Misfitmorgan's - Babies 2020

[misfitmorgan]

I have thought about hair sheep but i would feel bad for them in the winter up here. Lots of people do raise them but they are also still $200+ for lambs and $300+ for adults...even mixed hair breeds, last i checked.

 

[OzarkSerenityAcres]

purdy babies!

 

[Latestarter]

Not sure what the wool breeds you're raising are selling for, but if the hair sheep sell for more, it might be a good business decision to move over to them for the added income. They both eat about the same amount of food, and the fact that others up there raise them makes me think you don't need to feel bad about them in the winter. They still grow out a pretty dense fall/winter coat, they just shed it in the spring, so no shearing required (normally). From what I understand, they taste better too.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Not sure what the wool breeds you're raising are selling for, but if the hair sheep sell for more, it might be a good business decision to move over to them for the added income. They both eat about the same amount of food, and the fact that others up there raise them makes me think you don't need to feel bad about them in the winter. They still grow out a pretty dense fall/winter coat, they just shed it in the spring, so no shearing required (normally). From what I understand, they taste better too.

We have thought about it but prices are coming down and by the time we would get enough hair sheep to make a profit the prices would be around what we get for our wool sheep. Atm our suffolk lambs sell for $150 each at weaning. We have invested to bring in bigger suffolk and breed up the smaller suffolk sheep we started with. 3 yrs ago when we were looking at sheep any hair sheep lamb was $400-600, any hair sheep/wool mix was around $300, adult sheep were easily $800...so prices have dropped considerable in just 3 years.

Our goal is to make a name for ourselves as having quality animals and working to better the breeds where we can. We start everything with culls and bottom of the barrel and breed them up. I would love to go just buy a Max Boer thats all moonspotted up and an adult and registered....but I can't justify the $1,000+ it would cost so we will breed up our little herd and then look into doing AI with Max Boer semen.

Our Ram is bigger the anything local, our new ewes at a year and a half old are bigger then our 4yr old ewe. Our two lambs will be bigger then their mothers without question. There is someone local-ish to us who brought in 6 enormous ewe's last year and we have already asked them to let us know if they have any ewe lambs they want to sell this year.
Our hereford pigs look better then whats local in conformation, size, and color. The only thing we havnt worked on to much yet is our goats, mostly because boer or kiko meat goats here are not cheap either.

 

[Mike CHS]

Don't worry about them handling the temperatures as they are known for wearing their 'shelter'. Until recently there were more Katahdin sheep in Canada than the U.S.

 

[Mike CHS]

We were writing at the same time and I can see you have a pretty good plan already mapped out.

 

[misfitmorgan]

We were writing at the same time and I can see you have a pretty good plan already mapped out.

It seems we were....I do like hair sheep we have trimmed hooves for people before on hair sheep. I'm not buying this hair sheep taste better thing though. They say Berks taste better then whatever kind of pig, I have had lots of berks and other kinds of pig and i have noticed absolutely no different. To clarify, two pigs raised the same way in the same place, i have not noticed a difference in the berks to the whatever else pigs.

Maybe hair sheep do taste different, maybe they taste more like goat...i dunno, i've never eaten a hair sheep, i just dont find it likely that simply being hair instead of wool is what makes the difference.

Maybe down the road we will end up with some hair sheep and we can see for ourselves.

 

[Mike CHS]

There is a taste difference. I have eaten a chop of hair sheep literally beside a wool sheep chop and there is a difference. Not that one is better than the other but different and I don't know the breed of the wool lamb. Hair sheep don't have the lanolin that wool sheep do and I'm told that is what makes the difference. Before being able to buy locally all we had tried was lamb from the store which mostly comes from Down Under. Only after we bought one to be processed did we decide to raise our own.

 

[misfitmorgan]

There is a taste difference. I have eaten a chop of hair sheep literally beside a wool sheep chop and there is a difference. Not that one is better than the other but different and I don't know the breed of the wool lamb. Hair sheep don't have the lanolin that wool sheep do and I'm told that is what makes the difference. Before being able to buy locally all we had tried was lamb from the store which mostly comes from Down Under. Only after we bought one to be processed did we decide to raise our own.

I'm wondering if wool and hair raised on the same land with the same feed would be noticably different. Maybe if i ever get hair sheep i can test that out. I do like store bought/restaurant lamb, i also like farm raised and when i lived in Greece we had both and i liked both.....but those Greeks know HOW to cook lamb!! I have twice in my life been served what tasted like a wool sweater on a plate...that was gross and mint jelly eww no.

 

[Baymule]

Hair sheep here sell for around the $200 mark and up for Dorper, Katahdin and mixed. Registered rams sell for $500 and up.

I had only had lamb once, in a restaurant and it was gamy. In doing my research between goats and sheep, hair sheep won me over. We sold our first lambs, slaughtered, and kept a half of one. That was our first taste of hair lamb. It was far less gamy tasting than what I'd had. I compare hair sheep taste to good venison, not a gamy old buck in rut, but good venison, more like a young doe.