Journey towards sheep holistic grazing

Hey! This is my first post in the forum!

I’m in Sweden, zone 4-5 USDA roughly. We are about 45 min away from the Ridgedale permaculture site (and plan to visit)

My husband inherited this property from his parents, but theres a large amount of debt that hasnt been paid.

I read holistic management by Savory, so I decided to put it into practice

So we made plans to pay it by transforming the hectares of spruce-monoculture and heavy shade into a silvopasture system that is wildlife friendly, by cutting the trees with a contractor, leaving most of the profit towards debt and the rest towards resolving logjams and stuff. So far so good.

The main point of this post is that we have about 2ha of pasture (and 2.5 more ha rented for dirt cheap from a neighbor we are friends with), and historically it has been used for sheep.

The sheep is a small herd of 9 meat and wool hardy ewes of a heritage mix. 1 died this spring (sadly) so we are down to 8.

Apparently the meat and hides from 7 month lambs have been sold to a few customers, but the enterprise has barely been breaking even. The main problem really is lack of customers and some weird deals. 2 or sometimes 3 lambs were taken for the family for their own consumption, but thats really not enough to cover their meat needs.

I want to transition to a herdshare model, market them as grassfed (but still below average price for the area for organic grassfed) and expand to 10 ewes.

The other problem is the pastures. They’ve been grazed in a patchy way, and our spoiled sheep like to be close to home to watch the truck, so theres some areas that have SUPER tall grass and weeds and other spots that are severely exposed (pics attached). The 2ha are divided into a summer pasture, and a winter pasture that gets 1 or 2 hay cuts. at this point, if the herd was 25 sheep there would be excess hay for the long off season of oct-nov to around april.

The pros of this pasture is that my father in law decided to improve it with perennial clover, and they do mow it when needed, so theres not many of the more noxious weeds. Theres dandelions everywhere.

I planned (after a few adjustments) to have a grazing period of 1 day and 38 virtual paddocks until July 6. The sheep are getting atm about 200 to 230m2 of fresh grass per day, because we are not letting them touch the centre of the pasture at all (theres bare patches from them laying down), and the utilization rate atm is probably about 60% without counting trampling because we are grazing pre-eaten grass, temporarily. By the time they rotate through the pasture the grass there mightve rested about 45 days. Its already pretty tall since the sheep have touched that spot the least, so were excited to see how tall it will get by the time they come in.


After July 6th i plan to give them about 500m2, 3 days per paddock (counting the fenced off bare spots), which is enough time to stockpile at least 70% of the pasture. Then they are moved in September 11 to the other 1 ha and spend their time there until a flexible date of around november, and we do the hay cut if the ground isnt muddy. The other 1 ha would be cut for hay at July as it usually is. So sheep can fertilize both and theres enough growth there to carry them through the last of the winter before the snow is too thick.

If we decide to take 2 weeks off of vacation or cant be here we can just give them a bigger paddock with adequate rest period, so it should be fine. It takes me about 15 min to move the fencing, but i still get confused about the move. I think I can shorten that to 5 min.


We also have 4 growing cayuga ducks that have access to a dug out pond, but those are more for entertainment and slugs, lol. The eggs are a plus. This is the first time either of us have owned ducks, and we cant recommend them enough!!! Maybe its the way we treated them when the tiny ducklings got home, but they go on their own to their enclosure at night, they’re not dirty unlike what we have heard and read (when they were ducklings they were horribly messy, but then we learned to give them their food with water in it and separate water for their bills). They are super smart compared to the heritage chicken my inlaws have. I think to have good ducks you cant treat them like chicken.

Ik this is a long post

If you’re in the Ed or Vastra Gotaland area and would be interested in grassfed, antibiotic free lamb meat that is affordable, or have folks that would be interested, let us know!

Priscilla Hernández wrote:Hey! This is my first post in the forum!

I’m in Sweden, zone 4-5 USDA roughly. We are about 45 min away from the Ridgedale permaculture site (and plan to visit)

My husband inherited this property from his parents, but theres a large amount of debt that hasnt been paid.

I read holistic management by Savory, so I decided to put it into practice

So we made plans to pay it by transforming the hectares of spruce-monoculture and heavy shade into a silvopasture system that is wildlife friendly, by cutting the trees with a contractor, leaving most of the profit towards debt and the rest towards resolving logjams and stuff. So far so good.

The main point of this post is that we have about 2ha of pasture (and 2.5 more ha rented for dirt cheap from a neighbor we are friends with), and historically it has been used for sheep.

The sheep is a small herd of 9 meat and wool hardy ewes of a heritage mix. 1 died this spring (sadly) so we are down to 8.

Apparently the meat and hides from 7 month lambs have been sold to a few customers, but the enterprise has barely been breaking even. The main problem really is lack of customers and some weird deals. 2 or sometimes 3 lambs were taken for the family for their own consumption, but thats really not enough to cover their meat needs.

I want to transition to a herdshare model, market them as grassfed (but still below average price for the area for organic grassfed) and expand to 10 ewes.

The other problem is the pastures. They’ve been grazed in a patchy way, and our spoiled sheep like to be close to home to watch the truck, so theres some areas that have SUPER tall grass and weeds and other spots that are severely exposed (pics attached). The 2ha are divided into a summer pasture, and a winter pasture that gets 1 or 2 hay cuts. at this point, if the herd was 25 sheep there would be excess hay for the long off season of oct-nov to around april.

The pros of this pasture is that my father in law decided to improve it with perennial clover, and they do mow it when needed, so theres not many of the more noxious weeds. Theres dandelions everywhere.

I planned (after a few adjustments) to have a grazing period of 1 day and 38 virtual paddocks until July 6. The sheep are getting atm about 200 to 230m2 of fresh grass per day, because we are not letting them touch the centre of the pasture at all (theres bare patches from them laying down), and the utilization rate atm is probably about 60% without counting trampling because we are grazing pre-eaten grass, temporarily. By the time they rotate through the pasture the grass there mightve rested about 45 days. Its already pretty tall since the sheep have touched that spot the least, so were excited to see how tall it will get by the time they come in.


After July 6th i plan to give them about 500m2, 3 days per paddock (counting the fenced off bare spots), which is enough time to stockpile at least 70% of the pasture. Then they are moved in September 11 to the other 1 ha and spend their time there until a flexible date of around november, and we do the hay cut if the ground isnt muddy. The other 1 ha would be cut for hay at July as it usually is. So sheep can fertilize both and theres enough growth there to carry them through the last of the winter before the snow is too thick.

If we decide to take 2 weeks off of vacation or cant be here we can just give them a bigger paddock with adequate rest period, so it should be fine. It takes me about 15 min to move the fencing, but i still get confused about the move. I think I can shorten that to 5 min.


We also have 4 growing cayuga ducks that have access to a dug out pond, but those are more for entertainment and slugs, lol. The eggs are a plus. This is the first time either of us have owned ducks, and we cant recommend them enough!!! Maybe its the way we treated them when the tiny ducklings got home, but they go on their own to their enclosure at night, they’re not dirty unlike what we have heard and read (when they were ducklings they were horribly messy, but then we learned to give them their food with water in it and separate water for their bills). They are super smart compared to the heritage chicken my inlaws have. I think to have good ducks you cant treat them like chicken.

Ik this is a long post

If you’re in the Ed or Vastra Gotaland area and would be interested in grassfed, antibiotic free lamb meat that is affordable, or have folks that would be interested, let us know!

Forgot to attach the pics of the bare spots. Gotta go do potato planting now.

Also i am growing hazelnuts and apples and other fruits from seed in pots to plant in the pasture for shade and for food, ala Mark Shepard.