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Hi and Welcome!
I realized recently that I haven’t taken the time to introduce our farm and what we actually do here.
Our about page will tell you that we are Andrew and Mandy Bryan and live on our forever property in Southern Missouri that has been in Andrew’s family for decades. We bought the place in 2019 and Andrew spent two years renovating the farm house. It’s perfect!
Since then, he has worked on getting the property up to par. Fences needed rebuilding. We have a lot of weeds, so liming and reseeding pastures has been a top priority.
If binge watching YouTube videos is your thing; you can catch up on all he’s been up to over on our YouTube channel.
For everyone else, I’ll quickly fill you in.
We are now a sheep farm!
How did that happen you might ask? Well, it’s simple really. I happen to love sheep!
It only took about twenty years for my cow loving husband to get on board. I’m a patient woman!
To be completely honest, I didn’t know I’d love sheep. I love the goats we have had over the years, so I assumed sheep would be the same and I’d love them too.
In case you are wondering, sheep are not the same as goats. Not even close. They are extremely skittish, finicky, and cantankerous creatures. They’re humorous to watch as they try to move as one flock everywhere they go.
I’ll never forget the first time I received the death look and a hostile stomp of the foot from one of our sheep for trying to give them some feed.
Goats on the other hand are more dog-like. They’re more trusting which makes them easier to handle. As Andrew says, they also come with their own set of handles.
If need be, we can work on our goats right in the field. The sheep on the other hand, have to be cornered and wrestled to the ground. It’s hard on a couple middle aged bodies.
We do have a working pen with a built in tilt table in the works. That project can also be viewed on our YouTube channel. I cannot wait until it’s done!
The spiritual side of sheep farming.
Even with the extra frustration they bring, I can’t help but love them. I can relate to them and have a greater understanding of people being compared to sheep in the Bible.
I’ll never have as much patience as our Shepherd.
It makes a lot more sense to me now though. I watch how they act and think, yeah, we’re like that too. Scared and cantankerous at times. But, they need us and I suspect, as I watch them come back from the pond every night to bed down by the house, that they even like us a little.
Where we started….
Way back when we got married, living on a farm and raising animals was a given. I didn’t come from farming but Andrew did. Coming from a cattle farm, he naturally was drawn to cattle.
For years we bounced around from having cows to not having cows. Adding pigs, chickens and goats along the way.
The amount of land we farm on has always been about twenty acres.
We dipped our toes into direct to consumer farming. Meaning we raised, butchered and sold to customers off the farm or at a local farmers market. For various reasons, that didn’t stick with us either.
Looking back (hindsight being twenty twenty) I think the reason those things never worked out is that it didn’t flow well for what we had and where we were in life.
We have a way of making things harder than they need to be.
The issue with the cows has always been my lack of patience. That and we are limited to only a handful of cows given the amount of acres we have.
The vicious cycle we fell into was buying some cows, and then me pressuring to sell said cows before we reaped the benefits of the offspring going to the auction. The reason for that is money would get extremely tight and that seemed to be the easiest answer.
Local market health and labor are key players as well.
With the way the cattle market is now, I definitely have regrets. That’s just how life goes. You do the best you can and make decisions based on what you feel is best for your family in the moment.
Pigs and meat chickens have also come and gone. The pigs scare me and eat a ton of food. They’ve never been my favorite. The upfront cost of feeding them is hard to swallow.
Meat chickens are very labor intensive. Not that I’m lazy, but processing chickens is hard work!
It turns our that, for us, selling at our local farmers market was not near as profitable as we hoped it would be. We live in a very rural part of Missouri and the market is saturated with farmers.
Another reason our farm style needed adjustment is that we are raising a small family. We have four children whom we home school while we both work full time jobs. Time for extra projects is just not easy to come by.
This all plays into where we are now……
Where we are now…..
Currently we have forty ewes. Twenty five of those are mature Ewes. Two rams and four ram lambs. We also have about seven goats and thirteen laying hens.
Our sheep flock is a mixture of Katahdin and Dorper. For our area Katahdin and Dorper are a great choice. Katahdins are parasite resistant and Dorpers are meaty and grow fast. Crossing them gives offspring the benefit of both.
We recently took five ram lambs to our local animal auction. They didn’t do too bad. They sold at $3.60 a pound and they average 51 pounds. That’s about $180.00 each.
With the four ram lambs left, our plan is to work on fattening them up. Their ideal weight is closer to 80-90 pounds before we take them to the auction.
We have a small animal scale that we will be adding to the sheep pen build. This will take the guess work out of when the sheep/goats are ready to go.
As a reference, these ram lambs were born in the spring. Sheep grow fast and most Ewes will have twins. Another positive toward sheep for me.
Our goats are primarily Boer. They sell great at the auction as well. We have plans to add more as we can.
Here’s the part that made the most sense to me and seems to flow better with our life; we can take them to the sale barn and sell them when they’re ready. We don’t have to worry about what to price them, trying to sell them on Craigslist’s or Facebook (which is almost impossible).
The fun part of farming will always be the sale barn
I love going to the sale barn. It’s an whole experience for me. Listening to the auctioneer, watching the animals come and go, and trying not to fall off the flimsy catwalk. I love it!
Of course, this is just my take on our farm and how we ended up as primarily a sheep farm. I don’t see that changing anytime soon and look forward to adding as many sheep and goats our property will allow.
Andrew has posts (I think you’ll love this post) and videos that get technical on our decision to switch to sheep. Including some great comparisons between cows and sheep as far as profitability is concerned.
Be sure to check those out as well.
If you have any questions or comments, post them below and thanks so much for stopping by our little farm blog!