What causes the low profit in sheep farming?

There are many factors that cause farmers to lose money raising sheep. At present, the main reasons for low benefits in sheep farming, especially small-scale sheep farming by farmers, are as follows:

1. Feeding and management of sheep

A sheep farm with good feeding and management can save feed, avoid feed waste, and convert the feed input into sheep weight gain to the maximum extent; a sheep farm with good feeding and management has fewer sheep diseases, which can not only save the cost of purchasing vaccines, but also save the cost of routine preventive medication and therapeutic medication. According to reports, poor feeding and management and improper feed selection increase the feed-to-meat ratio by 0.2, and each slaughter sheep will use 20 kg more feed, increasing the cost by 30 yuan; when the flock becomes diseased, the drug cost increases by 10 yuan per sheep.

2. Feed

Feed is the foundation of sheep farming and the key factor determining success or failure. Under normal circumstances, feed costs account for 70%-80% of sheep farming costs, so how to reasonably select, use, and develop feed, improve the feed conversion rate, and reduce the feed consumption rate plays a decisive role in improving the economic benefits of sheep farming.

3. Breed

Breed is the primary condition for improving the economic benefits of sheep farming. The quality of the breed directly determines the sheep's production performance, feed consumption, feeding cycle, and feed-to-meat ratio, among others. Many experiments show that raising excellent crossbred sheep can increase the number of weaned lambs per litter by 1-2, increase weight gain by 10%-30%, and improve feed utilization by 10%-15%. Good breeds grow faster and have a shorter feeding cycle than local sheep, and can increase economic benefits by 10%-12%.

4. Disease prevention

Once an epidemic breaks out on a sheep farm, it will definitely cause major economic losses, or even catastrophic disaster. Looking at existing sheep farms, the problem of weak awareness of disease prevention is common. Disease prevention work is still blind, arbitrary, and based on luck. In many farms, flock diseases occur continuously throughout the year, rising one after another, year after year, again and again. After several years, they have to close the sheep farm. The losses are severe, and the lessons are profound. Sheep farmers always fix their attention on sheep prices and believe that sheep prices are the decisive factor in whether a sheep farm can be profitable, but this is not the case. If we look at a sheep farm with 500 ewes on hand and an average monthly output of 800 commercial sheep, one epidemic diarrhea in winter causes a direct loss of 400,000 yuan; if the sheep price drops by 1 yuan per kg, a 100 kg meat sheep drops by 100 yuan, and 800 commercial sheep lose an average of 80,000 yuan per month due to the price drop, which is only equivalent to one-fifth of the loss caused by epidemic diarrhea.