Sheep Farming: Are Hair Sheep A Better Choice? 

Wow what a great shout out for me. Thank you. Yes our Dorpers are fed well, they don’t get very much grain as they will get over conditioned fast. One of my biggest heaviest conditioned ewe, has triplets every year for the last few years. By the time I wean her lambs she is half the ewe she was. I figure she needed that extra condition to raise those three lambs on her own. Your also right about shedding quality, I have some ewes that are completely shed out already, some that are half shed and some that shed later. I find my yearlings don’t always shed well their first year, so I tend to clip their backs myself to get them started. Over the years I’ve kept replacements on shedding quality, as well as conformation as that’s what is really important to my buyers. I’d also say over half the rams I sell for breeding go to commercial Katahdin flocks. It is probably one of the best crossbreeding for good market lambs. When I first started sending a few market lambs to our local butcher shop, the butcher asked to speak to me when I picked up my order. He said that my lambs looked different than the other lambs during cutting. Apparently Dorpers marble the meat a bit differently than other breeds and also have more meat in the hind. If they are proper Dorpers they have double muscling in the hind so it helps especially in crossbreeding with a finer breed. I have many katahdin friends that have my rams and are seeing incredible results. Also note, dorper rams breed in any weather and they also keep lambing windows really close as they don’t hardly eat until their job is done. Also in one of your other videos you talked about breeding ewe lambs, I find dorper ewe lambs don’t mature quit as fast as other breeds. I let my ewe lambs reach their full growth before I expose them to a ram. I prefer a first timer having a nice set of twins over a big single any day and if I leave my ewes a bit older them seem to have twins more often than singles. Again thanks for saying my Dorpers look like yours. I think we both like nice solid ewes😉

Wow! Very interesting Lynn. Nice Lambert still wants some cuddles.

1. Hair sheep are heat- and drought- tolerant. What about cold-tolerant? 2. A whole sheep is compostable. What about wool or hair? 3. Why did you get out of hair sheep? I love your channel so much.

I knew Lambert would do well and adjust. He just needed some reassurance from you and some time. Not every lamb matures at the same rate I suppose. Sort of like us people. Thank you for the update on Lambert. That was a lot of information about the different brands of sheep of which I did not know. Like my dad used to tell me,”Learn something new everyday and you will have a fuller life.” And, that’s exactly why I am here, eager to learn about sheep. I love being here everyday. Thank you Lynn and Arnie for opening your farm and sharing with us. This homebound lady appreciates your efforts. 🐑♥️

Very interesting Lynn!! Haired sheep are something I knew nothing about, so your topic today was very educational for me!!! Thanks for sharing and stay safe!!

Wool is ecofriendly, weird that consumers are not using wool. I love wool. Thank you for sharing. Say hi to Arnie for me.

Clever sheep

I love my Dorset fleece I got from you. I’m working on it and will have results soon. Your sheep are very healthy you can tell by the fleece.❤❤❤

The price for wool or lack thereof caused many to try hair sheep but the shedding whilst sounding great needed addressing in larger flocks. They have proven themselves as meat sheep. Hard to catch out in the paddock though. No wool to grab hold of. Farmers need to be careful when loading large numbers as there is no thick coat to cushion the animal and avoid bruising.

Good morning Arnie and Lynn. School day today. Love it. Very I interesting to hear about hair sheep. I guess I thought sheep all had wool that needed shearing. And having a sheep shed really is different. They have bonuses to them when it comes to feeding and shearing. But I totally agree with you on still being conscious of how they are cared for so they to can develop to their fullest potential. The pictures you showed of your Dorpers were beautiful. And I can see how they won. I believe that if you treat your animals well their whole attitude is different and we become the winner of the beauty they were intended to have. I am still drawn to the wool sheep. They have such an amazing look and even when they grow up they have lamb qualities. Finishing up the video with Lambert was perfect. What a sweetheart of a ram. Thank you for all that information. Wonderful as always. Have a good day. Big hugs to you both. 🥰🥰🥰

Nice, Educational scientific video, Lynn!!! I love both, Deer, Goats, And, Sheep, It's amazing how many breeds of, Sheep, There are on the, Earth... 😍💕🖤🐑🐐🌍

Great video I run a flock of hair sheep and love them

As I was watching your video....and got to wondering what belly wool is used for. I looked it up. Because I've always wondered. They make pellets out of them to be used in gardens because they retain moisture, slow release fertilizer, and they repel snails and slugs. And....they are very expensive!!! Haha, what you consider trash, is in reality being sold probably for more than the clean wool. That's crazy! Neat info, since I am a gardener as well. Never had heard of wool pellets. Learned something new today. :)

Love lambert

One of the reasons I chose the Jacob sheep is that they are more primitive, and it sounds like they share some of the characteristics of Dorpers, in that they do browse on everything. They go to town on the bushes, trees, and weeds. That was the way I got my dad to agree to my having sheep (I sound like a teenager instead of someone closer to retirement than college!). And in the first year they did a really fine job of eliminating about half of the underbrush in a five acre mixed-forest-and-meadow plot of land. They girdled a lot of the Mountain Mahogany trees. They love to graze as well, but their first job was to clear out the underbrush on five acres of unimproved land that had seen a forest fire about 40 years previously. My niece when she moved in was appalled at what the sheep had done because she has an associates degree in botany or something, and so she felt like I was allowing my sheep to destroy the entire ecosystem and that they were to blame for a lot of the ecological succession that had been taking place as the area went through the reforestation following a burn-off event. The foundations of our property is just jumbled pyroclastic rocks (lava) with thousands of years of build up of sediment and etc., but my niece sees that as erosion, when I see it as the opposite of erosion. But she must be the expert (despite the fact that my husband has a BS in Biology and an MS in Botany). Since I got the sheep we've cut down 100 water-wasting cedar trees, and they've frankly killed about a similar number of Mountain Mahogany trees. (We probably had one acre of solid Mtn. Mahogany trees). My niece also moved in during the peak year of an extreme drought, so nothing much grew last year, and what did grow was thrown off by my ignorance in pasture management. So she was blaming my sheep on foliage die off that was happening all over the mountain. I ended up putting my foot down when she told me she was going to try to turn my coniferous forest/meadow area into a deciduous forest complete with ponds. (We live on the side of a butte, no ponds other than seasonal are even possible). She wanted to tell me when I could turn my sheep out into the different pastures because of how it would affect her little projects she was starting on the property without bothering to ask anyone (me) if those projects were okay. Yesterday my dad taught my niece how to use the tractor. So I had to mention that my only reservation was that she should know that just because she CAN use the tractor doesn't mean she GETS to use it to do whatever she wants on my land. Oh, and my father has come around to the perspective that he should sign the house over to me entirely. So you were right, Lynn, the kerfuffle from earlier this year has (so far) passed. Sorry.... did it again. Oh, and no babies yet. But Moo's udder is getting markedly bigger each day. Yesterday it also started to feel a little fuller, but not yet taut.

❤

I’ll be at the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival this weekend and that show would not exist without wool sheep. Super fun day if anyone is in the area. Do you all have a fiber festival up near you in Canada?

Great description about hair sheep. We are getting our Kiko goats in 2 weeks and will get our White Dorpers the end of June or first of July. We also want a few wool sheep as well so we will be getting Ile de France ewes late August and they will fall lamb this October. So glad to see Lambert has adjusted so well, he's a sweet boy and has very good conformation as well!! Have a great weekend.

*Important to note! If you mix a hair sheep with a wool sheep or even a mix with a wool sheep your "wool" becomes totally unmarketable. Fiber buyers will not touch it!

Thanks, very useful information!

Thank you for your knowledge ! The people we know with full dorpers & dorper cross (in tx) have horrible parasite problems with loss and lots of chemical intervention. We get 40-60 " of rain fall so parasites are a big problem here.I have st croix & katahdin. Im really new to sheep and rotating pasture every 3 days (& not returning to that pasture for 28 days) in hopes of avoiding many parasite issues. I do wish I had wool sheep though because I prefer the look and personality. And I'm a spinner so having my own wool would be nice.

😂 the prizewinning dorper is so pretty!!!🤩🤩😍😍 maybe the rubbish wool can be composted to enrich the soil on the farm? thank you for sharing!

What good girls the 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑are

🌹🌹❤🌹🌹

🩵🩵🩵

As one of the unwashed without much knowledge of sheep, what is the difference between wool and hair?

Is that Betty your cuddling