Cody Archie

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to say, hey,

Let's buy some more sheep, you know, because we weren't using all of our place all the time and the replacement heifers were coming and going.

So we ended up buying some more ewes and growing that flock.

And there's been some auxiliary benefits to that that I never saw.

Like after about a year or two, it was like, we don't have any weeds anymore.

We're not having to spray weeds anymore because

I've employed a set of ewes that eat weeds.

So now instead of either hiring my weed spraying done or trying to find time to spray weeds myself, I'm using those weeds that are growing as a source of protein or as a source to grow this flock.

So the lambs sell good.

Right now we've got to the point where you can wean a calf off the same amount of land that you can run these ewes on, you know, animal unit to animal unit.

a calf is going to sell for more money than the lambs are going to sell for.

But for the most part, that's going to change.

But did the cow cost more than the ewes did?

I mean, now it will.

You know, used to you could buy a pretty nice cow for $2,000, you know, and you could buy some ewes, some pretty good ewes for, you know, $110, $120.

So you'd have $1,100, $1,200 for a set of ewes.

Close.

But now, I mean, to buy some good ewes, you're going to spend $200 or $300, I mean, $200 a ewe probably.

So you're going to invest $2,000 to $3,000 for an animal unit, whereas you're going to spend $3,000 to $3,500 to buy, you know, a pretty decent two-year-old, three-year-old cow.

Yeah.