making a profit on raising goats and sheep? (small scale)

[itsasmallfarm]

hello everyone, itsasmallfarm here. asking a few questions about goats and sheep.

okay a little back story, i live on 21 acres, and am thinking about raising live stock for profit (small scale so not hundreds of animals) right now i raise chickens and ducks (there pets) but now would like to raise something more for profit (you know make some extra money on the side) so i guess i have a few questions about it. (also my dad has horses so we have like 5-7 acres of horse pasture)

1. first off i should ask can you raise sheep and goats together? or do i need different pens for them/pasture for them?
2. next i should ask, is it even possible to make income/profit off of a few animals? am thinking about the meat market but what else is there (not crazy about milk) is wool worth looking into? and how many animals would i need to break even?
3. is it worth it? what are your guys thoughts and spending the time and investment on raising these animals?

and lastly do they make good pets? if i decide i want a pet goat or sheep lol.

thank you for reading itsasmallfarm out

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Goats and sheep have different mineral requirements. Goats require copper which is toxic to sheep.

There are differences in their diet and differences in their behaviors. I personally wouldn't keep them together. Sheep will graze a pasture short, and goats will generally leave about 4-6 inches of grass. Goats are browsers and prefer scrub and twigs to grass.

I've had both as pets mostly.

You can make a profit depending on what you want to do with them.

 

[Zoomie]

OK, if you get sheep, do NOT allow them anywhere near the stuff you have for horses, and not only the feed but the mineral block. Sheep are copper sensitive. They will sure eat it but if they eat enough it can even kill them.

You can make a profit but it's a lot of hard work. I raised Jacob sheep for years. I made money by: shearing the sheep "perfectly" (very few second cuts) and selling to spinners but it has to be VERY clean wool; selling breeding stock; shearing for other people; selling manure; selling lamb meat and tanning and selling the hides. I also taught spinning and weaving and sold my handspun handwoven products. When I was running the farm that way, I always made at least a small profit every year. But understand: when I started out, we're talking about maybe $20.00 over my costs (it DID get better, LOL). This is not an easy way to make a living.

If I were to do it over again I'd probably just put up a really good fence and break up my field into smaller pastures so I could rotate. As noted sheep can be hard on the grass. Then I'd get a nice meat breed, and one that sheds, so that there is no shearing. That is really hard on your arms. However... one issue with meat sheep is that so many of the small slaughterhouse operations were shut down about... huh, maybe, 10 years ago? Due to new government regulations that favored large operations over smaller ones. So that's why I'm not doing this: the closest slaughterhouse is well over a hundred miles away. When you're making your plan you have to take all this into consideration. It's hard to break even, let alone make a profit, if you have to do a 300-mile round trip twice to have the meat ready to sell. (You have to drop them off, then come back usually a week later and pick up your meat.)

Sheep and goats both make nice pets. I like them both, but only have goats now.

 

[Welshies]

Horses, in my experience, are huge money drains. If you want to make a profit they'd be the first to go, at least on my farm, unless I was training projects or training my client's horses.
Sheep are copper sensitive, as already stated. They can be kept with horses just fine but you have to ensure they can't access any copper-infused minerals available to your horses (think: mineral blocks).
Sheep are docile and easy to handle.
Goats are easy to handle but quite playful.
If you live in a forested area goats would do better. Sheep do better on pure pasture.
Goats do better without any added feed than sheep do, but goat meat isn't as in-demand. You may look into goat cheese, Norwegians buy it by the pounds.
You can save money on shelter, feed and water by:

• Using cheap or free recycled materials for shelters (think leftover scraps from fencing and hardware companies)
• Buying okay hay that is edible, but not super high quality. Obviously don't get poor quality, but people regularly sell last year's hay for cheap and as long as it was a good cut (do your research) and not moldy, it's fine.

 

[Wickedchicken6]

Horses, in my experience, are huge money drains. If you want to make a profit they'd be the first to go, at least on my farm, unless I was training projects or training my client's horses.
Sheep are copper sensitive, as already stated. They can be kept with horses just fine but you have to ensure they can't access any copper-infused minerals available to your horses (think: mineral blocks).
Sheep are docile and easy to handle.
Goats are easy to handle but quite playful.
If you live in a forested area goats would do better. Sheep do better on pure pasture.
Goats do better without any added feed than sheep do, but goat meat isn't as in-demand. You may look into goat cheese, Norwegians buy it by the pounds.
You can save money on shelter, feed and water by:

• Using cheap or free recycled materials for shelters (think leftover scraps from fencing and hardware companies)
• Buying okay hay that is edible, but not super high quality. Obviously don't get poor quality, but people regularly sell last year's hay for cheap and as long as it was a good cut (do your research) and not moldy, it's fine.

I respectfully disagree with the feeding of lower quality hay to sheep for the most part unless the breed of sheep only produces singles/some twins or the lambs are almost self-sufficient but you're not rebreeding yet.

High producing ewes that produce a high number of quads, triplets and twins require a high-quality forage/grain as their pregnancy progresses to provide the required nutrients for her and her lambs with the limited amount of space she'll have. Failing to do so can set a producer up to experience various problems; everything from pregnancy ketosis to vaginal prolapse. Multiple healthy lambs from a healthy producing ewe help make that money. You never want things to go wrong where you'll have orphan lambs and the added costs of feeding milk replacer. (At least I sure don't...lol)

I am not as knowledgeable about goats. In addition to the great points everyone made above, with sheep, flock management and your fencing requirements may come into play. If you raise wool sheep you have to have a shearer or shear them yourself. Here it's almost impossible to get a shearer. This can affect what fencing requirements you may require. I raise a shedding breed so wool insulating electric fencing is never a factor.

 

[Duck Lover88]

we have our goats and sheep together and they get along great... and it saves fencing

 

[itsasmallfarm]

thank you everyone for the answers, if its okay i have a few more questions.

okay so this is my idea please tell me if it would fail,

okay so i would buy some young animals of the year (for example goats or sheep) and raise them to butcher age, sell them to market and repeat the next year, hoping to make more money they spend on them. would this work?

 

[Welshies]

thank you everyone for the answers, if its okay i have a few more questions.

okay so this is my idea please tell me if it would fail,

okay so i would buy some young animals of the year (for example goats or sheep) and raise them to butcher age, sell them to market and repeat the next year, hoping to make more money they spend on them. would this work?

Personally I would suggest you could do that, but also invest in breeding stock. Buying butcher animals every year adds up.

 

[twisted-acres-farm]

One problem I see is trying to both keep the "herd" small and yet have enough animals to justify keeping a Breeding Male, and then making sure you have access to more Unrelated males in a year or two if you are keeping some of his daughters for breeding as well. Also have you looked into Yaks ????

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

thank you everyone for the answers, if its okay i have a few more questions.

okay so this is my idea please tell me if it would fail,

okay so i would buy some young animals of the year (for example goats or sheep) and raise them to butcher age, sell them to market and repeat the next year, hoping to make more money they spend on them. would this work?

I don't think that would be very profitable. It cost a lot to feed kids and lambs to market weight if you don't have the dam to nurse them. You'd be further ahead to raise a few beef steer.