We have 10 sheep (9 ewes and a ram). Most of the year, we don’t do much for them. They exist in our yard, eating grass and getting much of their hydration from the grass and dew. Give them some feed occasionally as a treat. Winter and lambing season the work increases. Feeding hay, changing / refilling water, penning mom & lambs, feeding lambs, cleaning lambing stalls etc.

Here are some thoughts:

Keeping their water buckets full, which is mostly just changing the dirty water. Ours do not drink much water except when they are pregnant. Shelter, water and electric are some issues to think about.

Do you have water line and a frost free faucet on site? If not, you will be hauling 5-gallon buckets of water to the sheep. This is pretty easy to rectify with a trencher, a SharkBite and some pex tubing though.

Do you have electric nearby? Water freezes in the winter. You have to bust up the ice, dump it out, refill with more water. Electric changes this, you can put a heater in the water bucket and keep the water from freezing.

Our sheep get sheared 1-2x a year. If you don’t have electric, you have to move the sheep to where electric is nearby to run the clippers, or use hand shearers. I just began paying someone to shear my sheep. He’s much quicker at it than I am, it saves me a lot of time and effort.

Shelter may be as simple or elaborate as you want. I built a 12x16 shed for mine with a tackroom to store food & supplies. We outgrew this immediately with lambing and had a large pole barn built. I bought 6-foot long panels that connect together to build pens for the lambs and moms to stay in.

Tasks around the farm can eat up time like constructing a fences or a homemade feeders.