£8000-£10000 Sheep?

[Benn]

Morning all
following on from my turnover thread.
How many lowland breeding ewes would you need to make £8000-£10000 profit?
Am I right in thinking profit per ewe on lowland system is around £30-£40 per ewe.or is it per lamb.
This system based on no rented land,old pp,indoor lambing,scanning 180%.
Cheers
Benn

 

[glensman]

Morning all
following on from my turnover thread.
How many lowland breeding ewes would you need to make £8000-£10000 profit?
Am I right in thinking profit per ewe on lowland system is around £30-£40 per ewe.or is it per lamb.
This system based on no rented land,old pp,indoor lambing,scanning 180%.
Cheers
Benn

At least 500 ewe's

 

[neilo]

http://beefandlamb.ahdb.org.uk/wp/w...11/English-non-SDA-breeding-flocks-161115.pdf

AHDB have top third lowland flocks with a net margin of less than £15/ewe and average flock size of 759. GM is around £60, which is a very different figure to profit.

On those figures, you 'could' get a profit of £8k from 533 ewes.

 

[JD-Kid]

ummm no wages or a house i notice i think a true profit may be getting a lot higher than 500 ewes and some of the time only just break even along with some years of loss

 

[glensman]

ummm no wages or a house i notice i think a true profit may be getting a lot higher than 500 ewes and some of the time only just break even along with some years of loss

That's why I said at least and that's for the £8000 figure, to make a real living without subsidies would take a huge flock 2000 plus.

 

[Benn]

So are you saying that only making £8-11 profit per lamb going on 900 lambs from 500 ewes?
So the outgoings on the ewe that your taking into account Are
Vet ,Meds,deaths,feed,lambing products,and quad fuel.
I'm basing this on all land not being rented and all on same farm.

 

[neilo]

ummm no wages or a house i notice i think a true profit may be getting a lot higher than 500 ewes and some of the time only just break even along with some years of loss

The AHDB costings in my link include labour, both paid and unpaid, as well as most fixed costs. I've always felt ill at ease with the labour costing thing though. As I own the business, the profit pays my labour (sometimes/hopefully). I can see why it has to be accounted for though, in order to compare like with like.

 

[Benn]

For my hypothetical farm im not inc paid labour.

 

[neilo]

So are you saying that only making £8-11 profit per lamb going on 900 lambs from 500 ewes?
So the outgoings on the ewe that your taking into account Are
Vet ,Meds,deaths,feed,lambing products,and quad fuel.
I'm basing this on all land not being rented and all on same farm.

Those top third costings are based on 180% scanning and include the real rent figure (which is only £7.22/ac). They don't include any other land ownership/rental costs. The vet & med costs would be slightly lower than mine, and the feed costs are considerably lower than a lot I've seen.

 

[JD-Kid]

The AHDB costings in my link include labour, both paid and unpaid, as well as most fixed costs. I've always felt ill at ease with the labour costing thing though. As I own the business, the profit pays my labour (sometimes/hopefully). I can see why it has to be accounted for though, in order to compare like with like.

ummmm intresting numbers strange they don't look right tho top and bottom in alot of things very even we get from our accountant a review from a few accountants top and bottom with in a sector say downland lamb breeders hill farms dairy cropping etc etc the diffrences between top and bottom is huge in income and also spending ...
intresting ones we get shows up some short comings of the beef and lamb reports in NZ as well

 

[neilo]

ummmm intresting numbers strange they don't look right tho top and bottom in alot of things very even we get from our accountant a review from a few accountants top and bottom with in a sector say downland lamb breeders hill farms dairy cropping etc etc the diffrences between top and bottom is huge in income and also spending ...
intresting ones we get shows up some short comings of the beef and lamb reports in NZ as well

Similar costs per ewe on a lot of things, but output in kg/ha is more than double in the top third flocks than it is in the bottom, mostly down to stocking rate and higher N fert use.

They show a £77 difference in net margin per ewe between top third and bottom third producers. On that 500 ewe flock that @Benn wants, that's the difference between his potential £8k profit, and a £30k loss. I suspect the op would be considerably better off running a small flock as a 'bugger all input' hobby, and keep the joinery business going.

 

[JD-Kid]

Similar costs per ewe on a lot of things, but output in kg/ha is more than double in the top third flocks than it is in the bottom, mostly down to stocking rate and higher N fert use.

They show a £77 difference in net margin per ewe between top third and bottom third producers. On that 500 ewe flock that @Benn wants, that's the difference between his potential £8k profit, and a £30k loss. I suspect the op would be considerably better off running a small flock as a 'bugger all input' hobby, and keep the joinery business going.

yea it's intresting a hell of a lot of extra labour per head higher rent payed higher costs etc etc per head in the bottom 1/3 all high input costs in a low cost system

 

[CopperBeech]

I'm going to be unpopular maybe, but I would put money on the fact that there are some people out there, making more than 16,000 from 1000 ewes. . . . . .

 

[glensman]

I'm going to be unpopular maybe, but I would put money on the fact that there are some people out there, making more than 16,000 from 1000 ewes. . . . . .

Real profit after every possible expense has been taken off (things people don't cost in like depreciation maintenance and replacement of every piece of machinery,housing,equipment even dogs that you have to keep sheep) ?

 

[JD-Kid]

I'm going to be unpopular maybe, but I would put money on the fact that there are some people out there, making more than 16,000 from 1000 ewes. . . . . .

alot of there costs will be lower just due to scale fixed costs spread over more bums in seats some costs per head like animal health unless there is a price diffrence in bulk will be about the same per head regardless

 

[glensman]

I'm going to be unpopular maybe, but I would put money on the fact that there are some people out there, making more than 16,000 from 1000 ewes. . . . . .

There may be a small amount of these farms where they have a large farm with no bought or rented ground, haven't accrued any debt from bought in machinery new farm buildings and infrastructure and are excellent efficient farmers. Of course there are examples of the best to the worst in terms of profitability but remove subsidies and you'll see if they're really making money or not, the big farms have the big sfp and this makes them look wealthy to the outsider, I'd like to see the books before believing they were making £30-40 a ewe real profit . I'm not trying to give you a hard time I try to make it pay from every angle and I enjoy it but there's not much money in it.

 

[Benn]

I'm not going give up my joinery for sheep just looking for an extra bit income for savings.i make a living out of joinery and anything I earn from sheep would Be savings.i been offers more land and thinking what hypothetical profit id earn.im no way talking about 500 though.
I just got offerd 40 acres winter grazing,and maybe another 20 acres from August -April.and I'd be down to just 10 acres from April-July so just seing what people views are on profit from sheep to see what route go down
And ,I was thinking it was up £30 per ewe profit.
I'm sure I read on here when I first joined and my first thread was about profit.and I'm sure @timw mentioned could make £30000 from 1000 ewes?might be wrong though.

 

[glensman]

With a small flock and low cost's plus very good management and good breeding stock that's doable, so don't be put off but as flocks get bigger the profit per ewe will gradually decrease. Explaining this would take a lot of typing.

 

[Benn]

With a small flock and low cost's plus very good management and good breeding stock that's doable, so don't be put off but as flocks get bigger the profit per ewe will gradually decrease. Explaining this would take a lot of typing.

I won't be put off keeping up to 100 ewes but wary going any more as never going be full time so it's getting enough to be worth having them Don't suppose want to pm me why lol? I'd be interested to know the reasons for this?

 

[Clive]

you can probably make 8k working part time in mcdonalds with no risk