Best Sheep Breeds for Homesteaders - Homesteading and Livestock Friesians are among the best sheep breeds for dairy. People have been keeping domesticated sheep for about 1. Sheep appear as both livestock and metaphor in the writings of every major human religion. Sheep farms abound on every continent that accommodates agriculture. Human history and domesticated sheep are inextricably linked, and these animals remain one of the most efficient types of livestock available to 2. My wife and I have raised livestock on our Kansas ranch for more than a decade. Aside from herds of cattle and goats, we manage a flock of sheep descended from Katahdin ewes and Mouflon- cross rams. In our experience, lamb is the most delicious meat we produce. In fact, it’s the most flavorful meat we’ve ever eaten. Even friends who aren’t accustomed to eating lamb (meat from a sheep that is less than 1 year old) quickly realize that a grass- finished lamb provides a culinary treat. One probably has to try a perfectly roasted, rosemary- encrusted leg of pastured lamb to fully appreciate its lovely, robust flavor and tender texture. The practical advantages of raising sheep are especially evident on a small property with limited capital. In most locales, you can acquire a decent breeding flock of four or five animals for less than $2,0. You won’t need expensive handling pens or squeeze chutes, and you’ll be able to haul several animals in covered stock racks on the back of a pickup or in a small stock trailer. Many sheep breeds can also help turn rocky, dry hillsides into productive pasture.
Mary had a little lamb.They’re famously resourceful grazers, capable of finding good nutrition where no cow could survive. And they like shelter for the night, so you can easily harvest their manure by overnighting them in corrals near garden beds, where composted manure will increase soil fertility. In many temperate climates, sheep offer the distinct advantage of reaching slaughter weight before the grass goes dormant in winter, which means you can harvest or sell the year’s lamb crop without having to buy hay for feed. A 1. 00- pound lamb will yield about 3. The American Dorper Sheep Breeders’ Society was organized in December of 1995. In October of 1996 the first event was held in Cameron, Texas with attendees from. The sheep (Ovis aries) is a quadrupedal, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed. Our Sheep vs Goat comparison table allows you to quickly answer the question: "What is the difference between a sheep and a goat?" Click to learn more! Sheep have a reputation for being more labor- intensive than cattle. Some farmers will tell you that even the best sheep breeds need to be wormed frequently, that you must trim their hooves, that they need help lambing, and that their tails must be docked. However, many successful sheep farmers know that none of those processes are necessary if you choose your breed and breeder prudently, and if you manage your flock to be self- sufficient in your specific conditions. And if you raise a “hair sheep” breed, such as our Katahdin- Mouflon crosses, you won’t even need to shear them. Select the Best Sheep Breeds to Meet Your Needs. Choosing the best sheep breed for your homestead can be challenging. The United Nations has documented more than 1,0. North America. Multipurpose breeds are a good bet, depending on what you’re looking for. The following types of sheep are reliable meat producers, and some can provide you with additional products. Sans wool. If you have a taste for lamb but don’t want wool, then a “hair sheep” — a breed that sheds its coat naturally in spring — is a practical choice. Katahdins and Dorpers are popular hair- sheep breeds. For hardier sheep that take well to domestication, try Mouflon or Barbados Blackbelly. Watching a Mouflon ram patrolling your pasture will provide a window back in time: Historians believe the Mouflon is descended from the first domesticated sheep, tamed in Europe and the Middle East thousands of years ago. Breeders have crossed Mouflon with domestic sheep to create several varieties known for their impressive horns. Although horns serve as protective equipment on wild sheep, they can actually make your domestic flock easier to handle. The safest and easiest way to move a recalcitrant ram is to grab him by the horns. Most horned sheep will not produce the large, meaty carcasses of the best meat- sheep breeds. However, if you plan to sell your animals on the hoof or harvest them for your own use, you might just as soon raise two 1. With wool. If you want to harvest wool as well as meat, you should check out traditional wool breeds that have been bred to produce large volumes of fine, relatively short fibers. Merino and Rambouillet are characteristic fine- wool producers. Traditional wool breeds that produce less hair with longer fibers that are suitable for hand- spinning include Shetlands, Leicesters and Romneys. Plus milk. Dairy sheep have been gaining popularity recently with the growth in consumer markets for artisanal cheeses. Friesian and Lacaune sheep are popular dairy breeds, but many other breeds can be trained to serve as dairy sheep while continuing to produce meat and wool. Breeders. If you intend to raise your animals exclusively on grass, they’ll have a big advantage if they’ve been grazing locally and are conditioned to your area. So, try to find a competent breeder near your home or in a climate similar to yours. If you discover a sheep breed that’s been raised nearby, you’ll have ready access to new breeding stock when you need it, plus a potential market for breeding stock from your own herd. Grazing Sheep: Best Practices. If you intend to grass- feed and grass- finish your sheep on natural pasture, experienced ranchers will recommend that you bring a small flock to your property in the early part of the growing season to give them time to acclimate before they have to scrounge for sustenance in winter or drought conditions. As they become accustomed to their environment, sheep can be resourceful grazers, able to acquire nutrition from a varied menu. Case in point: On our property, a drought created an outbreak of ragweed in a relatively high, dry pasture, and our flock devoured the ragweed before they went to work on the grass. In many parts of the world, sheep and goats are flocked together — an ideal arrangement because their dietary needs are so distinct. Goats are browsers that need pastures with plenty of trees, shrubs or other woody plants. Sheep, although versatile, are primarily grazers that prefer grass. A balanced flock of sheep and goats can efficiently maintain a diverse pasture of grass, forbs and shrubs, and they can graze on steep, rocky ground not suited to crops. Livestock Health Care for Sheep. Authoritative books prescribe an exhaustive regimen of veterinary rituals to achieve perfect livestock health care. We’ve found that we can breed sheep to be hardy and independent, and we can manage our pastures to avoid almost every serious veterinary problem. Our local geographic conditions select individuals, generation by generation, to thrive on our prairie in eastern Kansas. And we choose the members of each generation that fit best with our lifestyle and agricultural techniques. We rotate our sheep and goats with a small herd of cows and don’t overgraze, and we’ve never needed to worm any of our animals. Most parasites that afflict sheep and goats are harmless to cattle — and vice versa. We’ve always chosen breeding stock from flocks that were seldom wormed, if ever. If you regularly worm your flock, you’ll breed animals with decreasing natural resistance to parasites. The practice itself contributes to the problem. With hardy breeds like ours, if you systematically trim hooves and don’t cull animals whose hooves need to be trimmed, then you’ll breed animals that require trimming. And so on. Our young rams are ready to be weaned — or, rather, their mothers are happy to wean them — at about 4 months of age, before they’re mature enough to breed. Years ago, we began separating the young rams at that age, which eliminates the need to castrate them. They graze for another two months, and we harvest them at about 6 months old. They eat only fresh grass — no grain and no dried forage. Their meat is much richer in omega- 3 fatty acids than ground beef is (see “How Healthy Is Grass- Fed Lamb?” below). We’ve read that it’s necessary to dock sheep tails of certain breeds in some regions, but we’ve never docked a tail and have never had a tail- related health issue. The most difficult time to remain hands- off is during lambing. When we started in the sheep business 1. We have day jobs, so spending four weeks a year watching the flock while the lambs are being delivered would be difficult for us. Plus, it just didn’t seem like good management. We’ve never helped a ewe deliver a lamb, and we’ve never bottle- fed a lamb. In our original flock of Katahdin ewes, our lamb mortality rates were 1. OK until I looked at studies of commercial flocks that had mortality rates of more than 3. Then, our rates seemed excellent. A few years later, we began crossbreeding with bighorn Mouflon- cross rams, and the resulting lambs were suddenly much more active and mobile. The Mouflon- cross lambs are usually able to run by the time they’re 3 or 4 hours old, while our Katahdin lambs can take several days to get their legs. Our mortality rates went down. Aside from predator issues, our lamb mortality rates are now usually less than 1. We have friends in the sheep business who assist in more than half their flocks’ births and experience higher lamb mortality rates. Yet, we’ve never helped a ewe, period. The only way we’ve found to explain this is to speculate that, as prey animals, the last thing our ewes want during the birthing process is a large predator (us) hovering over them and touching them. We’ve come to believe that the majority of lambing problems result from the intervention of people who believe they’re helping. Because we don’t vaccinate our animals, we’re careful to introduce new stock only from well- managed flocks. We’ve never had a major health problem, but we remain vigilant. How to Guard Grazing Sheep. Grazing sheep are essentially defenseless against predators. Coyotes, bobcats, foxes, domestic dogs and even the occasional mountain lion live in our region. We first protected our flocks with donkeys and mules, which was effective for many years.
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