QUALITY WOOL ... IN THE BLACK

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Jones maintains a flock of 200 to 250 ewes, and uses 8 to 10 rams. His lamb crop averages 116% (1.16 lambs per ewe), and most of the little ones are as black as coal. Unlike many sheep farmers, Gary computes his production percentages on the basis of lambs that he actually weans. Many other breeders do this on the basis of births, not taking into account the considerable losses that can occur between birth and weaning.

Each year the Jones family puts six to eight lambs in the freezer. The balance of the annual crop is either kept as replacement stock, sold at livestock auctions, or marketed to other folks interested in starting black sheep flocks.

Direct sales of stock, wool, and meat are the major — but not the only — sources of the Jones farm's income. In addition, each June Marilyn runs two week-long handspinning classes, to teach folks how to clean, card, spin, and dye wool using many natural colorings found in the prairies nearby.

GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS

Of course, you might well want to know just how much one can expect to reap from a black sheep flock. Let's look at the wool sales first. In order to insure that ranchers get a fair return on their investment, the government has established a per-pound support — or incentive — price for wool. The actual selling figure may be anywhere from 28¢ to 40¢ lower than the support price, and the government will then pay the difference to the producers. The average selling price from 1979 to 1981 was 89.6¢ per pound, while the average support price during that period was $1.24 per pound. These figures, of course, refer to wool of average grade and cleanliness. Better-quality fleeces would bring in more money, and dirty, poor-quality wool would bring in less.

Knowing that, you may be surprised to learn that the Jones Sheep Farm sells its wool — black or white — for $2.50 per pound (plus shipping) to handspinners across the country, and thus far Gary has had no problem getting customers ... in fact, he usually has a waiting list!

A flock of medium-sized sheep will yield an average of six to ten pounds of fleece per mature animal annually. Gary figures that six to eight pounds of this will be the high-quality, $2.50-per-pound wool, the rest being what he calls "scrap" that might bring a price of about 60 cents per pound on the market.

Jones also cautions that wool alone — no matter how high its quality — won't bring in enough to keep anyone in the sheep business. "It used to be that you could figure your wool money would pay for the cost of keeping your animals," he says, "but with today's inflation rate, that's no longer true. You've got to consider wool as a secondary crop." He figures that the cost per ewe per year — an expense that includes pasture, hay, grain, veterinarian bills (some years these are as high as $600), ram replacement fees, and the purchase of other replacement stock — comes to about $65. Given that figure, a rancher would have to sell fleece for nearly $ 10 per pound to make any profit!

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