Raising Meat Sheep for Profit

I’m so excited to announce I’ve entered the sheep business! Throughout my life I’ve been around and cared for many farm animals but never sheep before! This endeavor is intended to generate income through sale of lambs as well as producing meat for my own families freezer. I’m really exited to begin this farm adventure and have done lots of sheep research!

The breed of sheep I’ve purchased is called ‘Dorpers’, as I mentioned before, they’re a sheep bred for meat production and identifiable by their classic black head and white coat. The breed comes from Africa and is known to thrive on little resources. This means that they’ll likely do well, even on less productive pastures.

Dorpers are hair-sheep, meaning they don’t create a thick matt of wool that needs to be sheared off, rather they put on a winter coat, much like a dog does, and shed it off in springtime. (The wool abandoned on scratching posts can be collected to mix into garden beds, where it’ll help hold water in the soil!) As far as I can tell Dorper are the #1 meat sheep breed being raised in our area besides Suffolk.

Sheep are typically a good entry level animal when it comes to farming and in fact in my research it seems most new ranchers/farmers tend to start with sheep before entering the world of beef cattle.

I’ve purchased 4 weaned lambs from a friends farm, 2 females and 2 males. The 2 females (called “ewes”) will become my first 2 mother sheep in my herd. One is slightly shorter and stockier, with an almost perfect black head/neck characteristic of the dorper sheep breed. The other, slightly taller has spots on the wool of her back, and was said to have come from a reliable line of amazing mothers. The 2 males (called “rams”) will be raised up with my ewes and one will be butchered late fall this year. Between the males, again one has an almost perfect black head and this is likely the one I will keep as my breeding ram. While perfect coats are not as important in the world of meat animals, I’ll still be utilizing the genetics of my sheep strategically to breed for nice coats as well as other desirable characteristics like plump stocky body types and overall health and heartiness.

By fall of this year my 2 ewes will have been bred so that they can have their first lambs early spring of 2026. Since sheep almost always have twins, I will potentially then own 4 lambs and 2 ewes and the ram, bringing my herd to 7 head. Since this will be my Ewe's first lambing season though its also very possible they may have just 1 lamb each.

The lambs will either become permanent herd members if female and if male they’ll be either butchered the following October or sold as just-weaned lambs in Early Summer. So my system, in general, will be to keep the females for breeding and sell/eat the males until I reach a herd size I like, at which point I’ll be able to also start selling ewe lambs for profit as well.

I've had the sheep for close to 2 months now. So far the sheep have been easy to care for. Within the near year my husband and I will be looking at properties with acreage to move to where sheep can graze pasture but in the meantime the sheep are living at my parents house in a good size pen. They have a water bucket, a mineral salt block and eat bundles of grass we forage for them from around the farm or along the river. I've given them their dose of deformer pellets. Now that the spring rains are long behind us I've bought a total of 3 hay bales, which they're less than halfway through. The cheap oat hay from my local feed store (called oat hay for 'production') is just $16 a bale and seem to last quite a while.

Over the years, I plan to keep record of cost inputs and profits and share more about the highs and lows of raising meat sheep! Stay tuned!