Is raising sheep or goats profitable? Free flock profit planner

Will your flock pay for its hay?

Enter your ewes or does, weaning rate, prices and feed costs. The planner projects the flock and its profit year by year, re-runs your plan at different weaning rates, hay prices and market prices, compares selling at weaning against finishing and selling breeding stock, and finds the flock size where the farm covers its fixed costs.

Planning arithmetic on your own numbers and stated assumptions.

1. Your flock

Kind of flock

Breeding ewes or does you start with

Most breeding females your pasture can carry

Years to project (1-15)

Adult deaths per year (%)

Adults culled per year (%)

Young weaned per breeding female per year

Share of young that are female (%)

Young kept as replacements fill the flock up to your pasture limit; the rest are sold. New females are assumed to breed from their first full year. Fractions of an animal are averages, not a count you could stand in front of.

2. What you sell

Weight at weaning sale (lb)

Price per lb at weaning ($)

Share finished to market weight (%)

Finished weight (lb)

Price per lb finished ($)

Extra feed to finish one animal ($)

Surplus females sold as breeding stock (%)

Price per breeding female ($)

Price per cull adult ($)

Wool income per breeding female ($)

Hauling and commission per head sold ($)

3. What it costs

Hay per female per day (lb)

Days you feed hay

Hay price per ton ($)

Grain per breeding female per year ($)

Vet, wormer, vaccines, minerals per female ($)

Creep feed per young weaned ($)

Ram or buck price ($)

Females per ram or buck

Years a ram or buck lasts

Cost of a breeding female ($)

Fencing, shelter, handling gear ($)

Life of that setup (years)

Insurance, tags, pasture, other fixed ($/yr)

Hours per breeding female per year

What an hour of your time is worth ($)

Hay is charged on every breeding female for the days you feed it. One ram or buck is bought per group of females and its price spread over its working life.

Questions people ask

How many sheep or goats do I need to make a profit?

It depends on how many young you wean per female, your hay cost and what you sell for, because fixed costs (fencing, handling gear, insurance, rams or bucks) are spread across the females you keep. The planner shows the break-even number of breeding females for your inputs.

Is raising sheep or goats profitable?

For many small flocks the answer turns on hay and on weaning rate, not on the sale price. The planner re-runs your plan at different weaning rates, hay prices and market prices so you can see which of them your profit depends on.

Should I sell lambs or kids at weaning or finish them?

Finishing adds weight but also feed, time and risk. The selling-route table compares selling everything at weaning, finishing, and selling surplus females as breeding stock, using your own prices.

Is this farming or veterinary advice?

No. It is arithmetic on the numbers you type in. Animal health, parasite control, nutrition, predator loss, regulations, scrapie and traceability rules, and slaughter or sales licensing are out of scope.

Not decided

Animal health and parasite control, nutrition and body condition, predators, breeding and genetics, lambing and kidding losses beyond the weaning rate you enter, local rules on animal identification, slaughter and direct sales, insurance, and tax. Weaning rates, prices and hay costs vary hugely by region and year; the defaults are placeholders, not forecasts.

Also running a small farm business? See the apiary profit planner, the horse boarding profit calculator, the u-pick farm profit planner and the farmers market booth calculator.

Raising meat birds too? The pastured poultry profit planner prices a batch of chickens, your hourly return and the break-even price per pound.

Feeding cattle? The beef cattle ration optimizer finds the least-cost ration per head per day from your own feed prices.