[Jacob-list] re:more questions

[wolfpen]

Welcome Lisa to the list.  My computer and I have not been friends lately,
so I've been pretty slow with emails.

URL - I have a link page at http://members.xoom.com/wolfpen/links
that will take you some Jacob sites.  A number of the listers have sites
there so you can see what sheep we have.

I'm an expat Floridian (or is it Floridiot?).  When I was a kid we got our
donkeys from a man who raised Suffolk commercially.  They seemed to do
pretty well.

Making money with any sort of livestock - I loved Fred's biggest lies.
Raising Jacobs for fun and profit!  They sure are fun.  In our case, the
sheep pay for themselves.  But in order for that to happen we have to stay
small. Pretty much, we raise the sheep for ourselves, both the wool and the
meat.  We do have a good market for freezer lambs and they tend to pay a big
portion of the feed bills.  I usually don't sell too many ewes unless I'm
going to buy some more.  Then I sell off however many I need to in order to
make the money to pay for the new ones.  When we switched from crossbreds to
purebreds, I was selling five to buy one.  I'm doing a little better now,
selling three to buy two.  I also count a lamb we put in the freezer as
income.  By staying with about 7 ewes, we have no trouble selling the
extras.

Chickens, goats and sheep -  We have two Nubians.  Dave says if I get rid of
the goats I can get lots more sheep, or even elephants, anything but goats.
They do ok together except the goats really beat the sheep up.  Feeding them
together is a great way to starve out one of your less aggressive ewes. I
didn't disbud my nanny and in my situation that has been a serious mistake.
I looked out last week to see Naully (the goat) swing her head between the
hind legs of a ewe lamb, pick her in the air, twirl her around and fling
her.  Luckily, no more than a sore leg for a couple of days.  Chickens are
fine around sheep unless you just planted new grass.  They love the new
grass sprouts.

Linda