Girl (Full sized cow) on average eats 600 dollars worth of hay per year, she eats 360 worth of grain per year, and she uses 200 dollars worth of straw bedding per year, time wise, when in milk, she adds two hours per day to the farm chores, total hours 112, plus an average increase of 3 hours per week in barn chores, Hours in barn chore time this past year for her 144 hours.. Hard cash costs 1160, time costs 256 hours Equal to working a fulltime 8 hour job for 32 days of the year.
Vs
Milking sheep
It would be 300 for the year if they were like girl and are fence breakers and therefor have to be tied out, but they are not, a milking sheep would be able to go on pasture for six months of the year, so assuming good quality hay as a secondary treat for a milking sheep as well as pasture.. 200 for the sheep per year in hay.
Milking ration for the sheep- 120 per milking cycle, no increase in bedding, as the milking sheep or a milk goat would not require its own sleeping pen and therefor would get a equal share part of the bedding used for the sheep flock, which is typically 200 for the year, split ten ways.. 20 per year.
Time, I can milk my current milking sheep in about 15 min twice a day, for a total time of 30 minutues, or a total of 120 hours for the full milking time in a year. As for extra cleaning time, say two hours per month, because I like to scrub the milk stand down from top to bottom so often, otherwise no extra cleaning required.
Total money costs 340 and time costs 136 hours or Equal to working 17 full time eight hour as day job per year.
So extra cleaning time around 16 hours over the eight months.
Now the washing of dishes, straining of the milk and use the milk is not being figured out here..
I have figured out that our household does not require more then a liter of milk per day and that a gallon of milk per day is lots of making the amount of yogurt, cheese etc that my household requires, anything over that, is just going for critter food, I would rather only spend the time, effort and money to get the milk that is required for the household.
I think its pretty clear which one not only will save us money and time. Time which I can move over to other area’s of the farm and its needs.
Wow, I have to say that these would NOT have been the numbers I had come up with when I wrote it all out on paper in terms of what it would take, but there were factors that I didn’t expect, such as not being able to use the “cow pasture acre plus ” because the cow would not stop breaking though both a sheep and barb wire fence and therefor, needing to be either feed in her stall and or brought out and teathered, therefor while she did get to graze, she never properly got to use her own pasture which would have cut hay costs. Plus hay was cheaper as was straw when we made the plan, it went from 30 per large bale to currently at 50 per large round bale, straw went from 30 per large square bale to 50 per large square bale (delivery costs included in those prices)
There was no way to see the amazing rising cost of grains when I was making the plan three years before and was using those costs to figure It out, the weather, the floods and so forth has cause huge increases in feed costs for farmers across the board.
The other issue that must be shared but was included, we had to buy a truckload of water in the height of the dry spell, it worked fine, and it was split over all the animals but the cow added 60 plus gallons of water use per day when we were using the well, 60 to 80 gallons of water per day adds up, and can give drinking water to a lot of sheep.
I am not going to even add in the water hauling time in the summer because that is just my farm, feast or dry.. I either have more water then I can use or have to be super careful..
So while each farm will have its own costs and clearly if you have a auto milker or grow your own hay or grain, your costs are and time will be different.
However, I figured you guys might like the break down..
Just another Day on the Farm 