Sheep economics: you cannot make it on wool alone

As a shepherd, I want my sheep to be valuable whether it is by mowing the grass and eating pests my orchard; providing milk or lambs; or companionship and lessons in zen equanimity.  Oh, and wool of course, that inimitable fiber that keeps us warm even when wet, cools us when it's hot, doesn't get stinky, and looks fantastic!  Here at Big Foot Food Forest, we count our sheep’s value as companions, as grazers in the orchard, providers of lambs to sell, and makers of wool fleeces.  Ideally, on a working farm, the value of the sheep should exceed the cost of keeping them - measured in hours of care, and costs of inputs like feed, minerals, vet visits, etc (you can also keep sheep as a hobby of course, and many people do but it's a different story).  

On my farm, we spend an average of about 300 hours a year taking care of our sheep - moving the fence for their paddock; moving the summer barn; feeding in the winter; picking up hay and sheep medical care.  In addition, we buy about $1500 of hay for the Winter; and spend $300-$500 per year on vet care, minerals, and shearing.  Say I valued my time at $20 an hour, then the costs of keeping our 10 ewes plus ram and wether, and about 14 lambs every summer are close to $8000 a year, or $667 per adult sheep.  This is very much on the top end of the sheep cost spectrum.  If we had better pasture - we’re working on it - we could easily run 20 adults and 20 lambs on the same paddocks where we currently have our flock,  We’d spend twice as much on hay and the vet but the same amount of time, reducing the annual costs per sheep to $417.  

At the very other end of the spectrum, we have a ranch like Duckworth in Montana (more on them later), with a flock of about 10,000 Merino sheep that run on open land year-round, cared for by (Peruvian) shepherds and sheep dogs.  According to Glassdoor, median shepherd salaries in the United States are $65K annually.   Say Duckworth has 10 shepherds ($650K) plus sheepdogs, shearing, vet care - the costs of running these sheep might be somewhere between one and 1.5 million dollars, or about $100-$150 per sheep. 

Let’s compare these costs to what one might sell the beautiful sheep fleeces for.  On my small, artisanal end of the scale, shepherds specialize in sheep with fine or exotic fleeces that can be sold at boutique prices of $10 a pound or more.  We have not been able to sell our raw wool at these prices, but even if we did, the 5 lbs of wool we get from each sheep would cover only a fraction of costs (even with better pasture and a larger flock).  I suspect that not even Duckworth - one of the largest sheep ranches in the country - is able to break even off their wool.  Each Merino provides 8-14 lbs of raw wool (say average 11), which sells for about $7 a lb on the international market today, or, about $77 per sheep  (https://www.duckworthco.com/pages/sheep-to-shelf, and (https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/ams_2911.pdf).

That means you cannot keep sheep for their wool alone.  This may be an open door for most folks, but I had to think and work through the whole shebang, and I share my thoughts as others might need to do the same.

You need to find other income streams from your sheep in addition to wool.  On our artisanal end, we sell lambs to homesteaders and hobby farmers for $150-$250 for the Shetlands, and $400-$800 for the Babydoll lambs.  We make about $4-5 thousand dollars from selling lambs.  In some years, we get some additional income for eco-system services.  For example in 2027, the NCRS will pay us $1176 for our rotational grazing practice, which improves soil quality, water retention, and carbon sequestration.  In the beautiful book "English Pastoral" James Rebanks, England's most famous shepherd, reflects on the value of his flock in maintaining the beauty of his farm.    Barring such non-monetary values, we are not reaching the $20/hr farmer pay-equivalent (though at least we are not losing cash), although, with a better pasture and doubling the flock size, we could - conceivably.   Our arrangement with multiple sheep income streams mirrors, in mini-form, the larger scale - large ranches that raise (Merino) sheep for wool also sell their sheep for meat or as stock. In many countries and at both large or small scales, the government pays sheep farmers for eco-system services, for the cultural value of keeping rare breeds of national importance or for preserving the traditional landscape (as they do in the Netherlands, my native country).   In fact, such dual- or multi-purposing has been the practice for as long as people have been raising sheep. 

In a next installment, I’ll show a 140 year trend of wool production in the United States that I compiled using facsimiles of old reports from 1920, 1952, 1978, and so forth up to 2025 (it’s possible that once upon a time, these data were on the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service website, but that website has been blocked by the current administration - maybe there was dangerous information on it?!?), and think more about ways in which farms large and small are getting wool to market, and specifically some existing ways people get their wool to local markets.