Don't Give Up the Sheep

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Perhaps you just want a few sheep around as pets and decorative lawn mowers. The Cheviot breed was supposedly developed to look attractive on the lawns of the queen's summer castle, Balmoral, in Scotland. You may agree with this royal taste. We have had people buy black sheep from us for pets just because they wanted something a bit unusual. If you don't want to bother with breeding and lambing, you might even consider getting a few attractive wethers to keep around. They usually have good dispositions and make fine pets.

If you are going to try to raise sheep for a profit, then your choice automatically becomes a little more limited. You then want a breed that produces a lamb that is acceptable to lamb buyers and packers so you can command a top market price. You also want a breed that gives lambs that reach market weight quickly on a minimum amount of feed. Not only that, you want a breed that produces plenty of lambs either by having lots of multiple births or by breeding more often than once a year, or both.

Good carcass traits are found in most major breeds, though you may find that your local buyers have strong preferences and prejudices. Some breeds, Finnsheep and Karakul, for example, may not have good carcass conformation. In contrast, Columbias, Hampshires, and Suffolk's are common meat breeds in all parts of the country. Many shepherds select a ewe-type for a given set of traits, and choose a ram of a meat or mutton breed to sire market lambs. For example, our ewe flock is mostly Finn X Lincoln crosses selected for their wool quality for handspinners. We had used a Suffolk ram on them to produce market lambs. This approach had the disadvantage that we could not save replacement ewes from the terminal crosses (because the lambs from the Suffolk ram do not have the breed mixture that is wanted in the ewe flock). We switched largely to Finn X Lincoln and Lincoln rams after we found that the Suffolk-cross lambs grew no better than our wool-type sheep.

DOGS

Herding dogs are almost as much a part of sheep raising as the sheep themselves. A good sheepdog is certainly the greatest labor-saving device I know of, with the possible exception of a corkscrew. One can raise sheep without a dog, but it sure is easier with one. The Border Collie is the classic sheepdog, and I personally would not even bother to try another breed. A Border Collie is born already programmed to herd sheep. All the handler has to do is teach a set of simple commands to control what the dog wants to do instinctively. Teach the pup some simple commands, give it some love, and you've got a sheepdog.

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