Sheep & Goat Flock Economics: Flock Structure, Lambing & Kidding Rates, Growth to Sale Weight, Feed Budgets, Fibre & Milk Income and Margin per Ewe

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Summarise a mixed sheep and goat flock from its mob list: breeding females, replacements and males per species, the number of ewes per ram and the share of older ewes.
• Turn fictional barren, litter and loss rates into lambs and kids born and reared, express the result per female joined and work out how many whole animals are left to sell after keeping replacements.
• Use fictional daily weight gains to work out how many days each batch needs to reach its sale weight, the date it is ready and what it weighs on a fixed market day.
• Price six lots of lambs with a fictional grade grid and a seasonal index: the grade price per kg by weight band, the value per lot, the total sales and the average price per kg sold.
• Turn a fictional monthly feed plan into kilos of bought feed, the yearly feed bill, the feed cost per ewe and the feed cost per kg of lamb sold.
• Check whether the wool clip pays for the shearing, and you turn fictional goat milk yields into saleable litres, milk income and income per doe milked.
• Add up the ewes leaving the flock, the income from culls and the replacement rate needed to hold the flock size, and you compare rearing your own ewe lambs with buying in.
• Close the year with the sheep gross margin, express it per ewe and per hectare, test what a lamb price change of −20 % to +20 % does to the margin per ewe and chart the variable costs.