Healthy Eating

[Muttley]

As we are new in the sheep business and am wanting to sell butcher lambs I am wondering what is a good breed that will give me healthy tasty meat to develop.
I presently have a little bit of everything including Barbados, Suffolk, and Polypay among others.

[nodongo]

I read somewhere that there are more than 300 breeds of sheep which can be classified as sire breeds, ewe breeds, and dual-purpose breeds depending on whether the production objective is to produce high quality carcasses, or to produce high quality wool.

The Suffolk is considered a good sire breed for meat. It is a good milker therefore the lambs can grow rapidly. They have deep, broad bodies with well-developed hindquarters. The Hampshire is another sire breed often used for crossbreeding. It is a heavy feeder; therefore it produces rapid growing good, meaty lambs. The Dorset is a dual-purpose breed that has good muscle conformation and also produces desirable carcasses. The Colombia is a dual-purpose breed developed for range conditions. It has a high growth rate and superior maternal characteristics.

The North Country Cheviot breeds have outstanding crossbreeding ability and can be used as either the sire or the dam breed. If crossbred to meat breeds the resulting lambs have superior carcasses while Canadian Arcott are fast growing, well-muscled meat-type sire breed developed for crossing with hybrid ewes to produce crossbred market lambs. The Katahdin on the other hand are small-bodied low maintenance breed that produces lean high quality meaty carcasses. Their growth rates are also much lower than other breeds.

The Corriedale - good dual-purpose breed with a good carcass, and good fleece quality characteristics. The Leicester - good mothers, good milkers, and often give birth to twins. Leicester is often bred with North County Cheviot to produce Scotia half-bred ewes.

[cakadu]

Muttley, one of the things that I suggest you do is to find out what your potential customers would like to have in their lamb, what price they are willing to pay and how much they want and go from there. It is far easier to direct market when you are producing what will sell.

I can speak to the Barbados, which is a light to medium carcass, very mild tasting, and is extremely lean. Because there is minimal fat cover on the Barbados, there is an illusion of a lack of development in the hindquarters, however, when compared to commercial cross-bred animals it has a relatively large rib eye.

Our customers buy from us because the lamb is lean, mild-tasting and is raised stress-free and without any kind of growth hormones etc.

Once your customers tell you what they want, then you can go about growing it for them and with any luck, getting a premium for it.

Best of luck in your endeavours.

[nakodo]

Personally I like the naked sheep image of the "hair-sheep". Makes the sell easy, my friends are intrigued by the "naked sheep" description and after I tell them there is no wooly taste of smell they are hooked.

[Festus360]

For the past 5 years we have been raising Hair sheep. We started with the Katahdin which we found to have small, slow growing lambs but are very prolific mothers. Then we crossed with South African Dorper and lamb growth rate has increased significantly. Lambs can now gain 1 lb. per day. The meat is very mild and very tasty.