Great Lakes Dairy Sheep Symposium - the Department of Animal ...

already have their milking facilities and systems, and a market for their milk. As long as their
milk contracts don’t preclude them from doing so, the cow dairy can continue to ship milk while
they are building their facilities, and while they are experimenting with products and equipment
and markets. Even if the goal of the farmer is to sell a value-added sheep milk product, starting
out by simply selling milk to another processor will make it easier to get started.
Rushing to get started, and expecting quick profitability is a recipe for failure. Most
sheep dairies will need off-farm income or other farm income in order to carry the business
during its start-up phase (I don’t know of any in the US that have not started this way).
Depending on where someone is starting from, I would say that it will take at least 3-4 years to
get a sheep dairy full up and running:
Year 1: Planning and interning. You need to do the work, before you know that you are
ready to commit. You also need to do your financial business planning and need to start facilities
research and planning.
Year 2&3: Set up sheep facilities, and go through 1-2 lambings. If you are not already
sheep farming, you need this experience and need to get the bugs worked out of your feeding,
cropping, grazing, lambing, overwintering systems, etc. You should also use this time to figure
out how you are going to care for lambs, and your markets for lambs and fiber. It will be
important to watch udder health during this year, since high producing dairy sheep will be more
susceptible to mastitis.
Year 3&4: Set up your milking and cooling systems and get them functional. This is
often more complicated than people realize. Make sure that you consult with the milk inspectors
during the planning process. Even if you ultimately plan to value-add your milk, you are
arguably better off finding another milk market initially so that you can focus on your milking
system, your milk metering/record keeping system, and udder and animal health in that first year.
This is especially true if your animals have never been milked before, since most of them will
take a while to get used to it. Expect longer milkings during the start-up year.
Year 4 &5: If desired, build your processing facility. Practice/test making your target
product, and start marketing. If you do this instead of trying to make your product the first year
that you milk, you will probably throw away less product, since milk quality and cheese quality
will probably be better, and you will have more time to establish markets.
Principle 4: Milk production records are more important than breed or % dairy breed.
When you buy your breeding stock, it is important to not let the fact that the sheep are
part or pure East Friesian or Lacaune distract you from your selection criteria, despite the fact
that these are considered the “Holstein’s” of the sheep world. For instance, the sheep still should
have milk records to back up the value of their lines. Just as in dairy cows, there is variation
within every breed, and just because an animal is East Friesian, or Lacaune, or a percentage, does
not guarantee milk production. Thus, it is important to scrutinize the lineage (milk production of
the mother and both grandmothers if possible) of any rams or ewe lambs that you might buy, and
both the lineage and the milk records of any experienced, mature ewe that you are considering
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