Sheep VS Goats- Which Is More Profitable

Sheep and goats. Most would say they're closely the same animal, but they're actually very different and one of them definitely makes more money than the other. There are four categories we need to go over and break down to see which of these livestock is best for your farm. Whoever wins three of those categories is the better farm animal. You might remember from a few videos ago that I pit sheep and cows against each other and, spoiler alert, the sheep won. And now I'm going to compare the sheep to its mentally deranged cousin, the goat. I won't be talking about dairy goats or dairy sheep in this video because I have never owned them and we have never owned them in the past. I will be sticking to meat sheep and meat goats for the entirety of this video. Starting with our first category, land. Which of these animals can survive on less acreage? Well, of course I can't tell you for a fact on how much land you need for one goat or how much land you need for one sheep in your area. But I will say that sheep do a lot better on open pasture than brush and weeds like goats are known for. Sheep will eat those weeds and brush, don't get me wrong, but they only like to take small nibbles of everything and they're just more of a grass grazer like cows. While goats are literally living weed eaters and eat almost everything and annihilate shrubbery, making them big time browsers. But in the end, I do not know and do not have a ratio for how many goats you can have versus how many sheep you can have. So I'm not sure which one you can have more of per acre, but I am going to stick to the goat side on this category, giving them their first win. They could survive on brush and weeds alone and for that reason I could see them fitting into more farms and homesteads. The second category is which one is easier to take care of? Well, medicine and work-wise, sheep and goats are about the same. They both get sick more often than cows and have usual hoof problems with foot rot and problems with worms and you have to treat these diseases rather quickly or else they'll die. What I mean by work-wise though, I mean that we have a big day of the year that we call sheep day where we run all the sheep through our corral system to treat them for all their diseases if needed. We used to do the exact same thing for our goats, so in that sort of circumstance they are the same. Now behavior-wise, goats are way more crazy and erratic than sheep. I talk a lot about on this channel how I hate and disregard goats and this is probably the biggest reason why. They are known for being mischievous, finding ways to escape their pen, and finding ways to kill themselves. You heard that right. We've had goats suffocate under hay bales, drown themselves in richy water tanks, and even hang themselves with vines and trees when trying to get leaves. None of these things have happened with our sheep. And I know a lot of goat people watch my videos, but I'm just stating facts and the fact is that sheep are a lot easier to keep than goats. I hate to bash on an animal like this all the time, but it's true. Now category three, how much do they cost to start with? In other words, for our economist friends, how much is the initial investment? Well, unlike my video with the sheep versus the cows, sheep and goats are kind of the same price on how much you need to spend to start a herd. Of course, it depends on what breed you want and where you live, but around here in Arkansas, we can get a good breeding age ewe for about $250 and a good breeding age doe for about the same price. It's pretty crazy. You would think one is favored over the other in price, but no. This statement automatically makes you think that the sheep and the goat are both going to make the same amount of money and then this video is going to end in a happy funland tie where both the sheep and the goat both get a trophy. Well, you're wrong. There's winners and there's losers in this world and you're either one or the other. Just because this category ends in a tie doesn't mean the video will. Finally, what you've all been waiting for, category four, which one makes more money? Well, both the sheep and the goat have advantages over each other, but goats definitely mature faster than sheep, so they take a shorter amount of time to get to breeding age, taking around 300 days to mature while sheep take almost 390. Meat goats also have a kidding rate of over 200%, which means they almost always have twins or more per pregnancy. While our Catan sheep have a percentage of around 175%, which is 1.75 babies per pregnancy. All of these statements lead to the goats favor, but sheep definitely put on weight faster than goats having an average daily weight gain of almost half a pound while goats generally put on a weight of about a third of a pound a day. Sheep are also expected to have more weight at time of selling, the desired weight being 100 to 150 pounds per sheep. Well, goats are expected to get as big with their desired weight being 60 to 80 pounds, but enough about advantages already. To give you the big picture on who's better at profit, I have to give you guys the highly anticipated economic example. I will give two economic examples, one for each animal. Let's start with the sheep. Let's say you buy 10 bred ewes for $2,500. I know that's not a lot of sheep, but I'm trying to stay small scale. They are pregnant for about five months and then have their 17 and a half offspring using the percentage we have earlier. We then wait for seven months for those babies to grow up and to get to the average of 100 pounds each. The average price in our area for a sheep per pound is $2.50, which gives you a total of $4,375 for your 17 and a half lamb average. This comes out to $1,875 after paying off those ewes that you bought for the first year. Now let's go look at the goats. So you bought 10 bred does for the same amount of money as the 10 bred ewes. You then wait for five months for those does to have their 20 kids coming from the average kidding rate of over 200%. Then you wait seven months for them to get big enough for market, which is averaged at 70 pounds per kid. Goats around here go for $3.25 per pound. This ends up as $4,550, which comes out to $2,050 after paying off the does you bought for the first year. So the goat wins this category over the sheep making over $200 more in the first year. In summary, the goat wins this video and is the better farm animal over the sheep. But that's if your goat doesn't get suicidal thoughts. Don't get me wrong. I've been trying to be unbiased and neutral this entire video, but we still raise sheep and think they're better because they don't kill themselves and are not as frustrating or as hard to keep as goats. I'm not saying I'll never buy goats and I'll never raise them in the future. I'm just saying that category two might've been worth more than just one point for the sheep. That's my thoughts. Tell me in the comment section how you feel. And if you want to see how the sheep fared against the cow, please check out that video and please check out some of my others. And thank you guys for watching. That's a farm.