Sheep breed questions!

[JaderBug]

I am wondering what breed(s) of sheep everyone here owns currently, in the past, or would like to own in the future? I know I'm jumping the gun here quite a bit, but I'd like to get a handful of sheep in a couple of years and I just wanted to learn about some of the breeds. Meat quality isn't something I'm concerned with, I don't really like the taste of lamb so I'm not worried about butchering. I would like something a little more traditional and 'pretty', so probably a wool variety .

 

What breeds would you recommend for working? Temperament? Where do you find them, like what resources or markets do you look for them in?

 

Some of the breeds I was looking at just out of curiosity were Merino, Cheviot, Dorset, Suffolk, and just because they're really pretty, Scottish Black-Face. Any experience with any of these breeds? Any different warnings/suggestions?

 

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Second question first:

 

Merino: Hard to find in the states. They are lightish, and don't have any problem with heading in different directions on your dog if pressured. I've heard this from people who work them overseas. Your shearer will hate you if you manage to actually bring these in. If you are your shearer you will hate you.

 

Dorset: One of my fav breeds. It can be hard in some parts to find true production Dorsets. I've got an acquaintance who breeds them and I'm considering seeing if I can get a ram from her next year. I may have to trade my first born, however.

 

Border Cheviot. Build strong fences. Good lines are great little production sheep though. If you can catch and wrestle them to a standstill they are relatively easy to handle. They never seem to break to handling though. I'd rather shear fifty of my big BFL rams than ten of my Cheviot crosses.

 

North County Cheviot (in case that's what you meant): Lovely sheep. Another one I'd own in a heartbeat if I weren't so taken with my BFLs.

 

Scottish Blackface: Run. Save yourself. I've had a couple halfbreds and they were nutcases. I don't like the horns either. My goal in life is never to have another horn on my place. They were bred for open hill country and that's where they probably should stay.

 

First question. I have a mixed flock right now, but I'm moving towards a base of Dorset/Katadhin/BFL ewes, crossed on possibly a Dorset or Texel ram - or Suffolk if I get desperate. I'm all about the sheep first and if I need to train dogs I'e bought in nice "broke" sheep from someone else. My ewe flock is a little pushy and full of notions that can frustrate the novice dog and the novice handler (me). They are great for more advanced training though - they never seem to run out of tricks. If I ever get to that level I'll be all set for the big trials. It's just the nice sheep that take me by surprise.

 

The BFL blood is not the reason for how these sheep work. Nor is the other, actually. Honestly, it's having dogs that they can push around and get away with stuff - dogs that work sloppy and a handler who doesn't know how to fix it.

 

Normally, Dorsets work nicely but can sour with mishandling or overwork. They are really tough sheep to move when they get notions. Katadhins are very humble and probably the best sheep for beginners - especially if you can get some that are nicely broken already. The BFLs work well, but will look for the exit if mishandled, and will also challenge a dog if they feel they've got no alternative.

 

I've got Texel blood in my flock too - these also, as I mentioned with the Merinos, have no problem simply splitting to escape the dog. Not excitedly, just walking off. They are somewhat fidgety to work which drives dogs with a lot of eye crazy. I don't have the ability to explain what happens yet, but I've seen similar things happen watching range sheep worked and those who know, say the dog is catching the lead sheep's eye, but that doesn't work the group so the dog comes in tighter and pushes the others away. I used to Ramboullet and that was similar also. A laugh a minute working them, especially at lambing. I finally gave up and culled them out - between that and the shearing problems it wasn't worth it.

[Bo Peep]

Cheviot's - cute and little. St Croix -no sheering also border Lestrade's.(sp) Love them-they are so cute. Katahdins .and St Croix make the best mix add a little Barbados and you never have to switch sheep- JMO.

[Tea]

We have crossbreds and a few pures and goats.

 

Our dorsets are heavy and will challange a dog if they have young lambs. I do not like their wool, they give alot of milk for cheese. Good carcasses. Mine have great feet.

 

We have had pure icelandics. They do not flock well, the rams and ewes with lambs are tough and will challenge a dog, but if your dog will work cows it should be fine. I love their ability to forage that is why we added them as I believe in cross breeding. I did not like their wool as much. (I hand spin and knit/weave/crochet) You have to separate the wool. Some give alot of milk. Carcasses are small. They seem to grow alot of foot which in the Pacific Northwest is not too good.

 

Shetland- They are lighter but still don't flock as well. But better behaved than icelandics in my opinion. They have great wool.

Mine have good feet.

 

Fresian- Dairy sheep- flock good, nice wool, although it is long and in pure breds can part down the back, which is bad in heavy rain as the sheep gets cold. Good feet.

 

The cross breds are my favorites we have been crossing for over 7 years. They are crossed with all the above breeds for a specific type of sheep that suits our island.

 

They can forage well give ALOT of milk for cheese, are not too dim, nice wool

[juliepoudrier]

What I own currently:

Karakuls, tunis, and some dorper x kathadins

 

What I have had in the past:

border cheviots, Scottish blackface, Scottish blackface x karakul, pure dorper

 

My all time favorites for just looking at them out in the pasture were the Scottish blackface. Gorgeous sheep, but their horns can be damaging when you work with them, they never really seem to settle/get used to handling ("wild as bucks" comes to mind). They are very independent and for management purposes, you do have to consider that their horns can get caught in feeders and fences and the like. They have a long-stapled carpet wool that really should be shorn twice yearly. They are excellent mothers but can be very aggressive toward working dogs.

 

Tunis are a medium-framed sheep that are meant to be dual-purpose (meat and wool). Depending on what the breeder you get them from has been concentrating on, you might get sheep with stronger meat characteristics or sheep with much nicer wool but not so great meat conformation. Tunis are considered a rare breed (though they are recovering) and one of my tenets as a breeder has been to try to maintain the good dual characteristics, which means I won't sacrifice wool for meat or vice versa. They tend to be pretty mellow and easy to handle. Mine, at least, are light for dog work. They flock well.

 

Border cheviots are not called by some breeders "the alert breed" for nothing. I happen to very much like their looks, with their big doe eyes and upright ears and alert expression. The border cheviots I have known are generally pretty flighty and light, but they will also stand up to a dog when pushed. They flock well and are excellent mothers.

 

Karakuls are another long-stapled carpet wool breed that in their places of origin were/are considered multipurpose: wool, milk, and meat. They are structurally different from most other sheep, which makes it sometimes difficult to sell them to meat buyers, who are looking for the more familiar chunky or square shape of most meat breeds. Karakuls do well on marginal pasture (the breed was developed on the steppes of central Asia, where marginal is pretty much the norm) and are also good mothers and easy lambers. They tend to single rather than twin, although you will get twins in a flock. They are best known as the producers of Persian lamb, which you don't see much of in this country anymore, but still see in Asia and Russia (think of those black Russian hats that appear to be curly lambs' wool, which is exactly what they are--the pelts from very young lambs). They were brought to this country at the turn of the last century for the fur trade, but never really caught hold and are a rare breed here.

 

The hair sheep I've had seem to be the sheep that become most easily dog broke (excepting barbs). There are several big advantages of hair sheep over wool sheep: they don't need to be shorn (in general), they tolerate heat better, and they can live on a lot less feed/forage. They flock well, lamb well, and are good mothers.

 

You will find that especially in the meat breeds, there is a split between production and show animals. People who have production dorsets seem to really like them. I would stay way far away from Suffolks unless you can find someone with old-fashioned production animals (and it can be done, but these won't be the breeders selling 4H club lambs and the like).

 

In the end it really comes down to choosing sheep that will do well in your area of the country and then choosing a breed you like. If your interests tend toward, say, handspinning, then you'll want to choose a breed or breeds known for their excellent handspinning wool (like a border leicester, Romney, or Shetland). If you want to have a sheep dairy, then you might want to look at traditional dairy breeds, the Friesian for example. If you want to sell freezer lambs, then you might find dorpers or a dorper crossed to a terminal meat breed sire to be the way to go. If you don't mind dealing with sheep the size of a pony, then Columbias, Cotswolds, blue-faced Leicesters might interest you. If you just want somehing out in the pasture that you enjoy looking at, then perhaps Scottish blackface are for you. If you have a thing for red, then you might want to choose tunis or California red sheep. If you want to do breed preservation, then you would look at rare breeds, and so on.

 

There are general characteristics of breed types that are typical across breeds. For example, hill breeds like the border cheviot and Scottish blackface tend to be smaller, flightier/fightier (I'm sure that's not a word), and excellent mothers who can lamb on pasture without intervention. Lowland breeds tend to be heavier/meatier and flock better. The so-called primitive breeds like Shetlands, Welsh Mountain sheep, and Icelandics tend to be small, extremely independent, nonflocking, and are also good mothers who require little intervention and can subsist on poor/marginal pasture.

 

Crossbreds will of course be a combination of their foundation breed characteristics.

 

Oklahoma State's sheep breeds website has a lot of information on all sorts of sheep breeds. Not all of the breeds listed will be available here in the states, but it is fun to go through and read the information about the various breeds. You might even figure out that there is a certain "type" you like better than others, and that will help you narrow your choices too. I periodically go there and browse through the breeds just for fun, but then maybe I'm weird.

 

ETA: When choosing breeds, beware of marketing claims like "more parasite resistant than any other breed" as such claims have not been proven for any particular breed. As with anything, if a claim sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

 

J.

[Lenajo]

Since we have such a difficult climate (high heat, high humidity, most years we are drowning in rain but some years have horrible drought - basically a we have a great climate for parasites and foot problems but we rarely run out of grass even if it is mostly water ) I've tried a number of breeds and crosses to see what fits.

 

Right now my favorite and the drift of a lot of of my ewe stock is St Croix/ Bluefaced Leicester. The BFL provides a bigger frame to hang meat on when I cross the ewes to a terminal sire for meat lambs. They do produce wool, but no leg, belly or face wool.

 

I like Romney but most of them can't handle the heat and humidity - I spend all summer treating pneumonia - and they grow very poorly in the heat. Same problem with the Southdown/Romney crosses I tried. The meat tasted *bad* and smelled worse on that last cross - you had to have them slaughter by 10 or 11 months or it was just rank.

 

Dorset and Suffolk are too wooly, and even if I wanted to try them as terminal sires down here all you can get are show stock. Show stock are bred to have large single lambs that have small rumans so they don't have "hay belly" in the ring. None of this will work in a pasture based system. The ewes can't get the lambs out, and then the lambs are starving if you don't keep them on high concentrate diets (grain).

 

I tried raised some pure BFL but they are simple too parasite intolerant for this climate. Interestingly I found that the BFL ewes lambs out of the St Croix ram were the same, but the lambs out of the St Croix ewes and the BFL rams were not. Maternal genetics must carry your parasite tolerance in the St Croix - that or the milk gives them immunity? Don't know.

 

I've had a smattering of Romanov (too small framed), Barbado (good parasite tolerance but poor growth rate even for terminal lambs by wool rams), Katahdin (nice breed, haven't made much effort to get many because I already had St Croix).

 

Dorper/Katahdin ram I used for a while produced well on wool ewes.

 

The IDF (Ilse de France) Dorper cross is a new experiment. So far, last years limited breeding was acceptable.

 

In terms of dog work I don't care what breed - if they are handled right they are fine. But therein lies the rub...the dog has to be more capable with some sheep than others. In terms of forgiveness of my student's dogs the BFL crosses are favorites, as are, surprisingly, the Black Romney Mystery cross ewes I kept from a purchase a few years ago. Gentle souls, those ewes. Even the worst of dogs can't make them hurt themselves, and the produce 2 or 3 nice lambs every February like clockwork.

 

If I had a breed I disliked I would lean toward the Dorper. They are a bit piggish in nature - heavy to handle and tend just to push through whatever gets in their way. Some of the most dangerous rams I've had were Dorper and Dorper Cross. When testosterone loaded they were like dealing with angry pigs.

 

eta - have to agree with Julie on Scottish Blackfaces and fences. Everybody I know that has them has the same complaint - if they don't destroy it, they jump it.

 

also eta - parasite tolerance is genetic, but the touted parasite "resistance" Julie is talking about definately has not been proven. No sheep that I know of is resistant to parasites, some are just more tolerant of higher loads than others.

[Debbie Meier]

Hey Rachel, you've seen our little clan, some Barbs, Katahdins, Moulfons, St. Croix and a dab of Dorper, oh yeah can't forget about the Moulfon Dorset cross. We are working toward a mixed array of shedding sheep trying to maintain some of the individual traits of the barb and moulfon in part of the group, while producing a little better carcus in their lambs, it's not fun trying to find someone to come out to shear a small number of sheep, so running hair sheep is a nice alternative. I don't think there is anything cuter then a little barbado lamb. Crossing the Barb in gives us a hardy group that survive and do well on little forage, comparing our feed bill last winter to another member that has wool sheep (not certain of their breed but they are nice wool producers) our bill was a fraction of theirs and they had to hire in someone to shear them. We also like selecting for a good set of horns on our rams, we've sold a few to game farms, which is a bonus, it's just fun to watch the horns develop as the rams age. At the Farm Progress Show we had people come over just to see and get pictures of our rams, they had never seen live trophy rams in person before, was quite a conversation piece.

 

Regarding eating lamb, I'm with you, but we found that the yearling to 2 year olds are good eating, a totally different flavor then the lamb I had been served in the past. I found that the lamb I don't care for is milk fed, totally different taste.

 

When you are ready to buy let us know, I can put you in contact with Marcia with the Iowa Sheep Industry, we can match you up with some producers of the breed you decide to go with. Also, next June IHDA will be producing demos and a trial at the Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival again, you can meet with some breeders there too, it will be held down in Adel again (provided we don't get flooded out like we did this year).

 

Deb

[doggietrio]

I have a very small mixed flock.

 

3 purebred show Suffolks

1 Black Dorper/Katahdin

2 Katahdin wool crosses

1 Barb/Black Dorper/Katahdin (ram lamb)

4 Suffolk St Croix crosses (wether lambs)

1 Dorper/Katahdin/St Croix cross (ewe lamb)

 

The purebred Suffolks need to go. They are piggies. While they are very sweet ewes and their babies are amazing...they are big girls and they are the first to loose body condition in the fall when the pasture isn't enough. My Suffolk/St Croix lambs are 90 days old and 100+ pounds and all are taller than my BH Dorper/Kat ewe already! These babies are going to the meat locker. Yum yum.

 

I much prefer my Dorper/Kat crosses. The ram, with the smidge of barb thrown in, is really nice to work. The girls are also good. Not heavy, but not deer, either.

 

The 2 Kat/wool crosses are like dogs. They come to their names. The wether is so bad, he either sticks to you like glue or he'll stand off in the pen to watch the dogs work the other sheep. He was a bottle baby and the 4-h kids who raised him taught him tricks - I even have pictures of him doing agility. I keep him as my coyote bait - he's so fat the coyotes would have to eat him first because he can't run. Poor Luke.

 

But, the good thing about all of the above sheep, they are excelling on crappy pasture. I have 1 acre of irrigated pasture and the rest is dry. I have 6 adults and 6 large lambs and all are too fat and happy. I really do not want to have to buy feed for the flock year round, right now, I need hay for late Sept-until the rains come (early Nov).

 

I have a shearer that lives around the corner from me, and charges $8 a head because I have 5 sheep that need to be sheared. There's virtually no travel costs...so...I don't mind having the wool sheep. But, if I didn't have access to such a closer shearer, I'd get rid of the wool.

 

I'm relocating the 3 suffolks and am bringing in 4 more BH Dorper/Kat crosses and 1 more Kat/wool cross. I figure I can maintain 5 ewes for the same effort I put into the 3 suffolk girls.

[painted_ponies]

Has anyone ever heard of Gulf Coast Sheep? Anyone have any experience with them?

[juliepoudrier]

Hey Sally,

I don't know anything much about them except that I think they're considered a rare breed. Check out the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy page I linked to above (rare breeds) and see if you can find more information there.

 

J.

[sjones]

I have border leicesters and katahdins. I really like both breeds for different reasons. The border leicesters have a beautiful long wavy fleece and since I spin, its a delight to work with. I love that they have clean heads and legs; I can't stand having a sheep that has so much wool on its face it can hardly see. They are good mothers and seem to do well lambing on their own. They are laid back, not super slow, but not real flighty, somewhere in between. The katahdins don't have to be sheared which is a plus if its hard to find a shearer. Their lambs are lively right from birth. I find they work well with dog training especially in the summer heat; they don't tire as quickly as my border leicesters. Both breeds work well on pasture.

I have had columbias in the past and will never have them again. For one thing they are way too big for me to handle, have wooly faces/legs and boy can they eat! Suffolk and hamps(show ones) have lambing problems, and generally don't seem to do as well on pasture without lots of supplemental feed(same for columbias). I also don't care for breeds that come with horns like jacobs. I love the color of their fleeces, but its no fun to try and trim hooves or worm when they wiggle and jab you with the horns.

 

Samantha

[hsnrs]

We have a mix of St. Croix (excellent mothers); Katahdin; Painted Desert; and Barb. My favorite eating is Suffolk but don't shear so we have the hair sheep. Meat is really mild; too mild for us. If you don't like the taste of lamb you would probably like the hair sheep. They remind me of beef flavor more than lamb. JMO

[mjk05]

We run merinos (Australian superfine lines) for wool and cross them to PDs and Suffolks for the fat lamb market.

 

Merinos are a bit thick, fairly light to start on and when they get upset they just drop their brains on the ground and start running, but they dog down pretty quickly so you need to turn them over. They need a fair bit of maintenance re flystrike in our climate, especially now we aren't mulesing. Worm resistance varies on lines, it seems. Our crossbreds are smart, go over and through fences, and also get dogged fairly quickly. We don't keep them that long, but the ones in our training mob get a bit tame and will lean on your leg. They'll also stand up to dogs better than merinos, which is good or bad depending on what you want with each dog.

[Bill Fosher]

There are several big advantages of hair sheep over wool sheep: they don't need to be shorn (in general), they tolerate heat better, and they can live on a lot less feed/forage. They flock well, lamb well, and are good mothers.

 

As generalizations go, I didn't find many of these to be true with the hair sheep we kept.

 

About 1/3 of the adult Dorpers needed to be shorn, and nearly all of the yearlings.

Not much of a heat challenge in New England, but I found just as many heat-related problems in the hair sheep as in the wool sheep when temps went over about 90F -- a temperature at which Australian merinos would be quite comfortable, thank you. (Problems were primarily pneumonia.)

 

Living on less feed/forage was definitely not the case. The lambs took a great deal more feed to come to market weights, and the ewes required more grain during winter lambing in the shed to retain their condition. The ewes lost condition on poorer pasture much more quickly than our meat-breed wool sheep.

 

I will say that as a rule the hair sheep we had, which were Dorpers, Katahdins, and crosses of the two, were excellent mothers and produced wonderful hothouse lambs. But overall, they were less thrifty than the meat-breed wool sheep.

[juliepoudrier]

Bill,

It may be a regional thing. Here the kat/dorper crosses literally live on air, whereas my wool sheep (a breed suited for marginal pastures) need feed. I don't see a great difference in lamb growth rates for hair vs. wool. but considering that the hair sheep grow the same as the wool sheep while they need no extra feeding is a huge plus. Temps are higher than 90 here a good part of the summer (not to mention high humidity) and my hair sheep can still tolerate being worked by dogs while the wool sheep will be standing around panting even in the cool of the evening. Since our winters are relatively mild, I have no issues with shed lambing, and the pregnant and lactating hair sheep last year stayed fat and had big, healthy lambs.

 

All that said, I actually prefer my wool sheep, but I keep some hair sheep on hand because of the positive attributes I listed, which generalizations do seem to fit for folks living in this part of the country.

 

J.

[Little Bo Boop]

Bill,

It may be a regional thing. Here the kat/dorper crosses literally live on air, whereas my wool sheep (a breed suited for marginal pastures) need feed. I don't see a great difference in lamb growth rates for hair vs. wool. but considering that the hair sheep grow the same as the wool sheep while they need no extra feeding is a huge plus. Temps are higher than 90 here a good part of the summer (not to mention high humidity) and my hair sheep can still tolerate being worked by dogs while the wool sheep will be standing around panting even in the cool of the evening. Since our winters are relatively mild, I have no issues with shed lambing, and the pregnant and lactating hair sheep last year stayed fat and had big, healthy lambs.

 

All that said, I actually prefer my wool sheep, but I keep some hair sheep on hand because of the positive attributes I listed, which generalizations do seem to fit for folks living in this part of the country.

 

J.

 

 

Thats what I think as well Julie, about it being a regional thing. I know I've read all the neg. stuff that Bill has to say about Dorper/ Hair sheep in general ;-) but I've found everything you say to be true. They really do tolerate the heat a lot better than, say the Rambo's, I hardly feed mine anything, or they actually get too fat. The last lamb we had Dorper/St Croix was postively huge! It would make sense to me that since this is basically a breed bred for a hot arid climate, that perhaps it wouldn't thrive in, where is it Bill Lives? New Hamshire? The one thing I do agree with him about though, is the sheep that don't shed out, thats kind of a pain. Can you breed for that particular trait? For instance if I have a ewe that typically sheds out every year, will she pass that on to her offspring?

[nancy]

If you want the wool, look into Wensleydales. They are not really hardy enough for most of the North Yorkshire Dales, although they come from there. But, unless you have high moors for them to wander, they'll probably do fine in the US.

 

http://www.wensleydalesheep.org/

http://wensleydale-sheep.com/

 

OK, they are silly looking. But the wool is the softest I've ever used. I have two sweaters I've made from wool I bought - in Wensleydale, of course.

 

My favorite sheep breed (I keep trying to bring twin lambs home to my acre of mostly trees) is the Swaledale: sort of a my-size version of the Scottish Blackface. They are small, hardy, smart - and a bit feisty. My kind of animal.

 

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/sheep/swaledale/index.htm

http://swaledale-sheep.com/

[mjk05]

.

[Little Bo Boop]

There was a recent study written up in one of our local papers comparing Damara, Dorper and Merino ewes as the basis for fat lamb production. They ran 50 of each breed in one mob, same conditions, same feed, same sort of maintenance (except shearing, of course)

 

It wasn't a great study, was skewed in favour of the Merino (eg only mated once a year, didn't count cost of crutching and mulesing) and did show that Merino ewes were significantly more profitable. But some of the points they made were that the Dorpers and Damara (dorpers in particular, I think) were basically way overfed on the amount that was needed to keep Merino ewes at condition score 2 and above, to the extent that it affected their lambing rates (tails too fat for mating!). There were a couple of others points, I think including that Dorpers suffered significantly from worms in conditions that Merinos were happy with. I will go and chase the article up if anyone is interested. I have heard from people who breed Dorpers and other African breeds that they grow quicker and better on sparser conditions and that too much pasture feed is a bad thing.

 

 

That is interesting (the part about doing better on less) I've only had sheep for 2 or 3 years now, so I'm clearly still a novice, but my experience with parasite load, seems to be that although they don't seem to be overly burdened with worms, when you do get a wormy one, they sure seem to go down hill pretty quick. I've only had experience with horses, and you get a wormy one, you notice poor coat, weight loss, etc...but usually not life threatening. The sheep seem to be much more delicate in that regard. I have a question, do sheep and horses share/carry the same worms?

[Bill Fosher]

Sheep and horses are not subject to the same worms.

[Mona Howard]

Julie lives in NC and I live in VA and our climates are similar. My percentage Dorpers maintain

condition better than anything else I've owned. They seem suited to this climate. My ram sheds

out totally as do a few of the ewes. Most retain some fleece along the back. I actually like the

back cover as it affords some protection against biting flies. I have a couple woolies and when I

shear I leave the back cover and a few inches high up on the sides. They may look like they are

sporting mohawks but those are the sheep out grazing. The slick ones run for cover much sooner.

On getting first sheep I wouldn't go for a particular breed but just buy something local to get a feel

for them. Also there will soon be too many sheep so it's wise to take note of what type of lamb is

in demand in your area. Mona

[Black Watch Debatable]

Border cheviots are not called by some breeders "the alert breed" for nothing. I happen to very much like their looks, with their big doe eyes and upright ears and alert expression. The border cheviots I have known are generally pretty flighty and light, but they will also stand up to a dog when pushed.

 

Ditto. I have a tiny flock of [mostly] Border Cheviots, and I love 'em.