Getting better before we get bigger

I just gave a talk at the Ontario Sheep Marketing Agency with the 10 lessons learned as a beginning shepherd. One of the lessons was to get better before we get bigger .... and we better practice what we preach.

Bob just did a summary of the feed costs for the lambs. Despite higher grain costs we have been able to cut our grain costs per lamb by $10 and by keeping the lambs on pasture for a month longer than last year we were able to cut our hay costs by a significant amount as well ($11 per lamb if we sold the hay on the open market). That was all accomplished by improving the quality of our pasture and our pasture rotation. Those cost savings are huge in one year for an operation as small as ours. What was also good is we were able to do this without losing anything in our average daily gain.

We still have room for improvement but sure good to see some progress in efficiency.

TTFN,
Laurie