Our Goals

Our breeding program is based on meeting several critical criteria.

PASTURE: We want to raise our lambs on pasture, the way nature intended. We don’t think it is healthy for lambs to stand around in dry lots. Sheep are designed to forage for their food, and access to fresh air and sunshine contributes to the metabolism of critical vitamins.

NATURAL BIRTHING, GOOD MOTHERING: We also demand that our breeding ewes are capable of giving birth naturally, without significant human intervention. We want the new mothers to provide ample milk and have a strong mothering instinct to protect their lambs.

HIGH LAMB PERCERNTAGE: We expect our adult ewes to produce twins.  It's a heritable trait so it is easy to select for this quality in sheep. 

YEAR ROUND PRODUCTION: We choose to take advantage of breeds that will have lambs at any time of the year, instead of only seasonally. This allows us to provide fresh, natural lamb to our customers nearly year round. 

WOOL-LESS SHEEP:  We have not found a positive economic return in wool production.  We prefer that our sheep put their energy into growing meat, rather than fiber.

GREAT TASTING MEAT:  Of course, this is the real goal of any producer, hopefully.  The wonderful thing about the meat from most hair breeds is that it is incredibly delicate in flavor.  We think that is attributable to the fact that it is very low in fat.  Fat is where the pungent flavor originates in meat.  Our aim is to produce an all natural, low fat, great tasting product.

The Work In Process

Not all breeds have been designed to gain weight efficiently on pasture, alone. Some of the heavy wool breeds have been coddled during lambing time to such an extent that many, perhaps most of the ewes can no longer lamb unassisted. Some of these breeds also are poor parents, requiring intervention to keep mothers with their own babes. Most of the wool breeds only conceive seasonally, instead of throughout the year.

We are not interested in wool production. Except for the specialty segments of the market, such as the fine wool that hand spinners prize, wool does not bring enough profit to offset the cost of shearing. So, we have chosen to breed sheep that have a hair coat, instead of wool. 

Since genetics plays a most important role in how well a ewe or ram performs in all these elements of our breeding program, we are in the process of developing a flock of ewes that meets the criteria we have established for our production program.  A cross of the hair breeds, with an emphasis on Dorper sheep is the foundation for meeting our goals of good mothering ability, frequent multiple births, year-round breeding, and their hair coat.

Barbados sheep are quite capable of sustaining themselves on grass alone. However, as small to medium breed, they do not produce lambs that gain weight quickly nor top out at expected size for the ‘typical’ market demands in an acceptable amount of time.  Some Barbados lambs never reach "market weight" by the time they are a year old. 

Therefore, we are focusing on breeding a higher percentage of Dorper blood into our flock to help us achieve our remaining production goals. Dorper, a breed developed in South Africa in the 1930s, has a hair coat, is well known for its ability to prosper even on poor pastures, and is a big, meaty (but not fatty) breed. Their mothering instincts and multiple birth rates are within our expectations, as well.  Dorper lambs gain weight quickly and yield superior tasting meat.  We anticipate that the addition of the prized Dorper traits will round out our breeding program so that we can consistently produce the highest quality lamb, raised the natural way.