Sheep... Lots and lots of 'em

Now when you sit in our kitchen there is a new sound from outside.  Along with the river's constant gurgle and the crickets and cicadas racket, we've now added the bleating of sheep from up on the mountain behind our house. 

We've purchased sheep from a few different places and we're now up to 16 and expecting some more lambs soon.  Most of these are hair sheep (with hair like a goat), a breed which is much better suited to our climate than the woolly ones.  We want sheep for their meat and for the free lawn care service in our mahogany plantation. 

​People have asked: why not cows?  So, here's a little math for you, to see if you can follow our logic:  You can feed 8 sheep in the space of 1 cow.  The meat you get from butchering 8 sheep is equivalent to that of 1 cow.  The difference comes when you look at how fast you can raise the animals for meat.  Sheep are ready to butcher in 6 months, where cows need 1 1/2 years to grow first.  Theoretically then, we'll get 3x the meat production from sheep vs. cows. 

Right now we're still trying to tame the sheep.  At the point we got them they were a little wild and unused to being around people.  They would go "hide" up at the top left of the mountain, when the water and best grass was down on the bottom right.  Now we're training them to come down to their corral everyday to look for food or a salt lick, so we can see how they're doing and get them used to people.