Starting a Micro-Dairy Course

Are you interested in adding milksheep to your farm or homestead?

It's cheaper, easier, and kinder to the animals and yourself when we make our mistakes on paper.  

The online option is ideal for those just starting to explore sheep, especially milking sheep and want to learn as much as possible before committing.

The online and in-person option is perfect for those who either have sheep or have already decided sheep are for them and want to milk them too. 

This 6-week course will take place over zoom with an added option of visiting the farm in-person for a hands-on component.

Navigating through the maze of animal care, milk production, sales, production, and regulation can be difficult. We've been raising sheep since 2007, milking and making lots of different sheep-based products since 2015.

Sheep and their milk are the ideal homestead and dairy animals with great potential for small-scale ecological farms.

Some of the things we'll cover include:

• Beginning with a questionnaire exploring your personal, farm, and financial goals. Where you are now, and a skill inventory. This is done before visiting the farm and is brought to the farm consultation.
  
  
• Labour and how to manage your time as a micro-dairy.
  
  
• How different sheep breeds are for milking, the difference between milk, meat, and fibre sheep.
  
  
• How to manage a small flock in the barn, the milk stand, and the field. We do rotational grazing so there will be a focus on how to manage milksheep on pasture.
  
  
• Scale-appropriate milking equipment, and regulations around sheep milk in Ontario - including how helpful your health department can be.
  
  
• Value-adding with wool, meat production with dairy animals. 
  
  
• From bank barn to business. We'll be looking at the potential and pitfalls of milking sheep so you can have a better chance of avoiding them. We'll go through the documents we have used to help us make decisions. 
  
  
• How to find mentoring, funding, education, and grants for your micro-dairy/homestead.
  
  
• Labeling, packaging, and distribution of milk products online, in person, and wholesale.

• We'll talk about farm laws, regulations, and best practices from birth to death. The good, bad, ugly, and gross. It's all a part of livestock.
  
  
• Value-added products with wool, and meat, the equipment, and production.
  
  
• An exit questionnaire will be taken home to help absorb the day's experience and translate it to your own farm.

Farming uses all our senses. Seeing a working dairy helps make decisions about your own direction to take your dairy. 

No matter if you have had sheep for years or just starting, this will be helpful to you if you want to add milksheep to your flock.

On-farm experiences to be arranged individually to facilitate lots of hand-on opportunities.

DATE- TBD 2025