Is it a goat? A sheep? The speckled flock who started it all
In 2021 Snowdrop Farm decided to spend less time and money on mowing grass, and brought home the first pair of Katahdin sheep to do the job for us. These creatures weren’t white. They weren’t fluffy. They weren’t anything that screams sheep to most people. This unbeknownst to us sparked a great debate in the neighborhood.
Are they goats???
Sheep???
Cows??
Some kind of mutant goat-sheep hybrid???
Before we knew it, people were stopping by to ask us to settle the debate. These ladies have been here for years now, and people are still confused.
So To Answer The Question
They were Katahdin Hair Sheep, a breed of shedding sheep. Most people don’t realize shedding sheep exist. This shedding feature can make them look very goat like to most people, but they are in fact 100% sheep. Wild sheep shed and don’t require shearing. Those big fluffy cotton balls most people imagine when you say the word ‘sheep’ are a human invention.
Wool sheep are something we bred so that we could harvest the wool. Historically wool was much more valuable than it is today. Before we had all of our synthetic textiles, wool was indispensable for things like making clothes. Because wool used to be such a valuable commodity, almost all sheep breeds have a lot of it. Unfortunately for the sheep, not many things are made of wool anymore. For most shepherds the cost of getting sheep sheared is greater than the value of the wool. As a result, wool is now something we consider a downside to sheep keeping.
Enter the Katahdin Hair Sheep
What is a shepherd to do if they don’t want to shear sheep? Breed the wool back out of course! And that is exactly what we have done.
Hair sheep are relatively new on the scene. Prior to the creation of breeds like the Katahdin, the primitive hair sheep breeds were not large or productive enough to be practical for most producers. While there are several breeds of hair sheep available, the Katahdin is one of the most popular, and for good reason. They combine many of the meat production traits of wool breeds with the easy care, heat tolerance, and parasite resistance found in the tropical hair sheep breeds.
Katahdin sheep are ideally suited to the difficult conditions in the south eastern USA where we are located. They hold up well to high heat, and intense parasite pressure. Additionally they are highly productive, fantastic mothers, who easily produce a 200% lamb crop on pasture alone without any assistance from us. In other words, they were a perfect fit for our farm.
We loved having them around so much that the 2 ewes soon expanded to a flock of 10. And then because we loved them so much we began wondering what else they could do for us.
They can provide us milk
In 2023 due to some dairy allergies, we became interested in milking some of our sheep. While that is not something Katahdin sheep have been selected for, we were fortunate to have a couple ladies in our flock that turned out to be perfect for it.
And let me tell you, sheep milk makes some really, really fantastic ice cream and cheese.
So going forward we will be continuing to select our flock for all the traits Katahdins have a reputation for. We want them to excel at traits like excellent parasite resistance, excellent mothering, and weaning and raising lots of lambs to market size on a forage only diet. We are also planning to select towards better traits for hand milking as we feel that it is something that is not antagonistic to other valuable production traits. Plus it would allow these ewes to provide extra value beyond meat production to people raising a few animals on small acreages where maximizing productivity is important.
Our dairy sheep breeding program is brand new so we don’t for sure know what the results will be. We know that we won’t be able to produce a shedding dairy sheep with milk production on par with the East Friesian sheep any time soon. That will take many, many years of selection, however we do think we will land on a good multi-purpose hair sheep fairly quickly. Our goal is not a high production animal, but rather a multipurpose animal well suited to low input homesteads that has enough milk volume to be worthwhile for milking.
This breeding program has opened up new opportunities for our customers. Because we need to keep more animals than we can possibly use all the milk from ourselves, that has allowed us the opportunity to make sheep milk soap available to you.
Katahdin Sheep For Sale
Sheep are available for sale depending on the season and availability. We typically only sell lambs, but do offer both ewe and ram lambs every year. Ram lambs are also available as wethers for meat or pets.
We offer pure Katahdins who shed completely and are primarily used for meat, but many of them could be milked. You can check out our available sheep page or contact us to see what we currently have, or to reserve lambs from our next lambing season. If you have questions about our sheep and how they can fit into your homestead please let us know!
