Sole living from sheep ,Flock size

[Estate fencing.]

From what I heard the other day he’s got plenty of time for his “25 year old Mrs” lad would be better too get more sheep and stop all that tomfoolery!

but I know what you mean. I’ve got one very good friend. Works 7 days a week, 6-8 every single day. Anyone who doesn’t is a total waster and bone idle. Unfortunately I can see him being a very lonely person in 30 years time. It’s not as though he’s down too his last £ as it is! I don’t know, I don’t get as much time as I’d like with the family but we are all happy. That’s the main thing.

Tell him he’s a lazy bugger, could have done 2 hours work before he started. but seriously I like work, don’t have kids and would know what to do if I wasn’t at work. I do like to finish a 5 on a Sunday mind and dont like being told to work on Sunday by anyone else.

 

[steveR]

What a sad state of affairs the industry is in when you read threads like this we would all be better off at Tesco’s stacking the lamb on the shelf financially I suspect.
hope nobody starts a thread asking the same about suckers

"A Gentleman's Hobby", is what an old farmer who I knew (long dead I suspect) and who emigrated to Canada to farm in the early/mid 1970s, had to say about keeping Sucklers. He went on and ran cattle in Canada as @Frank-the-Wool suggest sheep should be farmed. Minimal expenditure and keep dry stock as cheaply as is possible.

I have a feeling he was spot on in many ways. Once SCP disappeared, so did the profit I reckon, maybe some super efficient, large setups do make money from sucklers, but with TB rife these days, the economics can soon go pear shaped!

 

[nxy]

I am surrounded by family farms earning a living (arguably an all right one) from either 400-600 Ewes or 50-80 Sucklers. However we have a very different subsidy system and without headage payments on stock, area payments such as ICHN (a bit like the old LFA payments) and environmental schemes it would be a very different picture. I would add that this is not extra money - our basic area payment has been greatly diluted compared to the UK the pot of money is just targeted rather than paid per hectare to everyone.

 

[Sheep92]

I'm over here in Ireland, farm 40% owned 60% leased, lambing just under 1000 ewes closed flock, trying to produce 1500 plus lambs for sale each year, full time farming along with hauling about 10000 lambs to local factory for local farmers and have to say are happy and have a decent living and great quality life

 

[muleman]

What a sad state of affairs the industry is in when you read threads like this we would all be better off at Tesco’s stacking the lamb on the shelf financially I suspect.
hope nobody starts a thread asking the same about suckers

Its a sad fact that we would be better off in tescos financially....but would we be happy, theres nothing id rather do than farm, and someone has to put the food into tesco!

 

[CopperBeech]

My sole living comes from my sheep really, no subs claimed, and just a little bit of contract cattle work for someone else. But that’s mainly done to keep my staff member in hours. It’s the cost of renting my house which is the killer and takes about 20k out straight away.

 

[serf]

hope nobody starts a thread asking the same about " suckers "

There's an ironic Freudian on the subject

 

[Derrick Hughes]

What a sad state of affairs the industry is in when you read threads like this we would all be better off at Tesco’s stacking the lamb on the shelf financially I suspect.
hope nobody starts a thread asking the same about suckers

We all suckers

 

[Farmer_Joe]

275 sheep owned farm just me, all lambs sold stores early so i dont have to fanny around with them dyeing all winter and wasting money on creep!

works of me?

 

[nxy]

Why did the UK give up headage payments on livestock? They are now banging on about "rewarding farmers who provide public goods".

Public goods like attractive countryside and secure food supplies? They could start by bringing back headage payments or would it hurt too much to think the french were right all along.

 

[Jonp]

My sole living comes from my sheep really, no subs claimed, and just a little bit of contract cattle work for someone else. But that’s mainly done to keep my staff member in hours. It’s the cost of renting my house which is the killer and takes about 20k out straight away.

Housing costs are a killer. I rent my 100acre farm for half of what I would pay for a flat in Newport/Cardiff.
Just over 100 ewes and 8 suckler cows pays the rent and bought in winter fodder. Sell most lambs as stores, never fat and calves get sold at 10mnths. In bad years farm makes a small profit...
No subs, no fert, old zetor. Work 2/3 days a week doing whatever. Not rich but content as getting on a bit now.

 

[Boso]

Headage payments over here are €21,- per ewe, per year. Will not make you rich but does help with some of the costs.
I get € 400,- per ha per year to maintain solar sites and moorland, ha subsidies go to the landowner. I try to only graze areas that make money from april-november and after that go to nearby farmers.
Summer grazing is all pp/moorland/heather so no fert/muck or slurry= slow growth.

Almost rentfree wintergrazing(i pay with jars of honey from my bees), however no turnips, lots of mustard.
No winterhousing.
Feedcost extremely low imho, atm €6,- per ewe per year including her lambs. Mostly mineral buckets and urea molasses licks.
Meds next yo nothing. Eartags a relatively expensive, think last order was around €2.50 per set.

Dogs, machinery and replacement/flock expansion is expensive.
Dogs €1k per dog per year (feed, meds, housing, being able to buy a new one 6-8 years later). Two workers at the moment and one retired one which turns money into sh!t

Especially the metal is costly. Even if its a 1965 Deutz 4005 and an 1982 Ford Cargo, keeping it on the road is expensive. Insurance for tractor and lorry combined is €1200,- per year. Some maintenance, repairs and the two oldies cost +- €2500,- a year.
The daily driver cost €5k a year (diesel, taxes, insurance, repairs etc).

With the above, I would need 500 ewes to live a little. Income from headage, summer grazing and lambs would be around €100k combined. In my case, dogs, quad, tractor, lorry, diesel, taxes, feed, insurance, fencing material, flock expansion, replacements, chainsaws, fuel and some contracting would be 25-30k a year. At the moment only running 160-180 ewes however most of my cost is fixed and not dependant on the number of animals.(which means I'm not making any money right now, just investing and expanding) Keeping just a few sheep is expensive.
However if you find your niche, you might not need a 1000 ewes...

Does it have to be lambs for meat?
If you milk sheep, 150-200 ewes would be enough to make a living over here.... Most sheep dairies are aprox 100 ewes. If someone develops a mobile sheep milking robot I'd use some lacaune genes and consider it myself.

 

[nxy]

Headage payments over here are €21,- per ewe, per year. Will not make you rich but does help with some of the costs.
I get € 400,- per ha per year to maintain solar sites and moorland, ha subsidies go to the landowner. I try to only graze areas that make money from april-november and after that go to nearby farmers.
Summer grazing is all pp/moorland/heather so no fert/muck or slurry= slow growth.

Almost rentfree wintergrazing(i pay with jars of honey from my bees), however no turnips, lots of mustard.
No winterhousing.
Feedcost extremely low imho, atm €6,- per ewe per year including her lambs. Mostly mineral buckets and urea molasses licks.
Meds next yo nothing. Eartags a relatively expensive, think last order was around €2.50 per set.

Dogs, machinery and replacement/flock expansion is expensive.
Dogs €1k per dog per year (feed, meds, housing, being able to buy a new one 6-8 years later). Two workers at the moment and one retired one which turns money into sh!t

Especially the metal is costly. Even if its a 1965 Deutz 4005 and an 1982 Ford Cargo, keeping it on the road is expensive. Insurance for tractor and lorry combined is €1200,- per year. Some maintenance, repairs and the two oldies cost +- €2500,- a year.
The daily driver cost €5k a year (diesel, taxes, insurance, repairs etc).

With the above, I would need 500 ewes to live a little. Income from headage, summer grazing and lambs would be around €100k combined. In my case, dogs, quad, tractor, lorry, diesel, taxes, feed, insurance, fencing material, flock expansion, replacements, chainsaws, fuel and some contracting would be 25-30k a year. At the moment only running 160-180 ewes however most of my cost is fixed and not dependant on the number of animals.(which means I'm not making any money right now, just investing and expanding) Keeping just a few sheep is expensive.
However if you find your niche, you might not need a 1000 ewes...

Does it have to be lambs for meat?
If you milk sheep, 150-200 ewes would be enough to make a living over here.... Most sheep dairies are aprox 100 ewes. If someone develops a mobile sheep milking robot I'd use some lacaune genes and consider it myself.

Where are you Boso?

Not many dairy sheep in the UK but perhaps this is an unexplored niche. At least the Deutz is going up in value and not down.

My father always said sheep farmers should restrict their investments to a dog and a stick............

 

[Boso]

In the Netherlands. Very close to German border and Eifel/Ardennes .
We only have a few dozen sheep dairies, probably less. Most use east friesians however on the texel isle, they milk Texel sheep a few months after weaning.

Your father was right, as in keep your operation as lean as possible.

 

[nxy]

In the Netherlands. Very close to German border and Eifel/Ardennes .
We only have a few dozen sheep dairies, probably less. Most use east friesians however on the texel isle, they milk Texel sheep a few months after weaning.

Your father was right, as in keep your operation as lean as possible.

You are talking about combining two of the things I hate most in the world sheep and milking.

I am in the Haute Vienne in France by the way, though a Brit by birth.

 

[andybk]

Why did the UK give up headage payments on livestock? They are now banging on about "rewarding farmers who provide public goods".

Public goods like attractive countryside and secure food supplies? They could start by bringing back headage payments or would it hurt too much to think the french were right all along.

Headage here just meant to many sheep kept that ruined the hills with over grazing , and lots of poor quality sheep just kept for sub , then that meant over supply of carp lambs , loose loose . The old variable premium was a better system , gov payment top up for lambs that hit spec and weight .

 

[nxy]

Headage here just meant to many sheep kept that ruined the hills with over grazing , and lots of poor quality sheep just kept for sub , then that meant over supply of carp lambs , loose loose . The old variable premium was a better system , gov payment top up for lambs that hit spec and weight .

I can't comment too much on sheep (I am really a cattle farmer) but headage payments have been tweaked over the years here rather than abolished. There are limits here on stocking rates and minimum calves/lambs produced to prevent the system being abused. The stocking rate varies even down to departmental ( like english county) level so the the rate is right for the area.

I should know about playing the system, in the late 90s, back in england every year we bought ewe lambs in Scotland and kept them on turnips on land that was not eligible for cereal payments. In May they were all sold and we grew a poor crop of heavily subsidised flax. We got ewe premium and flax payments whilst producing very little. The system here would prevent such abuse.

 

[CopperBeech]

I dont really agree with the whole headage thing, its bad enough as it is with various things keeping uneconomic farmers in the driving seat.

For me, from what I've seen, my biggest costs and time killers all revolve around the nature of my ground, which is spread out, on short term leases and unfenced. I run around 1000 ewes and if it was on a ring fenced farm, with stock netting, I think it would be a very pleasant job with a lot more free time! I burn a lot of diesel, own a lot of fencing, and need a level of staff to be able to do what I do properly, but essentially the sheep themselves are a small element of cost / time.

 

[SteveHants]

I reckon 1000 would be about right if prices fell back to £80 and you were producing fat lambs. Only basing this on the fact that I ran 500 and worked 4 days a week.

 

[Mc115reed]

300 ewes here, work 60-100hours a week tractor driving in summer and winter 3000 lambs and drive a gritter 5 months of the year wouldn’t say life’s that great tbf I survive but only because the bank manager can’t afford for me too die