I started my sheep business early this year, and I am hoping it will be a big family business within the next few years. My daughter and her boyfriend are hoping to come out to Bulgaria to live and to continue on with this business with me.
The first thing I had to do was build a temporary sheep shelter for the sheep I was hoping to buy. I had spken to the mayor of the village and he said this was okay to go ahead, but that I had to take note that there was new EU regulations and I would be needing a permanent place 3 kilometres outside of the village. I had a
few problems at first has I had wanted to put the shelter on my own land for the time being, but this was disputed by some local neighbours. So then I was told I could use the shelter that was vacant across from the village where they keep many sheep. Then that was disputed by another local that it was for the Bulgarians and not for English. So my Bulgarian friend decided that it would be best if we used his land for the time being, until I could get the land I was after for a permanent shelter. I have 2 years to do this in, under the EU regulations.
Then the fun began sourcing sheep, with the help of Asen, my Bulgarian friend who speaks English. He was in contact with several very good knowledgeable shepherds. These young men assisted us to find good sheep in the local villages. Much talking went on usually later in the evening, due to the fact we had
to wait for the sheep to come back to their shelters, after being out all day. They haggled the prices of the sheep for me and checked the sheep out. The animal Dr came to make out a document of transportation and check that the sheep were in good health and tagged, we then made a note of the numbers which were to be registered later.
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This was done again many times till I had the amount of sheep I wanted. All the documents we had then had to be taken to another animal Dr in the main town and have him fill in another document sign it and stamp it.
Then off to the register department where they register the sheep on the computer which is then sent to Haskovo. In between this I also had to register land for the sheep to go out to pasture, 2 acres are required for every sheep. There was much to-ing and fro-ing, and one stage it took two days to get into one department due to waiting around for our turn to come.
Once this was done the registering of the sheep went through to Haskovo and a week later a printed document was then collected from the department and then back to the last department, where we went into another office for the lady then to arrange for this to go onto disc. This then is collected and I will have a copy. There is much to learn just setting th business up but I have managed to do it, with the help of Bulgarian friends.
Now I have 80 sheep, 2 rams and 11 lambs and hopefully next year this will be double.
My last partner in the Uk had a small sheep farm and I learned of many things there, although I wasnt actually involved with it as such. The reason for sheep here was that I needed some form of regular income and was told by my Bulgarian friend that sheep farming is a very good business. So I decided to take a chance and give it a try. At the present time just for all the basic necessities; temporary shelter, 80 sheep, food, shepherd, lorry, my total costs have been in the region of 30,000 lev (around 15,000 Euros). But later in the future I am hoping to build up on the amount of sheep to possibly 300, with a permanent shelter in keeping with the EU regulations. We hope to get a milking machine and cooling machine. I can apply for theEU grant of 50,000 euros, but at the moment I am still in this process of trying to find out all the details and paperwork in English.
Milk at the moment is in between 0.75 and 1 lv a litre (0.30 to 50 Euro cents) but this depends on the milk company you are are able to deal with. For the subsidy it is 10 Euro cents per litre but you get it the following year.
The sheep have b, which costs een sheared at 2 lev (1 Euro) a sheep. Has yet I'm not sure what the earnings from this are, but I've been told it's not very good and is only 1 lev a kilo. This would only just cover costs for shearing, This is a business that you would have to do much work yourself to make money. The sheperd at the moment is paid on the rate of 4 lev a sheep. The sheep are hand milked and I am myself still learning the art of this and need to pick up speed. This is so if I do need to milk sheep
Everything is new and exciting, with much hard work and will take time to make a good business, but I'm sure that as time goes on and the stock is built up and I eventually get a permanent shelter for many sheep the
business will flourish. Now the rams are having power food to prepare them for mating then later to hopefully produce many good strong lambs. These will be sold to market and some will be kept for growing into the stock.
