Since our original purchase of the Katahdin ewe lambs we have improved our breeding stock, raising our own replacements, selecting for strong maternal traits and parasite resistance. We have gone through a few different methods of managing our sheep in reference to parasites which included trying to keep our pastures absolutely clean and worming heavily to raising sheep that show a tendency toward parasite resistance and worming only who needs it.  We do believe in keeping the parasite load on the pastures low and we accomplish this through rotational grazing.

 

Two years ago we ran a test trial with a few ewe lambs to see if we were interested in signing up with NSIP “ National Sheep Improvement Plan”. The program has great support and is valid method for improving breeding stock. Last fall we purchased a registered NSIP RR yearly ram who now has offspring on the ground. We will be collecting data on potential breeding stock. We are very excited about our new ram and have even given him the name of Trade Mark.  We named him this because he leaves a tan collar on ⅓ of his offspring. TradeMark has an outstanding temperament and was easy to handle during the breeding season. Trade Marks father was purchased by Double Ewe Farm out of the Virgina Tech Program and he was set to be consigned at the NSIP sale in 2018 but lucky for us the Popes did not attend the sale that year. Vince and Nancy Pope were kind enough to sell him on to us. We looked at Trade Mark for almost a year and compared his NSIP numbers with the traits or our flock. We decided he would complement our ewes well.  

 

We are now ready to sell breeding stock and our ewe lambs will be ready to go during the fall of 2019.  We also have a few ram lambs available for sale. The rams were chosen from ewes who have produced excellent offspring. We hope that if you decide to purchase breeding stock from us that you will be as excited as we are about the genetics of our Katahdins.