Keeping a Flock of Sheep

Because they provide wool, meat and milk.

• Male Sheep are known as Rams. Females as Ewes, young as Lambs.
• Lambs don't reach maturity until there 1 year old.
• Sheep live an average of 11 years
• Both Rams and Ewes produce Wool, only Ewes produce milk, and Lambs produce nothing. All can be slaughtered for meat.
• Sheep weigh on average about 190 lbs.. Rams a bit more Ewes a bit less

Like all animals, sheep need food and water. Sheep are great because water is easy to come by and they eat grass. This makes feeding them easy most of the time. However... during the winter months they will not be able to graze and will have to be feed. They require 2 lbs of grain ( such as Wheat, Barley, Oats, Alfalfa or Corn) per day per sheep. Most of these grains weigh around 40 lbs per cubic ft ( unit). This comes out to about 1 unit of grain per month per sheep. Lambs do not need to eat because they are sustained on mother's milk.

• 1 unit of grain (Wheat, Barley, Oats, Alfalfa or Corn) per month per sheep during Winter months.
• 6 units of water per month per sheep. (Not a consideration when they have access to natural water sources.)

To put animals into pasture to graze, you must have pasture land. Pasture land is generally just open land with natural grasses growing. As domesticated herds get larger and farmers cultivate more land, a balance between land used for farming and land used for ranching must be reached. Every hex of land only has so many arable acres. How many of these arable acres are used for pasture land or cultivated for farms will have to be kept track of. Arable land can be found in woods, forests, hills and the plains. All of these can be cultivated for farmland, but only arable acreage on the plains is suitable for grazing herds (without a considerable increase to the herd's mortality rate that is). For grazing land, you will need to dedicate 1 acre for every 5 sheep in your flock.

• 1 acre of arable land dedicated to grazing per 5 sheep.

All that Wool helps keep sheep warm in the winter, as does their tendency to huddle together. Shaving them in the summer helps keep them cool. A good pasture should have plenty of shade for summer and windblock for winter, but this requires no special preparation. Very bad winter storms can and have destroyed flocks before but are not particularly common. Civilizations that are very dependent upon sheep flocks in colder climates might very well consider protecting them with a housing of some sort. If so, Consider that each sheep is going to need about 5 square ft of floor space, and the building bust have some strength to resist the stress of sheep repeatedly bumping into it.

• 5 square ft of building floor space per sheep (precautionary for winter , not a necessity)

First of all, any herd of sheep should ultimately be managed by a Rancher of at least adept rank. If not, the flock will be tended to poorly and will suffer in terms of mortality, illness, decreased birth rates, and lower wool, meat and milk yields. A Rancher can effectively manage a flock of up to 50 sheep per his rank as a rancher. In addition to managing the flock, it will have to be looked after, guided, kept together and protected as it grazes and suns in pasture. For this, you will need ranchers, herdsmen and herding dogs. Now keep in mind that flocks must be looked after 24/7 unless you have them housed in a building (even when you have them in a barn, you will have to expend a lot of time and effort bringing them food and water). Flocks not adequately tended will lose great numbers to predators and sheep wandering off and getting lost/hurt. To accomplish this, shifts will have to be worked which will translate into a lower sheep per herdsman ratio then you might think reasonable. A rancher may tend 10 sheep per rank (in addition to his management duties). A herdsman can tend 25 sheep per rank. Herding dogs may be specially trained by animal trainers, and each rancher or herdsman may effectively utilize one. Each Herding dog adds 25 to the total flock size that can effectively be tended.

• Flock Management- 50 sheep per rank of Rancher. (a single rancher can both manage and tend a flock)
• Flock Tending- 10 per rank of Rancher and 25 per rank of Herdsman. (25 more per person with a Herding dog)

First keep in mind the average life expectancy for a sheep is about 10 years with medieval conditions and medical care. This means that each year, 10% will die off due to natural factors ( about .8% per month, which we will round to 1%). Butchering those that have died naturally or those on the brink of death is a bad practice. The meat is often foul and about half that of a healthy young sheep.

Research seems to indicate that the optimum male to female ratio in mating for sheep is 1 male per 30 females. Among sheep, quite high rates of multiple births such as twins and triplets occur. In various places I have seen annual prolificacy rates for sheep listed as everything from 100% to 200% of the Ewe population. Because were working in a medieval context, lacking sanitation and medical care of the modern veterinarian, we will use the lowest figure of 100%. This means that you can expect 1 lamb to be born for each Ewe each year. Of course not every Ewe bares lambs, and many birth two, that 100% is what it about averages out to. In our system, we will then expect that every month your flock will gain 8% of it's total Ewe population in new lambs. These will be about 50% 50% male and female. 29 of 30 males are generally slaughtered at 1 year for meat, where as all females are kept for milk, wool and lamb production.

• Mortality - 1% of the flock will die per month from natural circumstances.
• At least 1 Ram per 30 Ewes required for normal replacement.
• 1 new lamb will be born each month for every 12 Ewes.
• 1 in 12 lambs mature and become Rams or Ewes each month.

One of the things this system attempts to avoid is timing of production. Technically, like farming, Sheering of sheep occurs once per year in a big harvest like crops. The last thing on earth I want to keep track of is the harvest dates of dozens of different types of crops, and I will lump the harvesting of wool in with that. What I do instead is find the yearly yield of a crop and spread it out evenly over the year. After wool is removed, it still needs to be cleaned which takes much longer than simply cutting it. In this system we will assume that a mass cutting only occurs once in spring, but the labor of cleaning the wool distributes the availability of the wool over the entire year. Any rancher or shepherd can effectively sheer a herd of sheep the size of which they can look after in the needed time. They do however need proper "sheering tools" which last most ranchers a lifetime with proper maintenance. After doing my research, I have found that the average American sheep produces 8.2 pounds of wool per year. Further research shows that a bale of cotton (a similar fiber) weighs about 8.3 pounds per cubic foot. How convenient! The average American adult sheep produces an estimated 1 unit (cubic foot) of bailed wool per year. Thus, each sheep in your flock can be assumed to produce 1/12 a unit of wool per month.

• 1 unit of wool per month per 12 sheep (ewes and rams).

Aside from wool, sheep are a great source of meat. Generally the rams are killed because few of them are needed to promote the growth of the herd, and they are some what aggressive. Anybody can kill an animal and cut it up for meat. A butcher however will salvage far more than would an unskilled knife. First of all, we must realize that a unit of meat (1 cubic ft) weighs about 45 lbs. Each slaughtered sheep produces about 50 lbs of meat. We will average and round this to 1 unit of meat per adult sheep slaughtered. We will assume that a butcher of at least adept rank can push that to 1.5 units of meat per sheep through efficiency and better using organ meat. Lambs produce only one unit of meat when slaughtered.

• 1 Unit of Meat per Ewe or Ram slaughtered. (1.5 if done by a butcher of at least adept rank)
• 1/2 of Meat for each lamb slaughtered.

Milking animals is labor intensive and time consuming work. The services of a milk maid are in order here for more efficient milk production. According to sources I've read, at any given time you can expect about 1/3 of the Ewes in a flock to be producing milk. Those Ewes producing milk produce about 2 liters a day ( over several milkings). There are 28.32 liters in a standard unit ( 1 cubic ft). Thus the average milking sheep produces about 1/14 th a unit of milk per day (very convenient that we have 28 day months). So, how much milk per month. 2 units per month from each milking Ewe, or 2/3 unit of milk per Ewe in your herd.

How many Milkmaids do I need?

Well, the number of milkmaids you need is based upon two factors. First is the number Ewes in the flock ( not just the 1/3 lactating ewes), and the second is the skill of the milkmaids. The chart below denotes who many Ewes a milkmaid can tend to based on her profession rank.