Sunday, May 4, 2014

Is it Time to Sell The Sheep?

My husband and I have been keeping sheep since buying the 10 acre hobby farm.  The sheep are important as they do keep the grass chewed down and as such they prevent it from becoming a fire hazard.  In the fall tall dry grass is a real concern, but equally so are the risks in the spring, in fact a farm near us had a big fire caused by a fire in their burn barrel that got out of control.  As far as I know they lost their house, barn, and garage.

As such getting totally out of sheep is out of the question, but we are toying with the idea of selling all the lambs and the younger ewes and not getting a ram this fall.

This last winter was very hard on me physically.  Not only did we have a ridiculous amount of snow to deal with this winter but my back went out on two occasions and I could hardly move for days.  We lost 4 lambs over the winter, which really was not too bad considering the winter we had.

Mrs Dark Brown Barbado and her lamb

Some of our ewes are getting older, particularly Diamond, who was one of our first ewes, and Mrs Dark Brown Barbado, who we bought at auction very early on.  It is time they got a break from having lambs.
As such what I am thinking is to sell the lambs and the younger ewes, keeping the older ones and just letting them have a "retirement home" more or less.

I will still have to buy hay and oats for them in the winter, and will no longer have the benefit of selling lambs to offset the costs of feeding them, it will will still be some work, but less worry.

So I have the summer ahead to consider what to do with my sheep.  My daughter thinks it would be great to get horses instead, and while I would love horses, they are not exactly cheap. 

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