I recently read a conversation on the Vermont Sheep and Goat Association listserv on the topic of calculating a profitable lamb production enterprise. Some producers hadn’t calculated their production costs, while others weren’t sure what market prices looked like.
For our lamb enterprise, I calculated our cost of production and then did a bit of research on comparable products. Comparable products are lamb produced by other enterprise farms (farms where vegetable and animal enterprises make money, whether or not the farmer farms full-time or not). Local lamb in grocery stores counts, but not imported lamb. A quick google effort is all that is needed to see what other farmers are charging. I then deducted my cost of raising lamb from the prevailing price, and calculated how many lambs I would need to raise to make the amount of money I would like to from my lamb efforts. Lamb needs to pay about 2/3 of my annual income.
Predictably, I would need to charge much more for my lamb than the market would support to make something close to the median US income, but farm life has other benefits. We breathe fresh air, eat local food, do enough work to avoid needing a gym membership, and we get to spend our time together. It all comes down to what kind of lifestyle is enough.
I have a spreadsheet to share with any sheep raiser who needs a little help calculating the cost of raising their lamb. This calculator is only as good as the accuracy of the numbers you have, so be honest with yourself about how much the lambs cost to keep. If you are trying to calculate what it would cost to start a sheep operation, there are lots of resources online to help you estimate how much hay your sheep will eat and how much fencing might cost.
Download Your Lamb Enterprise Calculator
Please feel free to customize your copy with additional info pertinent to your farm and to share this resource. I love writing a good spreadsheet, so this is my gift to you. If the sheet that downloads has format problems for you, I am happy to send you a copy of the form in Google Drive – just get in touch with the form below: