Flock History
Flock History
We began raising Katahdin sheep in 1998, with purebred but unpapered ewe lambs and a registered ram. We bought additional ewe lambs in 1999 and 2000 from John and Ruth Getz, of Springfield, Ohio. The Getzes had a large Katahdin flock developed from registered stock purchased at Heifer Project in Arkansas. Over the years they continued to use good registered rams but did not register offspring, instead running a purebred but commercial operation and selecting replacements primarily on size and hair coat.
In Spring 2001, the Getz flock was being dispersed and we were were able to make first selection. We picked 100 ewes/ewe lambs. As as these ewes and our other original ewes were purebred but unpapered, we have recorded each generation of retained sheep in a gradual “grading up” plan.
"George"
Our first Katahdin ram, bred by
Doug and Laura Fortmeyer, Kansas, continues to influence the flock
through several granddaughters.
They are thick ewes with maternal
ability and prolificacy.
KHSI's open flock book (see Why Katahdins? and The Open Flock Book) enables breeders to capture excellent genetics from unpapered Katahdins or from other breeds. While this has been a slow way for us to move toward a fully registered flock—especially when exceptional unpapered ewes are retained for several years—taking this approach has allowed us to cull more heavily than is often done with registered sheep.
Between 1999 and 2003, we sifted through more than 150 commercial and registered Katahdin ewes to achieve our current base of 50 recorded and registered ewes. We found some highly productive ewes in this process.
We score each ewe at lambing on her mothering ability, noting how well she claims and stays with her lambs while they are weighed and tagged, as well as her care afterwards while the flock rotates each day to a new pasture. Lambs are weighed monthly and these data recorded for analysis by the National Sheep Improvement Program and for our own review.
Once our base of ewes was in place, the most significant breeding progress came with the flock’s entry in 2003 into NSIP with data from 2002 and 2003.
Other major progress in our flock has come from using rams with NSIP EPDs bred by Doug and Laura Fortmeyer, Kansas, and from Nancy Case, Missouri. Having EPDs for both our ewes and rams permits all matings to be balanced, stacking strengths and compensating for deficiencies in such important qualities as milking ability and prolificacy.
© Copyright 2006 by Richard Gilbert