Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[Ridgetop]

My fence post guy asked me if I had any "cheap lambs" for sale as his neighbor wants a few. I didn't quite know what to say...cheap lambs? I almost suggested that he sell his neighbor one of his cheap calves, instead. There are no cheap lambs on this place.

Raise the price, then give him the normal price "just for him". LOL

I had a friend that had a retail store and she said they would run sales around the holidays, jack up the prices by 20-30%, slash through that price and lower the new inflated price by 10%. Everything sold! LOL

 

[Ridgetop]

Those are great prices. I think even I could make a small or profit and I order lots of expensive hay. Not a profit to live on you understand, but enough to support the sheep.

 

[Mike CHS]

Those are great prices. I think even I could make a small or profit and I order lots of expensive hay. Not a profit to live on you understand, but enough to support the sheep.

They pay for themselves which was our intent all along. When I feed I get a custom blend sweet feed in Alabama which comes out to under $100 per 1000 lbs and it works for us.

 

[Mike CHS]

We did get the fence installed today. We still have to run hot wire but that won't take but a short while since we already put all of the insulators on.

 

[Bruce]

I had a friend that had a retail store and she said they would run sales around the holidays, jack up the prices by 20-30%, slash through that price and lower the new inflated price by 10%. Everything sold! LOL

The farm and garden store did that with the layer feed. Advertized $1 off but the price went from $11.99 to $13.99 so the "sale" price was $1 more than the old price.

 

[thistlebloom]

There was a chain department store here that used to do that. It made me quit shopping there, because it's deceptive, and I don't like being treated as an idiot. They don't do it anymore because they went bankrupt.

 

[Ridgetop]

I have been checking on lamb prices at the various auction barns. Apparently the call for lamb has gone way up since we were selling our unwanted buck kids.

The Halal market (Muslim) will pay $150 for a 40 lb. lamb. They will take up to 5 a week. My lambs are 40 lbs. by 7-9 weeks so that works for me. I am not feeding much to the lambs at that point so I can probably break even and get the ewes bred back by 90 days post partum. The Halal market sounds like the most cost effective marketing for me. Plus the butcher will pickup from so no traveling. Saves on gas and time. The auction barns are getting $100 for 50-60 lbs. lambs and $180 for 80 lb. lambs. The Dorpers go higher since they are more popular here.

I will have the Halal butcher out to see if my currently 2 month old lambs are too big for him at 50 lbs. If they are , I can still get them to the sale yard for around $100-180. I didn't realize lamb had gotten so popular here but should have known with our ethnic population.

I need to divide my flock up more in order to have a couple ewes lambing every 2 weeks or month. I currently have 4 jugs and am going to add a 5th. By carefully rotating my ewes I should be able to have a couple lamb every month. More lambing work, but by culling out those with lambing problems I can make it work. The Halal butchers prefer ram lambs with tails and testicles, but he said he would also take ewe lambs. That will work for e since I plan to dispose of all wooly ewe lambs to cull for clean shedders.

 

[Mike CHS]

We got the hot wire finished up today and I only got shocked one time. We don't turn the power off because we have two groups of sheep in paddocks that have electric netting. I've only had issues two times while using netting and both times it was not hot so we work around potential shock issues.

 

[CntryBoy777]

Long as ya didn't have to get up off the ground ya should be fine...

 

[Mike CHS]

We brought all of the lambs in for a final look this morning and we stayed with the 10 replacement ewes that we had already chosen. We also have 4 ewes that are sold that the buyer wants left in the field to get bred.