Best way forward , Ewes or store lambs

Kevhog1988

We have 8 acres here at the moment and only 4 ewes with 6 lambs among them. Would i be better buying store lambs and finishing them or buying ewes to breed more lambs for next year? Have 5 acres held back for slage/haylage for winter and going to put up a shed by end of summer 40ft long 18ft wide. All opinions/advice greatly appreciated.

sea12

theemigrant wrote: »

We have 8 acres here at the moment and only 4 ewes with 6 lambs among them. Would i be better buying store lambs and finishing them or buying ewes to breed more lambs for next year? Have 5 acres held back for slage/haylage for winter and going to put up a shed by end of summer 40ft long 18ft wide. All opinions/advice greatly appreciated.

Your away a good bit so would stores not be handier for you?

Kevhog1988

sea12 wrote: »

Your away a good bit so would stores not be handier for you?

Father is here full time and mad to help out.

Username John

If you are going lambing, then your shed will be worthwhile...

If you are going down the store lamb route, I am not so sure...

Will you be lambing the few you have this year next spring? If you lambing a few anyways, you could just up the numbers easy enough...

If you haven't already done so, I would suggest splitting up the 8 acres into smaller paddocks. Do you have an electric fencer?

I'd tis for the interest, I would say buy a few more ewes... stores are easier, but at small numbers lambing is nicer I think
(says the man who has store lambs, and doesn't lamb anymore...)

Kevhog1988

Username John wrote: »

If you are going lambing, then your shed will be worthwhile...

If you are going down the store lamb route, I am not so sure...

Will you be lambing the few you have this year next spring? If you lambing a few anyways, you could just up the numbers easy enough...

If you haven't already done so, I would suggest splitting up the 8 acres into smaller paddocks. Do you have an electric fencer?

I'd tis for the interest, I would say buy a few more ewes... stores are easier, but at small numbers lambing is nicer I think
(says the man who has store lambs, and doesn't lamb anymore...)

Yeah its split into paddocks via electric fence already. Just water needs to be brought to each paddock now. For this year should i buy stores. Finish them & buy ewes before october?

Siamsa Sessions

Stores are scarce enough this time of year, and it might be hard to finish them before October too.

There's no right or wrong answer really. It all depends on the amount of time you have, facilities, quality of land, etc. Only you can figure out what's best and that will take some experiementing.

Why not hedge your bets and buy 10 stores and 10 ewes?

rangler1

theemigrant wrote: »

We have 8 acres here at the moment and only 4 ewes with 6 lambs among them. Would i be better buying store lambs and finishing them or buying ewes to breed more lambs for next year? Have 5 acres held back for slage/haylage for winter and going to put up a shed by end of summer 40ft long 18ft wide. All opinions/advice greatly appreciated.

I'd imagine the grass is gone a bit wild at the moment and it'll be at least another month or sixweeks before any amount of lambs for fattening come in the marts.
Probably something like what username john is doing where he buys nice ewe lambs in sept and carries them for 12 mths and sell them then as breeding hoggets would be best because
1. it would improve and tidy your land to have it properly stocked with sheep.
2.The shepherding would not be as demanding as if you were lambing

Username John

Siamsa Sessions wrote: »

Why not hedge your bets and buy 10 stores and 10 ewes?

I dunno about this...

it's just easier to have one bunch, rotate them around... you could mix em all right, but its messy... you'd have to seperate em when the ewes go with the ram, when you start feeding the ewes, plus if you kept the store lambs over the winter, you'd have no grass for the ewes...

I would say decide on either one or the other...