It’s That Time Again!

Spring has arrived and with it comes the most fun part of being a sheep farmer… lambs!!! It’s hard to find much that is cuter than a tiny, fluffy lamb. Watching them grow from newborns on shaky legs to toddlers who are learning to run. They find friends among the lamb group, though their siblings are their best friends, and spend a lot of time playing and running races with the group.

Last year we decided to try something new with our Katahdin flock. We purchased a registered ram spring of 2021 to use to breed to our unregistered, commercial flock. That means that the lambs born spring of 2022 and these lambs are 50% purebred and are eligible to be registered as 50% recordable with the Katahdin Hair Sheep International registry.

We will breed the 2021 ewes this fall to a new registered ram and produce lambs that are 75% recordable and with one more generation we will have a 88.8% recordable flock. Once we hit that percentage we will have the hair coats of these sheep evaluated and once they are passed as having good, shedding, hair coats they will become 100% registered Katahdins!

We are thrilled for our breeding program to be heading in this new direction. Another exciting aspect of this program means that we will be selling some of our excellent commercial breeding flock as well as the lambs that were just born this year. This will give a new breeder the opportunity to begin with 50% recordable ewes to start their own program. The commercial ewes we will be selling are proven moms with great track records of producing beautiful lambs and raising them to be chubby, healthy teenage sheep.