We Started With Sheep - A First Year Field Guide

We Started With Sheep… A First Year Field Guide

From someone who figured it out in real time… mistakes and all.

We bought five bred ewes with zero experience, zero infrastructure, and a borrowed trailer. Two months after saving my husband’s family farm, we jumped in headfirst and figured out almost everything the hard way.

This guide is everything we wish someone had handed us on day one.

What’s inside:

This isn’t a textbook written by an expert. It’s an 18-page working field guide written by a first year farmer who lived it — with real numbers, real mistakes, and real lessons from our first lambing season start to finish.

You’ll get:

• Our actual financial breakdown — what we paid, what we made, and what we’d do differently

• A startup math worksheet so you can run your own numbers before you buy

• Flock snapshot tracker to know your animals at a glance

• Lambing tracker with a full supply checklist of what to have ready before they arrive

• Weekly check routine — not perfect, just consistent

• Monthly expense tracker so feed costs don’t sneak up on you

• The Jack Jack Rule — and why you should never pet a ram lamb on the head

• The weaning and selling guide — because the crying will bother you more than it bothers them

• Rotational grazing basics and the NRCS EQIP program that most first year farmers have no idea exists

• If I could start over — everything we’d do differently

• Our Amazon storefront starter kit with every product we actually used linked and ready

This guide is for you if:

• You’re thinking about starting your first flock and don’t know where to begin

• You’re in your first season and feeling like you’re drowning

• You want real numbers from a real farm — not estimates from someone who’s never done it

• You’re trying to start small without spending a fortune

A note on pricing and experience:

The numbers in this guide reflect what we paid and what we earned at the time we got started. Livestock prices, feed costs, and market conditions vary by region and change over time. This is our experience — one first year family figuring it out in real time. Take what is useful, do your own research, and ultimately do what makes the most sense for your flock, your farm, and your family.