Costs to winter ewes

[Aspiring Peasants]

If you don't add in your fixed costs you are not getting a true picture.

Fixed costs are different for everybody. I'm not discussing overall profitability, just one element of variable costs

 

[neilo]

If you don't add in your fixed costs you are not getting a true picture.

The fixed costs will presumably stay the same, however they are wintered.
I think the OP is just trying to identify the cost of wintering the ewes, nothing else.

 

[Skintagain]

The fixed costs will presumably stay the same, however they are wintered.
I think the OP is just trying to identify the cost of wintering the ewes, nothing else.

Unless your putting a shed up or buying a straw chopper etc

electric fencing for tack bloody adds up too!!

 

[hill shepherd]

I think he just wants an idea of how much he should be forking out to feed his sheep through winter without including everything he already has available to him such as grass, water, electric other fixed costs. Everyone on here becomes an accountant whenever any of these type of questions are asked

 

[Forkdriver]

I thought you were looking at enterprise costings..

 

[Tim W]

I'm talking about the time from tupping to lambing. Upland mostly PP no arable. The system is start lambing 1st April and house most of them from 1st Feb when they are scanned. Beltexes lambed inside, the rest turned out just before they're due to start. Feed is haylage, cake and blocks. I currently have a small number of mules scanned at 211%, mostly texel/mules at 184% and beltexes at 163%. I also bought some in lamb mule hoggs, scanned at 120%. I've read a lot on here about low costs systems based on forage crops over winter which is something I have no experience of. I've just run through what I think ours have cost over this winter and was wondering how it compares with other systems

Per ewe

Cake £10
Buckets £7
Haylage £15
Straw £5 (bit of a guess and the muck has some value)

Total £37

If you could send them down to me from late Oct until mid March what will you pay me?

 

[Skintagain]

Way I look at it

tack - diesel fencing and dog attacks scab

winter inside - sheds tractors straw water electric pile of muck

not much in it

 

[neilo]

Anyone sending ewes away on tack, or on someone else’s cover/forage crops, is paying an element of rent in that as they are ultimately buying in acres.

I try not to send off farm, but do if I’m stuck. I grow fodder crops for wintering on my arable land, but would do the same if I grassed that down, just in a different rotation.

Without that rent element, the growing costs of a decent forage crop can be very cheap per head, and the cost of utilising that crop are negligible if strip grazed in situ.
On a rough ‘fag packet’ calculation (are any other costings systems available or practical?), my ewes will have cost just under a tenner from a month post-tupping to the point of lambing. They then go back on to the pastures that have been rested since tupping, with zero concentrates fed. I have tried some (4) lifeline buckets out with the singles, but the multiples have had nothing but forage.

The pedigree ewes went away for 5 weeks after scanning, on £1/hd/wk, after grazing a poor beet crop. Even with that, they came in at around a tenner/hd.
Normally the fodder beet crop would yield double what it did this year, but with the same growing costs (we only skimped on rainfall ), but hey ho.

 

[neilo]

Way I look at it

tack - diesel fencing and dog attacks scab

winter inside - sheds tractors straw water electric pile of muck

not much in it

If you’re sending them off on tack, and paying a lot for it, then there is certainly an argument for keeping the nutrients on farm in a shed (if you have one). There is of course a cost to spreading, and to buying in those nutrients if you’re buying concentrates, straw, etc.

Cost of grazing fodder crops here is me running out on my quad & RAPPA winder to set fences up. Then either using the same system to move blocks every few days, or me walking down the fence line moving it a few feet each day, depending on the crop.
That RAPPA kit will have come a couple of £k I suppose, but spread over 10 years (and counting) it doesn’t really amount to much.

My only tractor usually sits with the hedge cutter on all winter, going out as and when it fits. Even the telehandler can go days without use, and only for a few minutes the normally. If I didn’t lamb the pedigree indoors in March, most of that use wouldn’t happen, nor would the purchase of 6t of ewe rolls.

 

[Skintagain]

If you’re sending them off on tack, and paying a lot for it, then there is certainly an argument for keeping the nutrients on farm in a shed (if you have one). There is of course a cost to spreading, and to buying in those nutrients if you’re buying concentrates, straw, etc.

Cost of grazing fodder crops here is me running out on my quad & RAPPA winder to set fences up. Then either using the same system to move blocks every few days, or me walking down the fence line moving it a few feet each day, depending on the crop.
That RAPPA kit will have come a couple of £k I suppose, but spread over 10 years (and counting) it doesn’t really amount to much.

My only tractor usually sits with the hedge cutter on all winter, going out as and when it fits. Even the telehandler can go days without use, and only for a few minutes the normally. If I didn’t lamb the pedigree indoors in March, most of that use wouldn’t happen, nor would the purchase of 6t of ewe rolls.

You are doing right but I rely on fly by night grazing mostly so it’s a different kettle of fish.

 

[neilo]

Another one…
Our sheep group visited a FC monitor farm a few years back, admittedly before the hike in fert costs, who was costing wintering his ewes on grazed swedes. He was running Welsh ewes and Aberfields iirc, so not the hungriest of sheep, but had worked out that they had cost £3/hd to carry from Christmas to the end of March (just before lambing).

Again, no rental/tack cost included, but significant savings can certainly made by growing fodder crops and grazing in situ.

 

[beardface]

I either rent land for forage crop or grow our own amd use deferred grazing built up within my annual let's. Think it around or below neilos tenner/hd. They always say the best thing for sheep in Feb is grass amd preferably someone else's.

 

[neilo]

It should also be noted that most of the fertiliser inputs to those forage crops are returned to the ground after grazing, without the cost of spreading muck.
I have steadily increased potash indexes here through rotating grazed forage crops, fed according to need. The following crop, be that Spring cereals here, or grass reseeds, will see that benefit.

 

[Skintagain]

I either rent land for forage crop or grow our own amd use deferred grazing built up within my annual let's. Think it around or below neilos tenner/hd. They always say the best thing for sheep in Feb is grass amd preferably someone else's.

I had a man who grew me 30 acres in his arable rotation was going nicely until he decided to start lambing ewes!! Also had a good dairy farm all walled they started lambing few hundred ewes too

 

[Rich_ard]

If you could send them down to me from late Oct until mid March what will you pay me?

What would you do it for?

 

[Hill Ground]

I couldn't winter ours outside now. Winters have got wetter. I would have to send them a lot further than an hour away and with diesel at £100 to fill the tank?

Yeah, it all adds up. Off the top of my head my ewes off the farm would have cost approx £7-9/head in rent (+fair bit of diesel checking twice a week, all electric fenced) from mid Oct to end of Jan, then home, on rested grass and had £5-7 of cake.

So say £14?!

But in highdsight, they should have had a bit more grub, not really happy with their condition now they've lambed.

 

[livestock 1]

Yeah, it all adds up. Off the top of my head my ewes off the farm would have cost approx £7-9/head in rent (+fair bit of diesel checking twice a week, all electric fenced) from mid Oct to end of Jan, then home, on rested grass and had £5-7 of cake.

So say £14?!

But in highdsight, they should have had a bit more grub, not really happy with their condition now they've lambed.

It’s not been a good year for sheep in our area. March was bad

 

[Skintagain]

It’s not been a good year for sheep in our area. March was bad

But January and February were exceptional

 

[livestock 1]

But January and February were exceptional

Aye march definitely took that away for us

 

[livestock 1]

Ewes were battered with bad weather and clash when the lambs were pulling on them the cake and liquid beet silage all the rest went to feed the weather to a big part