Your opinion on this website layout, please?

[secuono]

I'm always changing my website a little bit here n there, trying to make it more professional looking, answering common questions I get, making sure as much info is available right there for the potential buyers. I try to change the sheep pictures as I get newer pictures, so roughly one for summer, late fall, winter, spring with lambs, late spring w/o lambs and back to summer. No particular reason for this, other than I take tons of pics of my sheep and like to share them. I'm not sure if that's helpful to buyers to know the current state of the sheep or just more confusing, lol.
I've just added the dual registered bit, so let me know if that's confusing or sounds weird.

What do you guys think might need changing? Different font, more information about each animal, more info on other things, different layout, something else?

Thanks!



http://forever-farms.weebly.com/

 

[PhilaGardener]

He says sheepishly . . . what sheep? Guess I'm missing them somehow . . .

 

[journey11]

It looks clean and straight-forward to me. Since you like to do pics, might be fun to do a slideshow/photostream on there, maybe under "News". I work in Blogger, so I'm not sure what widget you'd need for Weebly, but I figure they'd have one. You can link it to a Photobucket or Flickr, etc, acct and update/add to it from there.

 

[valley ranch]

I think you're good! Nice looking paddock.

Richard

 

[so lucky]

Understanding that I know nothing about sheep OR website design, take my opinion with a grain of salt. I think it looks great. Only thing I might suggest is a pic of a baby smiling fluff ball, because everybody likes smiling baby pics.

 

[catjac1975]

Lovely- very professional.

 

[bobm]

Nice photo and introdudtion to your farm. What specific animals for sale ( including prices) and / or services are you offering ? You have registered sheep and as such you suggest quality animals to start or increase a breeding herd for profit, so are you selling breeding stock and/ or lambs for the freezer ? You have 5 acres in pasture and only 10 ewes, 2 of which are retired so the 2 are out of production ( what is your carrying capasity of your land and can you increase the number of breeding ewes) ... why 3 rams, then add another ram ? Are any of them for sale ? One mature ram can easily service 30+ ewes. ( In a farm internet advertisement : One Dorper ram in Oregon services 100 ewes 3 times a year for a total of 300). All of these things adds to overhead costs with little hope to turn a profit much less break even so not very intiseing for a customer to buy from you. My wife works for the IRS - audits businesses , since you are a hobby farm you can not deduct expenses from your income tax and by association any potential costomer looking to make money may be turned off. The above is not meant as a put down, but a hint as to what a potential buyer that is interested in making a profit from a sheep venture may see in the add.

 

[secuono]

These are considered "novelty" sheep, most buy them as pets, lawn mowers, for their wool or to breed and sell their own lambs. I don't personally know anyone who breeds to eat them or sell for the market.
All of my lambs have always sold before October thus far, so I haven't been able to keep any for dinner. That's why I got the cheviot, for dinner lambs and her longer wool. We'll keep one of her mutt lambs for dinner and sell the other(s).
Having more rams means I can sell unrelated lambs to make breeding pairs, trios, etc. So the buyer doesn't have to go driving all over the place to buy unrelated stock.
I have 4 rams because one of them I bought, was supposed to be dual registered, but there was a mix up and now he cannot be transfered to my name. I'm trying to sell him. I only want 3 breeding rams for now.
About 3 acres is now fenced for just the sheep. They are mini sheep and very thrifty, so I could easily have two or three times the numbers I have now and still be ok with enough grass growing. But that then makes parasites a bigger worry, lambing space tight and winter feeding expensive.
Sales of the lambs and wool pays for hay, feed, fencing and other bills for the sheep and horses. I don't use the money from their sales for anything else, so they pay for themselves.
I'm sure if I lived more west, I would have to feed all year because grass would be limited. But where I am, grass is plentiful and my sheep only see feed and hay during winter and right around lambing. Rams only get hay. Lambs are not creep fed, not needed. We only have lambs born in spring, so they are naturally fed and not straight out of my pocket.
My husband would never allow them if they didn't at least mostly pay for themselves.

Right now, I have 11 ewes in all, 2 of whom are no longer breeding. 4 rams, 1 of which is on the sale list. And 2 wethers pending pickup. I don't care when the buyers pick up their lambs, they can come for them as soon as they are weaned or wait until as late as the last day of September. October they are split up into breeding groups, so any and all sold lambs need to be off the property by then. And since there is more than enough pasture to go around, there's no worry for me to let them stay and help keep the grass down.

 

[NwMtGardener]

Cool, I like it! Overall really nice job with good pics. I know nothing about sheep, but I do have a comment about the phrasing on your home page. 2nd paragraph down, I'm not sure how to describe it but I would change the voice. Like, don't tell people why YOU got into babydoll sheep, describe why babydolls would be perfect for THEM! "Babydolls are great family pets due to their small size and because they're naturally polled..." Etc.

 

[secuono]

Lol, trying to get good smiling pics of themis so hard!
The LGDs are all over me and the sheep never stop moving.