Rural Gardening: Lambs!, 1 by gallesfarm

gallesfarm wrote:
Well, ideally I would sell some as breeding stock, but I haven't found any customers so far. There's a fair bit of competition with other breeders of Icelandics in this neck of the woods. And the economy hasn't been conducive to selling purebred livestock.

So, what we don't keep we end up selling as freezer lamb. I've sold some really nice breeding quality stock as freezer lamb. :-( But we can't keep them all. Hay is too expensive now. Thing is, you can't break even, never mind make a profit, selling freezer lamb. At least, not in this area of the country. In places where people can graze nearly all year, and not have to feed hay for those months, they can sell meat lambs and do OK.

We try to do low-input shepherding. We picked a breed that doesn't require a lot of intervention at lambing (some breeds are bad mothers, or always seem to need assistance somehow when lambing), that has a naturally short tail so tail-docking isn't necessary and that matures to slaughter weight before breeding season, meaning you don't have to castrate the ram lambs because they aren't going to be trying to breed everyone at 3 months of age.. That are generally good mothers and produce enough milk to feed their lambs. That are reliable twinners (though we've had our share of single lambs). We select for parasite resistance, good conformation, soft fleece, good temperaments.

I've had people who were potentially interested. I've had people come to visit, or call me on the phone and spend an hour or more in one conversation talking about sheep. But somehow they always fade away. This is no different from what other breeders experience, but it is frustrating.

The photo is one of our most recent lambs. He's out of two of my best sheep. Hopefully he'll go on to make more lambs someday and not end up in the freezer.