What would you do with 80 acres of pasture?

One thing to think about with cattle is the quality of your pasture. You'd be wasting some of the potential of high quality pasture on beef cattle (unless you dense stock) since they gain on poorer quality just fine. High quality pasture is much more important (and profitable) with dairy and fiber animals than meat animals.

What breed of sheep would you go with? Right now I raise Icelandics...but not sure they would be the highest production animal. They seem more suited to a homesteader, like myself, than a 'farm'.

Just make it pay you. Who cares how it pays as long as it pays!

There is a big learning curve to make any small business pay.

You can make some money if you rent the property out for cash. Figure out what it cost you, what taxes and insurance cost, and charge more than that, cash up front.

you will make money that way.

Getting into business for yourself, you take the big risks of critters dying, or illness, or markets going all to heck, or feed costs going way up.

There are cycles and trends and over 20 years you likely will learn a lot and have more net worth after those 20 years....

But you will have had a lot of $$$ risk along the way, and used a lot of time, and so forth. Then, you will not have coffee cans of dollar bills - you will have net worth - equipment, hay, better fence, perhaps breeding stock. None of that can you spend today, it is just net worth.

But, yes, you will be farther ahead. Probably.

It is a bumpy road getting from here to there, tho, and you should be warned and prepared for the bumps.

--->Paul

Well I'll tell you something from my experience, Rambler, keeping a can full of dollar bills is about the worst place to keep your wealth that I can think of. Dollars are just about the only thing guaranteed to lose value.

That would depend on the market in your area, your climate, the cost/availability of local breeding stock, the cost/availability of feed, and how much value-add effort you're willing to put in to production or marketing.

If you have a high demand for meat, your Icelandics may still be a great option. Cheviot, Dorper, Columbia or Romney might also be good options. You really have to balance ALL the production costs against anticipated yields and market price.

If you have a high fiber demand, you'd do best considering a breed with the wool or hair that gives you good return in markets you wish to pursue. Your Icelandic fleeces (as well as most hair sheep) have an excellent market for handspinners and crafters, and full pelts are highly profitable on the world market. Hair sheep market tends to smaller but pays more; industrial market ranges from coarse carpet wool (normally pays the least) up to fine silken wool (normally pays the most). There are just too many variables to recommend a breed here.

There are limited sheep breeds that are truly considered dairy and they do require more care. Sheep milk is a serious speciality market, but can be EXTREMELY profitable if you have several artisan cheesemakers in your area. Lacaunes and Friesians are probably best known.

If you're looking for something that can be used for a little bit of everything depending on the market at the time, Polypays Katahdins are normally a good bet.

(I'm partial to Cheviots because they do extremely well on pasture without major health problems or extensive husbandry ).

Northeast?

Hmmm....

Got dairies or horses anywhere around?

Had a good friend in West-by-God-Virginia, who made a pretty decent penny off of alfalfa fields. Alfalfa hay sells for over $200/ton, IIRC.

Yup! Lots of dairies in the area, even my neighbor is a dairy farmer. Lots of horse people around too. Not a bad idea.

Here's a business model you might want to check out and I would be interested in feedback from others on the thread as I am thinking of going this route as well:

http://foodshedguide.org/cases/millionaire-dairy

There's another article on these lines but still searching for the link will post when I have more

Wish they'd come up with a millionaire beef model.

Why would you buy high and sell low ? With 80 acres you could turn it into 8 pastures/meadows and use rotational grazing making sure to leave 4 meadows to grow spring til late summer for your hay which you can feed to stock if housed in winter. Strip graze cattle so they don`t spoil your grass by spot grazing some parts of the meadow and ignoring others. Follow the with sheep/lambs as they graze down shorter than cattle. Using this method you have at least 2 sources of income and the ground is organically fertilized. That is what I would do if i was lucky enough to have 80 acres at my disposal.

Then follow the cattle and sheep with a pastured egg mobile a la Joel Salatin for a third source of income. If the land is rolling or hilly also look for spots to build some stock tanks to store water for dry periods.

Here's the best link for the "Millionaire Dairy Model" by Dr.Larry Tranel. I'm starting a thread on the forum devoted to this and would like to hear from anyone who has tried it or knows someone who has tried it. Investment is not that large and I like the grass based approach and simplified system, though I'll admit I don't know too much about dairy farming other than milking a Jersey cow a few times.

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/dubuque/dairy

Here's an article written about the system in graze magazine:

http://www.grazeonline.com/wordpress.../april2008.pdf