With the growing of the global economic industries in this new era, encourage many people to challenge themselves to be part of these movements. The promising profit and undeniable amount of money in this hard life has changed people mindset as consumer into producer. Starting from fashion industry, technology, and most important thing is livestock industry – predicted would grow lager as long as the time keep ticking.
In this article of 3 important things you should know before farming sheep will moot one of the example of growing farming business that people start to give attention. Among many livestock animals, lamb has taken part of one of the most preferable small ruminant to be raise. Not only because of the famous production of their meat – especially lamb meat – sheep also become an important producer of wool in the fashion industries. This fact sanction sheep as a profitable business that you could ever try.
The necessity of food keep increased side by side with the growth of people’s numbers every year all over the world. That is why farming business not only become money sources – but one of the key to overcome the issue. It’s recommended for you to begin with administer a small farm at first, especially of you’re a beginner. Beside the general or majority paradigm of sheep – evidently, there are some people whose interested to take care of sheep as pet at home.
There’s a lot of surprising facts of sheep you’ll find out that would mesmerize you. The beauty of their character, the adorably appearance that would always bring you joy – all those things would occur on your life during the nursery time. Importantly is, you must devoted yourself to keep your sheep healthy, such the way to boost their immune system and giving them nutrition food every day. Yes, that is your duty – the basic duty of raising animals (surely not only sheep).
There are a lot of things should be your consideration and basic guideline before you really want to invest in a sheep farming business. With these 3 important things you should know before farming sheep would guide you through all the process and mechanism of how things work in this particular business. So, let’s take a look, my friends!
1. Calculate All The Resources
Calculated every resource you have will be the first step to design the production system that will support your business efficiently. To produce high-quality meat or wool you should know how to manage your sheep and count every single detail, such the number of sheep and other functional support tools which needed. These things are some of the resources you should calculate:
Land
You should consider the size of the land you needed which suit with the number of sheep you want to raise. You need to estimate your land productive capacity to produce maximum product every season. You have to make sure that you have enough pasture for all you sheep (ewes and rams are included). Majority of an average ewe requires 0,75 ton of pasture every year.
This number also depend on how much land do you have, how much the pasture that you can harvest every year. So, at least you could estimate the number of sheep you can raise based on how much of land did you have.
Basic Equipment Tools
To run sheep business you should have all the equipment and some machines such a machine to cut pastures and harvest hays. Or perhaps you decided to contract a contractor to do the harvest – or, you prefer to purchase all the food stock? These are some issues you should think – make everything fit with your budget. In case – if you decided to purchasing hays, it easier and cheaper to buy the hay if you only needed approximate 100 tons of hay a year.
Also, you need to provide a proper sheep equipment, such: lambing pens, fences, sorting pens, castrating, shearing, ear tagging, tail docking, and etc. Don’t forget to build a store building to keep all the equipment and a medical building for ill sheep.
Labor
It is impossible to take care of sheep all alone. You need another labor to help you with food, janitor, or people who watch your sheep all the time. Consider that sheep are easier to manage than other farm animal, perhaps it’s not hard for the labor to take care of them. The labor must give much attention to the necessities of sheep.
Market
The question, after all the products are ready, how you market it? Yes, you need to have a good view about this thing. Arrange some marketing plans to promote your products. What kind of sheep you will breed – breading stock, slaughter or feeder lamb, wool, or you plan to breed all those sheep? You must study what kind of sheep you want to breed.
2. Purchase The Right Breed
Remember this, always purchase the good quality sheep from trustworthy breeders and farms. Purchase the breed which is match with your business purpose. It could be more cheap and easier to manage if you have set up breeding program. Or it would be easy if you decided to produce all the products of sheep – then you can purchase any sheep are available. But, do consider these tips before you buy sheep:
- Always buy a long breeding season, or at least a year around breading season.
- Make sure that the sheep are in early sexual maturity.
- Breeds that could do multiple births.
- have a high average daily gains.
3. How to Feed Your Sheep
As a small ruminant, the main food of sheep are grasses and hays. The things about feeding your sheep is you have to make sure that they get all the nutrients the needed. The sheep almost get the large portion of nutrient from the good hays and pastures, but still – you need to give them extra supplement such minerals, proteins, or grains and other vitamins supplement to boost their healthy. But, please be careful with cooper – for cooper is toxic to sheep.
So, you need to read the label of materials contained in the supplement before feed them to your sheep. The last is water. Keep providing your sheep with fresh and clean water – it is best if you place it in the water container to prevent water spilling at any cause.