Stocking Sheep per acre

[Benn]

Hi all
This question may be impossible to answer but I'd like a rough idea how many sheep could keep per acre

I'm in south west all feilds pp on heavy'ish ground.

At minute I got 15 ewes and a ram on four and quarter acres,which split into five paddocks so I'm hoping that be enough to keep them on with lambs.am I right in thinking this?
The farm got another 26acees and another ten acres that can rent.
I want to know how many ewes with lambs ,say lambing 180% (I hope) ,lambing outdoors in furture,I could keep per acre?
not wanting to be overstocked and have problems.
Is split most feilds into 3-4 acre paddocks and rotate.
3 per acre?
Cheers

 

[Man_in_black]

What breed/size are they?

 

[Benn]

There llyens and they be around 60-65kg.
Depending how many ewes I could have they be put to either llyen or llyen and Char Rams.

 

[GTB]

There llyens and they be around 60-65kg.
Depending how many ewes I could have they be put to either llyen or llyen and Char Rams.

Two or three per acre unless you want to make things hard for yourself. Less stock means less disease, less costs and less work so more profit.

 

[unlacedgecko]

In a similar theme, what kind of stocking density do people use for stubble turnips? Looking to strip graze from now till end of March...

 

[Frank-the-Wool]

A good rule of thumb on PP improved grass is around 4.5 to the acre summer and just 1 in the winter unless you want to be feeding additional forage. Being in the S W you might get away with 1.5 in the winter.
The stubble turnip question is the same as "how long is a piece of string"! You can do it scientifically by taking a square meter measurement and then working out the dry matter. It all goes wrong though if you get bad weather!!

 

[Benn]

Ok so max ewe per acre can keep all year round on 30 acres would be around 45 breeding ewes?this is not housing at all or extra feed maybe bit of hay.
Trying see if it worth it renting 30 acres for £70 per acre if only had 45 ewes and 81 lambs that made £60 per head if lucky from them would only make £2760 after paying the rent and not inc Med bills,knacker man.
Not much in this sheep buisness is there .

How many ewes do you all keep on what acreage?

 

[GTB]

Ok so max ewe per acre can keep all year round on 30 acres would be around 45 breeding ewes?this is not housing at all or extra feed maybe bit of hay.
Trying see if it worth it renting 30 acres for £70 per acre if only had 45 ewes and 81 lambs that made £60 per head if lucky from them would only make £2760 after paying the rent and not inc Med bills,knacker man.
Not much in this sheep buisness is there .

How many ewes do you all keep on what acreage?

You could keep 60 ewes and their lambs quite comfortably on 30 acres.

We keep 2000 ewes and 600 tupped ewe lambs on just under a thousand acres of PP and 1500 acres of rough grazing (moorland) plus about 90 suckler cows and all offspring to forward store or finished. Also sell all lambs finished. Have cut back ewe numbers from 2500 to 2000 this year due to environmental schemes on hill plus trying to reduce costs etc.

 

[andybk]

Ok so max ewe per acre can keep all year round on 30 acres would be around 45 breeding ewes?this is not housing at all or extra feed maybe bit of hay.
Trying see if it worth it renting 30 acres for £70 per acre if only had 45 ewes and 81 lambs that made £60 per head if lucky from them would only make £2760 after paying the rent and not inc Med bills,knacker man.
Not much in this sheep buisness is there .

How many ewes do you all keep on what acreage?

thats why many of us keep higher stocking rate , and rent winter keep on dairy / arable , sheep will do quite well on cheap dirty stubbles and volunteers ,(unless you can do roots ) to rest our own ground for lambing and build a bank of grass , but labour and fencing will cost first few years , and any getting out will damage reputation

 

[M-J-G]

Some guys up here are running close on 4 mules (including cutting) on pretty good land, and we're in the permafrost in comparison to the climate in the SW, so I'd have thought that down there it would be a lot more.

 

[Benn]

there so many variables so I'm guessing that's why so many different answers,
I'm trying get costings together to see if worth me buying in more ewes next year and paying rent for land.
Any outside lambers care to share there rough coatings for typical year?

 

[Benn]

Costings

 

[beltextexel]

1350 Texel ewes on 500 ac although 200 ac of that is hill ground that we only use from 10th may till around now. We try and graze all lambing fields hard before tupping then sheep go to winter keep on dairy farm or turnips from December. If we had 500 ac of good lowland grass we could run 2500 ewes including making our own silage I reckon. We also run around 200 pure hoggs on top of the 1350 ewes on our current acerage.

 

[Beef farmer]

Two or three per acre unless you want to make things hard for yourself. Less stock means less disease, less costs and less work so more profit.

Whilst I agree with you statement, you will have more profit per ewe, but under stocked you won't have many to sell, where as if you were slightly over stocked, you'd have more to sell, so yes at a slightly smaller margin but more margins to help pay the bills.

 

[Derrick Hughes]

Good land should keep 5 to acre, we kept 3000 on 650 but some of that land was poor and we didn't use much bagmuck

 

[GTB]

Whilst I agree with you statement, you will have more profit per ewe, but under stocked you won't have many to sell, where as if you were slightly over stocked, you'd have more to sell, so yes at a slightly smaller margin but more margins to help pay the bills.

Higher stocking rate pays better when there's a good strong trade for lambs. Lower stocking rate and therefore reduced costs works better on years like this one. We were heavily stocked during the 80's, 90's and 00's and it catches up with you in the end. Unless you're absolutely on the ball your vet and feed costs can spiral out of control. Sometimes less is more.

 

[Grouse]

Llyn sheep are pretty big - almost bordering on a Mule. We can stock around 1.8 to 2 to the acre in the winter with no supplements other than the odd bucket on good grazing land / improved pasture

 

[neilo]

A job to work it out for the OP, without knowing what the pp is like too, and what winter feeding is based on.

If it helps.....
I run 500 Highlander ewes (similar feeding requirements to Lleyns I suspect), and 200 pedigree Charollais ewes and around 100 yearling rams (which I reckon need close to double what the Highlanders do for maintenance). If we call that 1000 'Lleyn equivalents', for arguement's sake, I run those on 220ac of pp (mostly old but some reseeds just coming in). All Highlanders are run on no concs and all lambs finished off forage. Half of Charollais ewes are inwintered (lambing early), other half are forage only. All Rams on zero concs.

I use about 50 bales of silage for the Charollais ewes lambing inside, everything else is on roots & no bales, so mostly off the grassland from Christmas until mid-March. I don't use a lot of fert (average 75kg N/ha over the grassland) and intend reducing that as get more clover in. I only make 100 or so bales of silage, as it gets away from the grazing rotation (selling surplus) and probably 100 round bales of hay every other year (mostly sold).

More reseeds would allow a much higher summer stocking rate, particularly with more rotational grazing, but not an option when a chunk of the farm is old parkland & pp. Still room for an increase as existing grassland output improves through management IMO. We all have to try to use what we have to the best of our abilities.


It's your wintering arrangements that limit your overall stocking rate most. A low stocking rate through the summer will lead to poor forage utilisation & poor performance.

 

[beltextexel]

Profit per acre is more important than profit per ewe remember.

 

[gone up the hill]

Good land should keep 5 to acre, we kept 3000 on 650 but some of that land was poor and we didn't use much bagmuck

Before long that land will become sheep sick at that stocking rate!!

You need a mix of cattle/ sheep to keep both healthy if they are grazing on the same ground for year after year!!