Raising Feeder Lambs
Short-season sheep production allows you to be a part-time shepherd.
Short-season sheep production allows you to be a part-time shepherd.
For the most part, the beef cattle industry that supplies meat to U.S. major supermarkets involves three distinctly different operations. These specific phases may not be typical of small hobby farms or homesteads, but we can steal a page from their methodology and adapt the tactics to a small lamb-production farm.
The first phase of most livestock enterprises starts with a brood herd. Cows, ewes or even sows are kept and bred for their offspring. The underlings can be used as replacements if the operator is trying to increase herd numbers.
Additionally, there is absolutely nothing wrong with keeping animals for pets or the tranquility they bring to a small country farm. However, if production is the aim, some type of program should be in place to have the farm run smoothly, improve the soil, and make the production profitable and efficient.
Please be aware, production livestock may not be for all readers. Don’t become too attached to the lambs. This program is not about pets. In fact, this article is about raising lambs for the freezer, so if you are uncomfortable with that type of operation, stick to other types of farming endeavors. We’re OK with that!
Before we go too far, and for clarity, let’s discuss the three major phases of any livestock production. These three phases correspond to the growth steps of the young.
Phase One
As stated, the first phase is a brood herd. In the cattle business, it’s called the cow-calf phase. The mother and young are often called pairs. The producer keeps a manageable number of mature cows for the calves they provide each year. The operator realizes his or her profit when weaned calves are sold.
Typically, the calves are sold at somewhere between 450 and 600 pounds. The operator keeps a few youngsters to replace any aging animals, but probably 80 to 85% of the weaned animals are sold privately or at auction to a second operator who should be set to raise animals through the second phase.
Phases Two & Three
The second phase means growers with a bit of available pasture will purchase and raise weaned young animals to a heavier weight and ready for finishing. Cattle people call phase No. 2 the stocker-yearling phase. For sheep and goat people, we just think of it as the feeder phase.
Remember, these animals (regardless of species) are weaned and ready to leave their mothers. The lambs should have a developed rumen and be fully capable of making the transition from mother’s milk to grass, hay or other coarse feeds. At the end of this second phase, large corporate farm operations often send cattle or heavier feeder sheep to a feedlot for finishing.
Finishing is the third and final stage of the meat industry and simply means fattening the animal and creating a desirable finished product for consumers. Hobby farmers and production growers now realize that many consumers are choosing meat that isn’t sent to a feedlot but simply finished out in the pasture with the meat sold as “grass-fed.” Finishing on grass may take bit more time and may be slightly more expensive, but the results are a healthier, more natural and tastier product.
Lamb Logistics
If you happen to be a very small farmer, or new to livestock, you may be reluctant to take on the risks involved with keeping farm animals. You’re right; drawbacks for many livestock operations can seem tricky or overly complicated at first. For example, concerning sheep, you may not want to keep breeding rams, worry about shearing or run the risks that can come along when ewes are giving birth.
However, raising feeder lambs is good for your soil, healthy for you and can provide some extra spending money for making improvements to the farm.
Raising feeder lambs eliminates nearly all the problems just mentioned. You need not shear or keep rams, and since you are only keeping animals on pasture for five to six months, your pasture can go fallow and recover in your off-season.
In fact, your pasture won’t just recover but will be improved by the manure and urine left behind by your small temporary flock. As the fallow season progresses, you’ll also break the cycle of any parasites that might otherwise persist in your pasture. Another wise move might be to take the time to introduce some cool-season grass seed in the off-season or provide some irrigation to encourage recovery in the field. The fact is small spaces are fairly easy to manage and each season you may see marked improvements in your soil quality.
Here is what you’ll need to become a part-time shepherd who only keeps and finishes grass-fed lambs. First, you will need a field with a minimum space of about
1⁄ acre. That may not seem like much, but you can actu
4 ally raise about three feeder sheep on a little field that is only 100-by-100 feet. The space must have secure fencing, water, shade, some kind of minimal protective shed and a feed trough. It will be all the better, if you have more space, but 1⁄ to 1⁄ acre is truly all that is needed if it
4 2 has some good quality grass or clover.
A perfect size for many hobby farms would be an operation involving a target number of about five sheep per year. That space should be a bit over the
1⁄4- acre minimum space. Check out the photo on page 74. A herd of five feeder lambs in my area of the country will net nearly $1,000 and still leave one lamb left over for personal consumption.
Key to Success
The best way to success is to not pay high prices for your newly weaned lambs. If you have local 4-H and/ or FFA organization close by, find out where they buy lambs for the county fairs and junior livestock shows. You don’t want to find club lambs that will make weight during your local fair, because those competition lambs will sell at very high prices. However, you will want the names of several producers with flocks. It’s very smart to arrange a farm visit before you’re ready to purchase.
You may also want to attend livestock auctions, talk to your local farm advisor or even inquire at local feed-supply stores.
Just remember, lambs destined for competition at the county fairs are going to be too expensive to be profitable. You want to buy so-called spring weaned lambs at about 50 pounds, and you want to sell grass-fed finished lambs six months later, at about
130 pounds. Your entire profit will come from the weight gain, so expensive, weaned, county-fair lambs simply won’t make you a profit. The farm advisor will know reputable sheep people that will sell healthy and reliable animals.
Many of the fast-growing sheep breeds will work. Hampshire, Suffolk, Southdown and crosses are all very reliable as freezer market lambs. Of course, auctions are a somewhat less trustworthy. Quality-weaned lambs are available all across the country, but you may have to do a little research to find them.
Stuff Ewe Need to Know
Once you transport your feeder lambs home, they should be introduced to their new pen and kept confined until they adjust to the move. If you have lush green pasture, be cautious when releasing any
ruminant animal to a new field. Cud-chewing critters break down cellulose with the aid of microbes that live in the rumen part of their gut. Lush moist greens cause a rapid bloom in the gut and animals may produce a frothy foam that can be difficult to expel. This condition, known as bloat, can be prevented by slowly introducing the new lambs to their new pasture.
You may have to cut and feed small amounts to control their consumption. Better yet, you may be able to buy weaned lambs that have already been on green pasture. Another option would be to feed baled grass hay or alfalfa, so they are relatively full before you release them to greener pastures. Just keep an eye on things for the first few days.
Your feeder lambs should adjust fairly quickly. They are probably already familiar with one another and should be about the same size. At harvest, five or six months later, it’s fairly important that all the lambs dress at about the same weight, and they should all be dispatched on the same day.
Sadly, of all livestock species, lambs actually have the worst dressing percentage. What we mean here, is that a 130-pound lamb will yield about a 65-pound carcass, and even less cut and wrapped product. The poor yield is due to a fairly large G.I. tract, and a heavy head and hide, neither of which is included in the carcass weight. Most lambs will carcass yield just slightly above 50%. Try to find buyers for your lambs early on in the process. Once the carcass is cut and wrapped, the weight of packaged edible product may only be 45 pounds or so.
seLL firsT, raise LaTer
It’s important to presell your lambs. Most growers, including myself, prefer to sell to friends, family or other acquaintances. Of course, once you sell your first few lambs in the fall, you’ll have repeat customers
wanting more the following year. Make sure customers are aware of the amount of meat they’ll likely receive and that the price may not be much lower than supermarket lamb. However, the grass-fed quality is likely to be much better. The USDA mandates that all meat sold in the U.S. be inspected. Nevertheless, producers can presell the lambs and then individual customers can have the meat cut and wrapped on their own. The idea here is that you have presold the lamb and are simply raising the lamb for your customer.
There are usually small companies in rural counties that specialize in ranch harvest. They will come to your location, do the work and then take the harvested lamb carcass to a meat locker of your choosing. There is, of course, a fee for this, but it’s simple and traditionally the fee is just added to the price of your lambs without markup. Your customer pays you for their lamb and the harvest fee. Each will then pay their own wrapping fee when they pick up their meat. These methods work out especially well because the purchaser can let the butcher know exactly how they would like their lamb cut and wrapped.
Raising short-season lambs is a simple program that is easily adapted to your schedule and will provide high quality grass fed lamb for the table. If you enjoy the taste of high quality lamb, you may find this type of operation easy, fairly risk free and even profitable, albeit on a small scale. Bill Graves is a college agriculture science professor from the West Coast. In addition to his short-season sheep, he keeps a small flock of laying hens on an almond orchard in California’s Sacramento Valley. He grew up on a largescale poultry farm with 20,000 laying hens and a herd of about 50 white-faced ewes.