Amishman to do the work, and he's also put up fences and rehabbed the used mobile homes. My land isn't great, so I needed another revenue stream.

@theShepherdess

11 ай бұрын

Great idea!

Any job

Note wooded land can be cleared over time and is much cheaper, also a dog is a lot cheaper than buildings, Greg Judy just keeps his sheep outside yr round that has been done for ever and world wide.

@tripledividefarms2177

Жыл бұрын

Well, we all can’t live just outside Salem Ar. Many farmers have winters where late January/early February temperatures routinely hover @-10/20 and have snow ass deep to a giant giraffe. I’d love to see Greg sleep well at night with his girls out in that and watch his KZread video on how shepherds from the world over (like him) keep his stock from suffocating in snow drifts with a lashing 25knot wind and gusts that would peel paint off a new car. Then again too, some farmers don’t have land surrounded with heavy hardwood and pine shade trees. Some folks are on the prairie where the heat is so hard spit evaporates before it hits the ground. Sorry Greg does what he does well, but every stockman has to do what is right for his charges according to the environment they occupy. One shoe doesn’t fit all.

@safffff1000

Жыл бұрын

@@tripledividefarms2177 Has sheep always lived in buildings 1000's of yrs ago in the winter? Where do wild sheep live in the snow areas to survive?

@tripledividefarms2177

Жыл бұрын

Wild sheep aren’t confined within perimeter fencing. They can range for miles to escape weather. If they can... a lot can’t. Interesting you bring up wild sheep. I used to hunt call sheep in the Brooks Range of Alaska. How many wild sheep have you seen, I mean, other than on tv?

@safffff1000

Жыл бұрын

@@tripledividefarms2177 Just learning on youtube from people with sometimes decades of experience. KZread university, I get different views such as you. It's an excellent learning source, I replaced timing belts on car which I never did before. You imply learning from TV is bad I take it. And Greg Judy is full of it.

@alanwesterfield4254

Жыл бұрын

@@safffff1000 They MOVED or they died. Why do you think sheep have short gestation periods and multiple births? Humans have realized we can take care of the sheep and capitalize.

How do you create a place for the sheep to go but a predator can’t go

@theShepherdess

Жыл бұрын

Needs to be a complete enclosure.

Where did you find the 15% mortality rate? Please cite a source and don't just throw stuff out to see what sticks...

@theShepherdess

Жыл бұрын

Here you go: u.osu.edu/sheep/2020/01/14/reduce-lamb-loss/ Google “Lamb Mortality in the USA” for more.

@jlpaints

Жыл бұрын

1. If you have been following this young lady for any time at all you would know she does not "throw stuff out to see what sticks." 2. You might also do some research on your own. Pretty easy now with the internet at your fingertips. 3. You might ask her for references in a nicer way. No need to be so rude and accusatory. She is one of the most thoughtful and caring people I have ever known and deserves kindness and respect from everyone. She is my neighbor and friend and is a pillar of the community.

@eastcoastspotlight7002

Жыл бұрын

@@jlpaints you are obviously drinking her social media darlingness up...this lady is faking it until she probably won't make it...she speaks in truths that she has not even seen yet. She has barely 40 sheep and pretends to know everything about sheep including what our Almighty Sky Daddy wants for us. This lady is a social media personality nothing more nothing less. I mean just go watch the video again when she is using the rake/pitchfork trying to take up hay. She looks like she has never held a pitchfork before much less how to properly use one. Just watch how awkwardly she holds it. Not to mention every shot of her, her clothes are SPOTLESS..what REAL farmer has pristine clothes on?? She literally has zero stains on anything. What farmer that you have ever seen looks like this Yuppie?? Every shot of her "working" is carefully curated to show what she wants YOU to see. Again the shot where she is carrying the gate. It looks like she has never had to lift anything, ever. ...I could go on and on about how she lied about(by not talking about it or referencing the problem) the parasite problem on her farm that killed DOZENS of HER Sheep. She did not document this. She said absolutely NOTHING about her sheep DIEING!! Something so big to a farmer such as loss from a parasite infestation should be openly talked about but selling her fantasy life as a larping farmer is more important to her obviously.