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Hi, I am looking for my first job on a farm. I am interested in cattle/sheep and would want full time hours (preferably starting as early as possible in the morning and finishing early afternoon due to family commitments). I am on the south Staffordshire/ Shropshire border, but am willing to...

Question for those that don't have sheep as their full income and have to work elsewhere. How do you find the time to do both? Do you work in the day and fit in the sheep on evenings and weekends? Or do you just work a few days a week and can then dedicate the rest of the time to the sheep? Any...

£300 a week?! With costs like that, it seems such an incredibly hard task for new entrants to make a living from sheep. Factors such as these are such significant barriers to entry and are quite demoralising when thinking about shepherding as a realistic career.

To those who do make a full time living from sheep, how many of you own/rent a farm as opposed to having patches of land all over the place? As someone who wants to get into sheep farming, it seems nigh on impossible for a new entrant to actually get their hands on a farm where all the land is...

That sounds pretty ideal then, as having a good deal of flexibility in the working day has always been important to me. In your experience, do the self employed wallers/hedgelayers work solo or as part of teams?

Yeah I have to that with most jobs it's better to learn on the job in real life situations as opposed to being in some kind of educational setting. However, the number of walling or hedgelaying vacancies that I can see online are next to none, so I wonder if they are mainly sought out by word of...

When you say right area, I take it you mean Cotswolds, national parks of Wales, pretty much the whole of the North of England etc? With the regional differences in stone and techniques that go with them? Would you say most of your work is agricultural walls or garden walls? Thanks for your...

I have seen that the Rural Skills Hub are offering a fixed amount of training grants to enable young people to gain qualifications in dry stone walling and/or hedgelaying, and I am considering applying. Can anyone offer any advice on what the job situation is like for dry stone walling and...

I wasn't aware of the lambing list until just now. It looks like there's a few farms near to me which I can try. Thank you for that!

Hi, Is there anyone local to South Staffordshire who would be happy for me to join them and get some lambing experience? I don't have any experience currently, but I am looking to learn as much about sheep farming as possible. Even if it's just a few hours one weekend I would be extremely...

Thank you for the ideas. I'll have a look online and see if I can find any websites, directories etc with contact details

I may have to stick to looking for voluntary work when it comes to sheep then (although not having much luck with that at the moment. Every person I've contacted round here has said they don't have capacity for a volunteer). Bit frustrating really, as sheep farming is my long term aim.

Presumably, unless they're running very large numbers, sheep farmers will do the vast majority of the labour themselves?

Does anyone have any advice on how to get a first farm job with no experience? Ideally on a sheep farm, but more than happy to work with cows or mixed livestock. I live in South Staffordshire and there doesn't seem to be many vacancies within a 45 minute radius. I have posted an advert on here...

I am looking to gain experience in sheep husbandry to start off a career in livestock farming, so I am seeking a voluntary opportunity for a few hours per weekend. Ideally in South Staffordshire or Shropshire. I'm willing to help out in any aspects of the job and pick up as much knowledge as I...

I presume you have considerable fuel costs then? How spread out are your different pieces of land?

I realise that there are many variables such as access to land, time, available cash etc, but does anyone have a rough guide on how quickly a flock can be expanded? For instance, if you started out with 20 ewes, in ideal (and not so ideal) conditions, how many ewes could you expect to have in 2...

Tbh, I'm not sure about that one. It seems that breeding stock is about the quality, and selling for meat is about the quantity? I appreciate that's a very basic take on things, as obviously you need a bit of both to some extent

So, in the first year you didn't make any money do the significant amount of purchases you had to make. But in the coming years, wouldn't you have started to make money as you built up your numbers, in addition to not having to factor in all those initial, one off costs such as the quad, rapper...

That was more along the outlay that I was expecting. It's interesting though that two people with experience in the industry can have such different estimates on price. Not saying I inherently trust one person's judgement over another, but it is interesting how you can both come to such...