I am so very glad I have found your channel, its incredibly difficult to find anyone sharing content about hair sheep or meat sheep in general. I have been saving up for 3 years to purchase a home and 10 acres to start my own sheep farm. I fell in love with sheep because of my border collies who i went to herding training with, and now I love the sheep too and want to be able to have both haha! Seriously considering Katahdin or Dorper... Dorper's always seem nicer for meat but those Katahdins i've met are usually better for parasite resistance. Thank you for being on RU-vid!!
seasoned shepherds all around the world, particularly at the mediterranean area where i reside have chosen sheep or goats for msassive shepherding for all the reasons u mentioned at this video, 1000s of years of small acreage farming have shown the efficiency of those animals, it was very weird for me to see that theyre not so popular in the us, happy to see that there is ay least one person that has discovered the obvious right decision than dealing with a less efficient, super demanding animal like cowsm welldone!!!
Thanks to The Lord.I purchased sheep for many of the reasons that you mentioned but did foresee the downsides. Grateful for the encouragement. I think we made the right decision.
@@theShepherdess Your very welcome. Our unique ways to dream create and share are limitless in a world where God gave us all the tools and people we need for each and every one of us to be providers for everyone.
Historically lamb and mutton, adult sheep meat, were a popular meat. Unfortunately, during WW2, servicemen were served rancid mutton and the popularity took a nose dive. It never regained its popularity. It probably needs a campaign like pork did to raise its popularity among home cooks.
@@theShepherdess hehe 😂 I would actually love to be a farmer at some point, but at the moment I don't have my parent's permission to turn their property into a farm 🤪
You mentioned in this video the ability to run 5 to 6 sheep on 5 acres, but in another video you mentioned 80 sheep on your 25 acres. I have 14 acres in Henderson, Tx. Probably 9 acres of which is bahiagrass pasture. How many sheep per acre of pasture can you actually have? Love your channel. Happened upon it as we came closer to actually moving forward on preparing our property for a profitable livestock. I’m also curious on your pasture grass as I was concidering tilling the whole place and planting burmuda.
I always recommend starting small and testing what your land can support in its own. I started with just 1 sheep per acre and within the next 5 years plan to build to 3-5 sheep per acre, scaling back if my grass doesn’t support it. No need to till up any existing forage: sheep will do well on basically any forage quality and will improve your pasture year after year with the fertility their manure produces. Hope this helps!
Dorpers are bred for dry climates, so if you are raising them in a rainfall area of 40" or more you need to monitor and cull for better resistance. Being that we live in a rainfall zone of around 50" it requires some intensive management on our farm.
Hardware disease for cattle I would think is another good reason. Maybe all you have is a small pasture or paddock with a burned down shed or a lot filled with old rusty cars. Cows are very likely to eat nails, rusty bolts or wire and get hardware disease whereas sheep are not.
All of this is correct BUT plz do not be the people that get hair sheep like dorpers and katahdins. The only reason you got them is cuz ur to lazy to shear your sheep. There's plenty of awsome breeds out there that are much better options.
There is little or no market for wool. Shearing is costly and would reduce profitability on any modern sheep farming operation. Thank you for commenting! -the Shepherdess
@@theShepherdess it's not that expensive if you do it yourself. And if your really are concerned about profitability why won't you choose a breed that can actually reach market weight in a decent time and gain more than half a pound a day