How to sell sheep
HOW I SOLD MY FIRST LIVESTOCK without a sale barn | Dorper Sheep Farming
0:00 / 0:00
Timecodes:
this is kind of surreal nine months ago
i went out to pick up my first live
soccer now
i'm going out to sell
my first livestock so we are about 10
hours
out from the launch of my very first
livestock sale i've launched a lot of
products in my life but i've never
launched any with four legs and a
beating heart
so i think we're about to make history
[Music]
shepherdess at harmony farms here coming
at you today with a total recap on my
first
livestock sale
there are some things i'm gonna change
but overall i was so incredibly thankful
for how
my first livestock sale went and i'm
gonna walk you through exactly what i
sold and some of the strategies that
went into it
first and foremost how did i sell my
lambs well i have two different ways
that i can market and sell my dorper
sheep two different products that they
can end up as and one is livestock
feeder animals for other small farms to
finish the process of growing a lamb and
process themselves
or breeding stock ranchers can come in
and buy
rams or use from me to build up their
flocks whether existing or new
and then i have
dead stock i guess it would be which is
a meat product i can sell my dorpor
lamb as a gourmet grass finished
lamb product i get a lot of questions
this is a side note as to how
dorper meat tastes
guys i've never tasted a meat like it it
is absolutely incredible they basically
produce the most tender and delicate
meat you will ever have but
back on track
this year i sold my livestock at
shepherdessdorpers.com which is a
website that i custom built
for
my dorper sheep sales i did not do an
auction i did
a fixed price listing now while i did
pay a little bit of attention to market
values
i also did price my products based on
what they are which is a highly niche
grass
based livestock and my customers were
coming to me understanding
what went into raising these animals
whether i'm successful or not it is my
desire to set a bit of a bar
with respect to
grass-based livestock sales as a
first-timer coming in
i was looking
for basically what i'm selling now i was
looking for livestock from operations
that managed on forage so that i could
take
not only the economic advantage of that
kind of a system into my system but that
i could also take the health of that
animal into my system so i sold
not
as an auction basis but as a fixed
priced
animal and i moved these both on my
website as well as through
local channels not 100
of my sales came through my website i
have a series of local channels that i
also use to move and market my sheep and
while into the future i believe i can
get to that 100 mark through
shepherdessdorpers.com that's going to
come with building a customer
base but i am extremely optimistic with
the volume that i was able to move
through my direct website this year and
i anticipate it will be even more
next year
so how i did it and how i will change it
i sold my lambs once they were weaned
but i didn't really begin the sales
process until
about four weeks after they were weaned
i was managing weaned lambs in a
separate group because the rams were at
that point mature and able to breed so i
was running those groups on pasture all
while coordinating
the building of this platform
marketing these animals sales logistics
shipping and all of that
and in my job if you guys know i am a
digital marketer by trade and it's
digital marketing for physical products
and the way that that works is products
come into a warehouse
they sit nice and tidy on a shelf while
i market them
and then shipping partners
will ship those products straight to the
customer
well in my livestock sales
i had two maintenance four-legged
animals with a beating heart
while i waited for those sales to happen
so how am i going to change this into
the future to make this easier on myself
and to make it honestly more of a
sustainable solution to sell livestock
straight off of my farm thankfully it's
a very easy fix and here's how i'm going
to do it lord willing for 2022. i am
going to start selling the lambs once
they start dropping in march i'm taking
pre-orders and once they're weaned march
april at the end of may i'm probably
going to have one
big happy pickup day and what this means
is that i can spend time marketing and
promoting what i have for sale
while the lamb's moms are essentially
taking care of them and then once their
moms are done taking care of them
i can ship them to their new owners
and that is going to be a much much
better solution one in which i may be
able to get a little more sleep
yeah do a little bit better on that
front but overall
so incredibly grateful because like i
said it's something that can be done not
with 10
but really with 10 000 there's no limit
with respect to
the volume
that can be handled through an internet
based sales system like this the sales
portion of it
didn't take a whole whole lot it was the
logistics that needed to be refined
so guys
subscribe to my newsletter
follow my blog and as always i look
forward to seeing you in the next video
until then
keep on
farming on
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
you
