I have never raised sheep, and have nothing substantial to offer. But, I have a friend who used to raise sheep along with a cows, goats, chickens.
He stopped raising the sheep, due in part to, and I quote, "sheep are the only animals I have ever seen that look for ways to die."
Pretty much what I've been told too. From what I read up on sheep, they either need zinc, or they cannot take zinc. I forget which it is right now, but it's at odds with horses and cattle. If you just raise sheep, it wont matter, but if you raise other animals, then they are at odds with feeding. I went with goats. Goats are fun, easy to take care of and easy to sell. Meat prices at the auction are a bout a buck a pound. Facebook and Craigslist pricing is higher, but it takes a little more effort to sell them that way. Either way, my small pygmy nigerians boys sell for $100 and the girls are $150 to $200 on a good day. Then the question is how many do you have to sell every month, or yearly to make it worthwhile? Fencing, housing, water year round, which means heat for the water in winter, and additional feed and medicine like warming them all factor into it. If I sold a hundred goats a year, I would be making about a grand a month off of the goats. The cost to take care of 60 to 70 mama goats is probably a tenth of that, or a hundred bucks a month, plus your time. So with goats, it's doable to break even once you have the land, fencing, barn and handling facilities in place. I don't think you can make a profit, but enough people are doing it that I'm sure it's possible.
If you are going to do sheep, I would create a spread sheet of expenses and known sales prices like what they go for at auction. If you are thinking wool sheep, what can you sell the wool for? What can you sell them for meat? What can you sell them for as pets? and is there any market for trophy rams to a hunting ranch? Same thing with hair sheep. Here in Texas, a ram with a decent set of horns will sell for a couple hundred bucks to a ranch, that will sell them to clients to come and shoot them for another hundred bucks or more depending on the size of the horns, and the type of the sheep.
