If insomniacs mentally count sheep to be able to fall asleep, a former banker in the name of Nilo Casas literally do that in his farm in Cavite, Luzon as he eyes profit on his endeavor.

For 23 years, Casas, who is also a commercial goat raiser has been convinced that there is money in sheep raising even as it is true that Filipinos generally do not eat lamb. His market, the Arab and Muslim communities as well as returning Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who come from the Middle East all contribute to the continuous growing demand for mutton (sheep meat) in the Philippines.

“One time,” the 54-year-old Casas recalls, “I was able to earn more than a million pesos for selling 275 heads of sheep alone. There was a politician who bought 200 heads and another rancher who bought the other 75 heads. I told myself, indeed there is money in here.”

How Casas stumbled into raising these woolly mammal species is an interesting story in itself. In 1984, right after he resigned as a liaison officer of a prestigious bank, Casas focused his energy on managing his five goat stores in Metro Manila.

One day, a farmer from Dumaguete offered him to buy a live sheep. “I told him, I don’t have any market for that. But the farmer insisted and I bought the sheep for P405.00. The next day, I was able to sell the sheep for P600.00,” Casas said.

The following day, he recalled, the Dumaguete farmer came again and sold more sheep. “That time, I was able to sell those for P1,000 each. That cycle repeated until I was able to sell 32 heads of sheep.”

After five months, Casas said he bought 22 heads from the same farmer but did not sell the ewes (female sheep). “I brought them to my mother’s farm in San Juan, Batangas where they were taken care of as breeders and in three years time, the number of heads multiplied by eight times. By 1987, I was already raising around 400 heads of sheep.”
Since sheep belong to the genus ovis and are part of the goat antelope sub-family, Casas said that raising sheep and goats does not differ.

In fact, he says, it is even easier to raise sheep because they do not succumb to the dreaded sore eyes and foot and mouth diseases which usually infect goats. Both ruminants, sheep and goats could also be raised together in the same farm and share the same food, which mostly consist of weeds and silage.

“The sheep has a higher survival rate than goats,” Casas explains. “One of the reasons for this is that sheep rarely give birth to twins and as such, don’t really compete in drinking from the milk of their mothers.”

Today, Casas maintains two sheep and goat farms, one of which in an 18-hectare farm here and the other, a smaller five-hectare in Kawit, Cavite where all his ruminants roam freely to pasture in verdant grasslands.

Through the years, he has tried to shepherd different sheep breeds from the fine-textured Suffolk to the hairy St. Croix and the exceptionally vigorous Damara. The prices of these imported breeds range between P25,000 and P35,000 per head. They are raised primarily for their meat, unlike in other countries, where some sheeps are also raised for their good quality wool.

In three to five months after birth, Casas said, the sheep are sold live at prices ranging between P3,000 and P4,000. The ewes sell more for P5,000.

Through time, he said he has also learned the art of value-adding by grilling the lamb and selling the whole “lechon tupa” at P5,500. The price would include his version of the “tupang kilawin” and “papaitan.”

“Imagine. Say you have 50 heads of sheep sold at P4,000 each for a total of P200,000. How much does a Filipino domestic helper in other countries earn? P35,000 a month or less? They might as well come back here and raise sheep.”

But then, the proverbial question that remains: Is there really a growing local market demand for mutton ? Casas says he doesn’t have the accurate figure to answer that question, although based on his experience, the demand is something close to 250 heads a month.
The demand peaks during Christmas and Muslim holidays and when the Arab communities in the Philippines have their own celebrations, Casas said adding that the Spanish-Filipinos or the mestizos also buy a lot of sheep from him.

For Arabs, Casas said they buy only live sheep from him and they want it complete with ears and tail. “They do not want parts of the sheep cut off.” The growing number of overseas-based Filipino engineers who have already acquired the habit of cooking and eating mutton which they have acquired during the years they have stayed in various Arab countries is another market, he said.

To further expand his market, Casas makes his sheep visible in agri-trade shows like Agrilink, which he has already been his loyal patron for the past four years. At the start of the year, he designs his own “Sheep Calendars” and distributes them to the different Middle East and Arab embassies in Makati. He said those calendars contain pictures of his sheep, his name and contact numbers and even maps of how to go to his farms.

He is also an active member of the Federation of Goat and Sheep Raisers of the Philippines through which he regularly exchanges notes and pointers with other sheep raisers on how to improve their enterprises.

For those who are interested to raise sheep, Casas shares this advice: “For a start, one can raise five to 10 heads of sheep. After eight months, the ewes can already be impregnated by the rams. In five months, they would already give birth.”

If the sheep reaches the weight of 18 kilograms, they can already be sold. “In my experience, raising one head of sheep entails the cost of P500 that includes the cost of the animal’s food, depreciation and labor costs.”

Sheep eat any kind of grass although Casas recommends napier, para grass, centrosema, malunggay and ipil-ipil. Sheep can also eat leftovers and food peeling and “if you want good quality meat, you could also feed them with growing mash, the one that you feed the pigs.”

It is also advisable for new raisers to contact others who are already in the enterprise so that they could learn from their own experiences. “We are growing in number. We have sheep farms in Bulacan, Antipolo and some other places.”
If they are worried about their market, Casas said, new sheep raisers can come to him because he also do not merely sell sheep as he also buy and outsource from other raisers in order to meet his volume requirement.

In the future, Nilo Casas said he aims to increase his sheep production from mere hundreds to around 3,500 heads. He said he is looking for possible business partners who with whom he could forge an alliance with. “With the growing number of sheep enthusiasts and the continuous increase of well-traveled Filipinos who have already acquired the passion for lamb meat from abroad, time will come I would no longer be able to count the sheep in his farms.”

By that time, he added he would probably be paying it forward and teaching the new generation of Filipino shepherds how to earn more money by raising these well loved woolly farm animals.