I am raising purebred St. Croix. St. Croix do well in this environment and have good resistance to parasites. St. Croix are small so aren’t typically used for meat. They are, however, cross-bred with Dorper sheep in my area to make a bigger animal that is parasite resistant.
Terminology
- Lamb: A baby sheep.
- Ewe: A female sheep.
- Ram: A male sheep that can breed.
- Wether: A castrated male sheep.
Current Stock
I currently have 5 St. Croix.
- 3 ewes
- 2 rams
I would like to have a lot more ewes, but they are hard to come by as everyone is trying to expand their flock.
I am also keeping other breeds as breeding stock.
- 26 dorper, barbados, and crosses.
- 2 lambs
Lifecycle
- Wean lambs at 3 months. At this time ram lambs are virile, so they need to be removed from the flock, neutered or they will breed.
- Ewes are mature at 5-12 months of age. Spring lambs tend to reach maturity quicker than autumn lambs. Hair sheep tend to reach maturity quicker.
- Estrus cycles every 13-19 days, averaging 17 days. The ewe is receptive for about 24-36 hours in the cycle. Estrus is also regulated by daylight hours. They will enter estrus when daylight hours begin to decrease — in the autumn. They also tend to enter estrus when exposed to rams provided they were separated for 6 weeks prior. Conception is 60%-70% for each cycle.
- Lambs are typically slaughtered when they are about 60-80 lbs (for muslims and jews) or 95 – 125 lbs (for eastern American markets).
- Mutton is typically harvested at 3 years old, but can be anything over 1 year old.
- Breeding takes 142-152 days, with an average of 147 days (4 months 3 weeks). If I want April lambs, then I need to put the rams on in December. I could keep the rams on the ewes all the time and occasionally I’ll get 2 crops in one year. Some say that this is too much and really stresses the animals.
- Ewes are typically culled before being exposed to the rams. The factors for culling are numerous, but roughly anything amiss is a reason to cull the ewe.
Sales Strategy
- Certain holidays are the ideal time to sell lambs: Eid ul-Adha and Eid ul-Fidr for Islam and Easter for Christians (which is around passover for Jews.) Selling a week or two beforehand is best. Islam only uses ram lambs, not wethers, so don’t castrate the ones for sale for those holidays.
- Eid ul-Adha is expected to occur on June 16th, 2024, June 6th 2025, and May 26th, 2026. We won’t know until several months in advance.
- Edi ul-Fidr occurs after Ramadan and will be on April 10th, 2024, March 30th, 2025, and March 20th, 2026.
- Easter is related to Passover and occurs March 31st, 2024, April 20th 2025, and April 5th, 2026.
- Make sure to clean the animals before sales. Dirty butts or hocks are considered undesirable.
- Shear the sheep before sale that are the ideal fatness. They look better to buyers.
- In the Eastern US, lambs weighing between 95-125 lbs are preferable, while the ethnic markets prefer lambs between 60-80 lbs.
Dogs
There are two types of dogs people may keep in relation to sheep.
- Guard dogs (or just sheepdogs) are meant to be in the herd and protect them from predators. Good guard dogs stay with the sheep and also patrol the area. When predators approach the sheep, good guard dogs will bark and frighten the predators.
- Working dogs are meant to help the farmer move the sheep. These are typically Border Collies and are trained to respond to certain commands. Working dogs do not stay with the sheep and the sheep should not become comfortable with them. They work because the sheep are frightened of them and will move to avoid them.
As of now, all the dogs in the field are meant to be guard dogs. Some of them will be bonded to the land, others will be bonded to the sheep.
I do hope to get a working dog one day, but it is a major time commitment both to learn how to train it and to keep it up-to-date. Working dogs have tons of energy and need lots of attention every day.
Facilities
I plan on keeping my facilities minimal. Since I do not feed my sheep, I shouldn’t have problems (too often) with hooves. The only time I will be tempted to wash or trim the hair is when I get lambs ready for sale as meat.
The key features of my facilities are that I can sort the sheep and that I can work on individual sheep occasionally. I won’t need a tip table or anything like that.
I want to build mobile facilities so that I can work on the sheep in any part of the field. Perhaps I can use livestock panels with temporary posts to create holding areas, and then maneuver a chute into place. However, it is not necessary to make the facilities mobile.
Note that I will not be building a shelter or pen for the sheep. I need them to stay outdoors all the time.
Goals
I want to grow my herd until it is about half of the animal units on my acreage. I estimate that to be about 320 ewes.
Originally I wanted a pure-bred St. Croix flock, but since ewes are very hard to find (and very expensive) I’ve decided to keep St. Croix along with other sheep.
For the foreseeable future, I will breed with St. Croix rams and whatever I have for ewes. I’ll try to keep the purebred St. Croix registered, but the others I’ll keep just to breed and sell the lambs.
Once I have hit my flock size target, I will start thinking about balancing the breeding business with the lamb business. Probably 1/2 or 1/4 of my flock will be purebred St. Croix and the rest will be a mix of Dorper. St. Croix, and whatever else I think might work. (Katahdin?)
Links
Boneyard
I am going to remember the sheep that died on my land here.
Ram Lamb 2023-02-03
Killed by a predator. I moved the cows to the back 20 and the sheep were free to roam my 60 acres. It was killed somewhere in the woods just south of the pond during an ice storm.