this is one of the reasons i'm really keen on goats
they nibble at everything, grass included but not mandatory
if i was running dairy sheep i'd be looking at what ways to make feed into the freeze times for them... not something i need to think about here when i get my goat dairy/ranch happening
This is exactly what we shoot for every year, growing a nice stockpile of winter feed for the sheep. We have had success a few years and failed just as much. This year we thought we finally found someone to cooperate with by planting turnips after the barley harvest. Unfortunately, the barely didn't grow well and they planted corn as an emergency replacement. By the time we found out, it was too late to work a new deal with someone else. We scrambled and tried to plant something on a couple acres here at the homestead but we didn't prepare the ground well enough and ended up with nothing. Fingers crossed next year the cooperative plan comes together.
yeah, i see the complexity of the issue there crystal
this is why the goat wins as an animal because it will eat anything so you can probably scavenge the weeds to make into hay and they'll deal
the sheep copes with the cold (assuming it's wooly) but what's it gonna eat in the snow anyway?
hay has a shelf life so i think the best strategy is to have a target for each month of stashed hay and it should cover you for your intended head count
This is way over simplified. Even hair sheep do just fine in the winter. They also don't need water if you're not feeding them hay AND will dig through the snow to get grass AND they also eat forbes. Every goat farmer I've seen still creep feeds hay in the winter. Add in parasite resistant breeds and sheep win.
Also, try keeping a sheep in on a single strand on polybraid, you can't.
