sheep
SHEEP:
We work with hair sheep (no wool breeds). Our goal is to breed for parasite resistance and good hooves, rather than large carcasses and faster grow-out weights. We are also interested in producing tasty meat that is not "gamey" in flavor. Hair breeds are great for this, as they don't produce that lanolin found in wooly-breeds of sheep. Therefor their flavor tends to be milder. However, as our sheep eat mostly grass, they are also going to gain that richer flavor found in grass-fed animals, versus the less flavorful sheep that are fed mostly grain.
Our breeds of choice for our sheep herd is St. Croix and Katahdin. We do, however, still have 3 Ewes that are 1/2 Dorper-1/2Katahdin mix. Dorper adds carcass weight to the slimmer, slower-growing Katahdin and St. Croix sheep, and they also have that milder flavor. Full Dorpers do tend to be slightly less parasite resistant than the St. Croix and Katahdin. But by adding either of these two breeds to the Dorper mix, we tend to get a much better parasite resistance in our offspring, while still gaining a slightly larger carcass yield.
DIET:
Our sheep are mostly grass-fed. We do feed them a small amount of sheep grain in the morning, and evening, just to bring them in from the pasture to look them over and make sure all are healthy and accounted for. We also like that, because they are very food-oriented, it is extremely easy to call them to the barn. We find this makes rounding them up and caring for them as needed, much easier on us.
We do not vaccinate our sheep.
We do not feed growth hormones.
We DO provide loose minerals and sodium bicarbonate on a free-feed method.
Hay is supplemented during the winter months.
And of course, plenty of fresh water!
OUR HERD:
Ram: Registered St. Croix, with excellent blood lines
Ewes:
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x3 St. Croix
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x6 Katahdin (registerable)
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x3 Katahdin/Dorper mix (50/50)
BREEDING GOALS:
Our goal is to breed late fall, for an early-mid spring lambing.
Our ram currently runs with the girls on a regular basis. However, in the future we will be creating a separate pasture for him and any ram lambs that are over 3 months old.
Ram-lambs are either sold to other sheep farmers, or grown out to be processed for meat.
We prefer to sell our ewe-lambs for future breeding. However, some do end up being processed for our freezer as well.
Extra sheep meat is sold as freezer meat. We list all of our available live sheep, and freezer meat, on Craigslist when available (Jackson, TN).