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Goat and Sheep Farming Business Plan:
Well, Everybody thinks that it’s easy to establish a sheep or goat farm and achieve desired profits.However, Sheep farming and Goat Farming involves many risk factors which may influence the profits and even put a person in poor economical situation without proper business plan and marketing. One should be careful while planning for a sheep or goat farm. With proper farm management skills and marketing strategies, one can earn decent profits in this farming. Let us put brief some simple ideas for profitable commercial goat and sheep farming business.
The following are main parts of end-to-end sheep and goat farming.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 1: First and Foremost, you should decide whether you are preferring to go for sheep farming or goat farming. However, both have their own advantages and disadvantages. However, when you look at time-frame and managing the farm, sheep farming would be the best. Anyway it’s your call to decide.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 2: If you are novice (beginner) in this field, it is advised to go for sheep farming or goat farming training and attend any seminars related to this.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 3: Preparing a business plan is the first step of going for sheep farming or goat farming. In this plan, you should out-line the budget for number of animals, set up cost, feed cost, vaccination/medical care, insurance, labour cost.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 4: To get an idea of cost and profits of sheep farming or goat farming, get any practical project report from local animal husbandry or agriculture department . Analyse the report and modify your business plan according to it.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 5: Though you are a big investor, start with small number of animals.After finding in and outs of sheep and goat raising, go for large scale farming.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 6: Watching sheep farming videos on you tube, reading sheep and goat farming blogs will help you in setting up a farm.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 7: If you are opted for sheep farming, then there are two options; going for breeding and raising sheep and selling.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 8: Initially, it is better to try with temporary structure then for permanent one. Try to spend minimum on shed construction. There are many ways you can construct shed using different material. Try to consider economical one.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 9: Selecting a quality, environmental support breed is a main factor for commercial success of sheep farming or goat farming.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 10: Try to go for multi kidding female breeds and muscular breed, if you are going for breeding. If the purpose is just raising and selling in short time (4 to 6 months), selecting disease free, healthy males are important.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 11: When you plant to go for buying animals in bulk, take veterinary doctor with you to check the animal health status.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 12: Saving money comes into picture in a big way when you are purchasing in bulk. Negotiate well to get at cheaper price.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 13: Before getting the animals into your farm, make sure they are all well vaccinated, if not go for necessary vaccinations.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 14: Clean water, timely observation of animal behaviour is important in your farm.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 15: When it comes to feeding, there are two options; growing green crops like co-1, co-2 perennial grass, maize and other crops and make your own feed (silage). This way you can drastically reduce the feed cost. If you buy feed out side, it may cost up to 20 rupees per kg.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 16: When you plan to make silage, you should have at least 1 acre land to grow green crops for feed, get a feed cutting machine to achieve this. There is a subsidy on getting this machine from local agriculture department in India.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 17: If the farm is on large scale, make sure the animals are insured.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 18: In sheep farming, stall-feeding or semi-stall feeding can be considered where as it’s hard to have full stall feeding of Indian goats. in some cases like, Boer goats, you can opt of full-stall feeding as well. However, goats prefer natural grazing, semi-stall feeding can also be considered. Stall feeding is where animals are fed in shed/house and in semi-stall feeding, animals are fed half a day and remaining day would be for outside grazing in open fields.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 19: Once silage is made from green crops like maize, it may last up to 2 to 3 years and will be very useful in dry periods.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 20: Make sure veterinary person visits your farm on regular basis to check and treat any ill animals. If you find any animal is not sleeping and eating,it should be separated from the flock and immediate medical care should be provided.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 21: Checking the sheep or goat weight every two weeks gives an idea of weight gain, so that you can make any changes in feed supply.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 22: When it comes to marketing, you should find a genuine buyer. Now a days there are many people who can buy the animals at your farm for supplying hotels/restaurants/function halls apart from meat shop buyers.
Sheep Farming Business Plan – Tip 23: Having cyclic growing would be a nice idea for easy marketing. You should plan and maintain 2 batches yearly (batch for 6 months), where one batch would be ready for festival season and other would be ready for other season.
Where from I should buy the sheeps?