INVESTING $2500 for $225K RETURN | Farm Business Dorper Sheep Farming Cows MICRO RANCHING FOR PROFIT

i took one month off of youtube spent 2 500 all in hopes of a 225 000 return i'm gonna break it down for you in the upcoming video so stay tuned the cyclops super without farmers you would be hungry naked and sober all right thank you again valleyfarmsupply.com check them out guys best service best selection anywhere you will find am grazing a flock of 30 ulam pears six cow-calf pears six beef steers for grass-fed beef two rams a bull and all on 23 acres of pasture in northeast texas that's 75 animals on 23 acres and to me this sounded like too many animals for 23 acres so over winter i pursued a lease agreement for my neighbors 15 acres of pasture but with no success in the midst of my pursuit i was actively reading quality pasture by allen nation this book is available at shopshepardus.com i would love if you'd buy it there and support my work allen nation gives an example using two men who achieved a one beef cow per acre stocking rate through intensive pasture management and incremental improvement of pasture and this stocking rate of one cow per acre even included all of the land necessary to produce supplemental hay over winter now ironically these men were within a 60 mile radius of my farm here in northeast texas and so at that point i put a pause on my pursuit of more pasture and turned my focus to the 23 acres i already had over the past two years of grazing i have honestly seen enough production capacity in my pasture to know that the stocking rate was a reasonable possibility for me here seven sheep equals the weight of one beef cow therefore the 75 animals that i just mentioned is equal to 18 beef cows now a major proponent to achieving this carrying capacity on the land is rotating your animals to fresh pasture once a day now this ensures a maximum amount of rest before the animal revisits that paddock and not only that but it eliminates selectivity in the grazing pattern of the animal thus making more of the forage that already exists on your property now my rotational grazing system is already fairly intensive but given the fact that my system previous to this month was somewhat makeshift and the reality that i do still have a full-time job moving daily was something that was only achievable for me for four months out of 12. so with the hardcore goal of using this next year to test that one beef cow per acre stocking rate on my 23 acres here i bit the bullet and made the investment in some infrastructure that would number one replace the portable infrastructure that i've had in place since the onset and number two make it a faster process allowing me to move daily even with a full-time job but before i dive hard into these upgrades and exactly what my 2500 dollars got me i want to encourage you to start small i started on a 250 dollar system which included a four foot ground rod an old charger from my parents garage a roll of poly tape on a plastic reel and a handful of dollar fifty step in posts from the hardware store and guys i wouldn't change it for the world it worked and that initial 250 dollar setup was a springboard for absolutely everything you see on this channel and so as i list these upgrades these improvements understand that i have two years of bootstrapping it behind me and for yourself know this that starting small is better than not starting at all take the smallest step possible towards your large scale goals and really see where the lord takes it that's what i did two years ago and i don't regret it for a moment this video is going to give you a quick broad overview of what i've done over the past month but if you want a pdf with all of the details where you can buy everything i installed on my 23 acre grazing system click on the link down below i will email that straight to you in hopes that it will help you so about 1900 of the 2500 was soaked up by electric fencing improvements two primary things number one i installed five thousand feet worth of high tensile perimeter around the 30 acres and number two i upgraded to a 12 jewel cyclops fence charger guys i want to give a shout out to valleyfarmsupply.com right now for having the absolute best selection of rotational grazing supplies but the 1900 includes 5000 foot of high tensile wire hand tools for tensioning and splicing that wire wraparounds for corner posts insulated tubing for under gates and pass areas where i would lay the hot wire underground rather than on a fence line and i reused existing six foot ground rods by removing previously sunk ground rods from the ground which was possibly the most exhausting six hours of the 40 plus hour project here but what is that when you're able to repurpose 180 worth of ground rods so that was essentially my fencing project getting a hot access point no matter where i was at across the farm so that i did not have to tote that portable fencing infrastructure and honestly guys you might go to the website and see a 530 charger and think wow i'm never doing that well if you have sheep and you're on 50 plus acres you probably need to do that unless you're going to be using a lot of netting when i have my sheep on a small charger and i try to pressure them into spaces to eat absolutely everything and not just their favorite thing they will jump the fence and also if you're going for the exact same setup on a 10 acre or a 20 acre pasture the five jewel option that cyclops sells will do it for you and that's only about 250 and absolutely worth it as far as my water system goes i spent about 573 dollars and the primary expense here was polyethylene tubing so on my small acreage it's 30 acres and right at the middle of this 30 acres i have some hose access points and so the most economic and convenient option for me is simply to take 500 foot lengths of polyethylene tubing and connect them to that primary hose axis point these three pieces would go one in each pasture and reach about the middle point on the pasture now in setting up my grazing program for my daily moves i am grazing in a pie configuration which means that trough sits right in the middle of each of these three cross-fenced pastures and i graze my paddocks like a pie off of each one so i do not have to move that 100 gallon trough but once when i move the entire herd to a new pasture and that was a very economic way to improve upon an old system wherein i would carry five gallon buckets to the flock every day or i would offload from a water tank on the back of a utv both of which again are excellent options if you're just getting started and if you have a small flock if you're grazing cows you really need some type of large scale watering point sheep are a lot more flexible because they don't drink a lot of water but how does this all double back to that lofty number of 225 dollars in return well if you live in upper east texas you'll know that land prices are going absolutely through the roof and that 15 acres that i was trying to get a lease agreement on would cost me anywhere from 225 to 300 000 to buy but if i can actually buy in that level of productivity through intensive management through systems that will save me hours on the back end it's money i don't have to spend and this is a principle that joel solitan talks about all of the time let's think less about money that we have to earn and be smart and think more about money that we don't have to spend now this is all culminating into a large scale goal and that is my micro ranching goal and ultimately this is the stocking rate that i need to achieve in dorper sheep in order to reach the income goals i have set for this 23 acres and so this is giving me a way in the short term to prototype that carrying capacity so that at the end of five years i might actually be able to achieve that with a product which is the purebred dorper sheep that generates the revenues i need to make an income off of ranching on such a small acreage now the irony of all of this and i know that some of you out there are going to say well what if the rain turns off and you are absolutely right the rain turned off about one week after i committed to taking on this herd which was doubling my carrying capacity from what it had been and thankfully i had a lot of stockpile and they were able to graze through a lot of stockpile but that drought persisted over winter and we hit extreme drought d3 and i was scared now the worst case scenario was that i just have to de-stock i would just have to get rid of these animals but i'm gonna be covering in a future video how i handled coming into spring and a three-week delay in germination in that spring flush and some strategies i put in place to facilitate my drought plan and praise the lord we have had a tremendous amount of rain this spring and while i don't think we are caught up it is enough to keep the grass going and it's really looking good out there i could not be more grateful next video up is going to be answering one of your most frequently asked questions and that is how is the lakeland sheep and goat handling system performing and i am so excited to share it with you guys to be honest i have missed you guys a lot please leave me a comment down below i would love to hear what you've been doing for the past month

Channel: the Shepherdess

Views: 1,074,902

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Id: EYerhPFUF-8

Length: 9min 17sec (557 seconds)

Published: Wed May 11 2022