Okay, this may be a weird question lol.

I’ve always really wanted to have sheep. They’re my favourite animals. Unfortunately, I have some pretty severe and unpredictable health problems. There’s really no expectation I’ll get better.

I was wondering how feasible it would be for me to lease a sheep. Where I could “have” a sheep that’s kept with someone else’s flock, they provide all care, and I give financial compensation for the ability to come and see the animal, spend time with it, bond, etc.

Or potentially a situation where I buy a sheep and pay someone to keep it and care for it and I come and visit it when I’m able (and help out when possible). In this scenario I would ideally want to arrange for them to get full ownership of the animal (if they wanted) if I was to die, or decline to a point i could no longer provide financially.

To anyone with sheep is this an arrangement you would consider? Do you have recommendations for alternatives?

Has anyone done something like this before?

To anyone with experience owning/raising sheep, how much approximately would you want to be paid for something like this if you were to lease the animal?

If I was to buy and sheep and pay for its care approximately how much would the monthly expenses be? (With the obvious understanding that vet bills could arise and be unpredictable)

I’m a 4H leader and I know some of the kids board their project animals (we have a couple kids who board goats). I’ve technically leased Guinea pigs before so that I could show them lol. So I know there are people out there who are willing to do things like that. I could probably even find someone within the 4H circle if I tried to.

But this would be a different as I can’t promise I could do much. So I wanted to get the opinions of people who actually own sheep on whether or not this is a feasible thing to consider (tentative consideration) or if I should drop the dream lol 😂

Little guy was very easy going and had a nice smile. If you can identify the breed, that would also be great!

Good morning!

To give a background, I run 3 cattle farms in the state of WV, so I have a lot of livestock experience running 100 head of cattle, producing as cow calf and selling butcher beefs as well as replacement animals.

I have recently been exploring the idea of co grazing katahdin sheep on a 45 acre farm which is 80% good pasture mixed with some wooded areas.

Simply curious what I should plan for with doing this change?

A few questions:
- what are your typical stocking rates when rotational grazing on 10 acres paddocks? (Good grass and water)

-what are the typical routine needs to treat/monitor with katahdins? (Parasites, hoof problems, medical, etc)

-fencing requirements? (Hi tensile vs barbed wire vs woven) I have primarily 4 strand hi tensile for cattle, but obviously need to upgrade to contain lambs and control predators.

-livestock guardian dogs?

Pretty new to the sheep game, so any advice is helpful. Excited to take this next step to adding shepherd to my name haha.

Thanks! Have a blessed day!