my estimated gross revenue potential
with beef cattle on 23 acres would be 8
910
and my estimated gross revenue potential
for sheep on 23 acres is thirty one
thousand two hundred dollars
all right so i'm going to give you this
information in number one a dollar for
dollar pound for pound animal
productivity comparison i am also going
to give you a journey to cash flow
meaning the time that it takes to get
that investment that purchased animal
into a product you can sell and with
sheep that's also 200 to 300 faster than
beef and then i'm also going to give you
a real
time example of just how this has played
out for me in the past 18 months now in
my last video i did a pros and cons
sheep versus cows and i'm not going to
repeat any of that information but i
will include a link to that video in the
description below if you want to
backtrack there
this is all going to be in the context
of just hauling them off to a sale barn
i want to be really clear up front that
i do not advocate for sale barns but to
be fair i am using nationwide averages
as far as market prices for each animal
class and this is so that this video
will be universal in its application and
as i say that i also want to caution you
to be really careful these are numbers
based on my context in farming as you
watch this video sift it through your
own set of circumstances and be careful
before copying and pasting my farm
business plan onto your farm and
speaking of farm business plans i have a
free worksheet below it's the 100 000
farm business plan it's going to pose
seven questions that are going to help
you figure out how much of what i'm
getting ready to tell you will apply to
your farm setup all right first step is
estimated gross revenue potential on my
23 acres i can carry about 10 000 pounds
worth of animal and in the beef world
this would be nine productive cows and
in the sheep world this would be around
80
breeding use nine productive cows would
in the perfect world produce for me nine
calves to sell every year and those
calves would have a total weight of
hundred and 4950
pounds eighty breeding use would produce
a staggering ten thousand four hundred
pounds worth of saleable offspring every
year this has to do with the
reproductive capacity of sheep versus
cows and i covered that
in my previous video current usda market
prices for sheep are three dollars per
pound
cows are 150 to 180 if you're selling a
good quality beef steer my estimated
gross revenue potential with beef cattle
on 23 acres would be 8
910
and my estimated gross revenue potential
for sheep on 23 acres is 31
200
now my gross revenue potential is
actually higher than 31
200
i am running purebred full blood dorper
breeding stock they're going to bring
more than a sale barn i'm also running
value added consumer education and grass
based genetic selection which further
enhances the value of my product here
also really quickly in reference to the
80 breeding use on 23 acres there are
risks that may in the long run prevent
me from actually carrying that many
sheep on this acreage right now in order
to maintain the overall health of my
system i am carrying both sheep and beef
and will be incrementally increasing the
quantity of sheep on this property as i
carefully monitor the parasite loads in
my operation next up on the comparison
is just the cash flow time frame i'm
just going to illustrate this by walking
you through a cash flow
journey with my original plan which was
beef and my current marketing model
which is primarily sheep now when i
initially launched into raising beef
cattle for profit i knew and i saw and i
still fully believe that the only way to
make any sizeable income on a small herd
was to sell grass-fed beef direct to
consumer in a grass-fed beef for profit
model i would breed my cows and it would
take about nine months before a calf is
on the ground once that calf is on the
ground it takes 22 to 24 months to
finish a steer on grass and therefore
the return on investment for my beef is
33 months now let's go for sheep and
with sheep my market is a much broader
market so this journey to cash flow is
going to follow the breeding stock route
i buy my sheep five months later they
drop their lambs and four months later
they wean those lambs and i can sell
those lambs as breeding stock or feeder
animals right then and there so my
return on investment with sheep
is just
nine months i bought my beef steer last
november to grow them out and sell them
as grass-fed beef and they still have
about four months to go before i can
harvest them and begin selling so that
whole process from buying the calf to
harvesting the grass-fed beef steer it's
15 months and in that 15-month period of
time i have already sold around 20 head
of dorpora sheep and most of those were
lambs that had not even been born yet
when i picked up those calves and that
is exactly how i can and already have
made 400 more on sheep than beef i've
actually not made any money on beef yet
for the sole reason that i have put all
of my energy into marketing sheep and
while i could turn that energy and
market beef in the same way and i
believe i could sell my beef at retail
level i just see a lot more opportunity
for the energy that i input into the
marketing to produce a greater yield
with sheep than beef and all of this
kind of boils down to the small scale
element of my operation i wanted to make
a business out of this 23 acres and i
could do that with beef but the amount
of money that i'd be making would be
much smaller and i would have to put in
a lot more effort to get that money
another factor that i consider is just
the regional element right now i live in
a county that has just declared there
are more cows in this county than people
than humans so in order to sell my beef
i actually need to go to the dfw
metroplex and begin marketing it there
which again is a great market but there
are already established grass-fed beef
sellers in the dfw area and i believe i
could carve out my own niche in the
market but it would take more time than
doing so with sheep sheep are no utopia
pun intended
we have had this flock four this will be
our fourth year first two years the
learning curve was so steep and we lost
half of our flock just through that
learning curve and so the next video is
going to be really addressing profit
killers in any sheep operation some of
the ones that we encountered and some
that by the grace of god i have narrowly
avoided also if you've stuck around this
long i'm gonna put one more plug in and
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shopping at
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down below i look forward to seeing you
there or in my next video
[Music]
you