Why Katahdins?
The Bottom Line: Why Raise Katahdins?
By Richard Gilbert
As hair sheep, Katahdins do not have to be sheared. But that is icing on the cake and not the main reason to raise the breed. The Katahdin ewe offers what animal scientists call reproductive efficiency—fertility, prolificacy, and mothering/rearing ability.
Ewe reproductive efficiency is the key profitability trait for 21st-century meat sheep production, according to sheep geneticist Dr. Charles Parker. Katahdins also are 50 percent more parasite resistant on average than wooled sheep. This resistance needs to be bred for and increased, as it offers huge economic benefits for the farmer and health benefits for the sheep.
One of the advantages of being a composite breed is that Katahdins retain more than 70 percent of the hybrid vigor from the breeds that were combined to make this unique American breed. For farmers with Katahdins, retention of hybrid vigor without crossbreeding is a realistic option. Straightbred Katahdins will produce lambs well suited for the 80- to 100-pound market, while very large lambs can be produced by terminal sires mated to efficient, hardy Katahdin ewes.
Hair sheep have been the only growth segment of the U.S. sheep industry in the past 15 years, partly because of the low value of ordinary wool and the difficulty in getting sheep shorn. Katahdins have led the shedding-sheep revolution in America. Katahdin registrations exploded throughout the 1990s, the only registered breed to so expand, as word spread that Katahdins also were profitable, easy keepers.
Hair sheep breeds gave the Katahdin its shedding coat, parasite resistance, mothering ability, and prolificacy. Wooled sheep contributed frame size and muscling. But the blending created something entirely new as well: The Katahdin is much greater than the sum of its parts.
Breed Creation on the Piel Farm
The process of melding a diverse gene pool into the Katahdin breed began in November 1957, when Michael Piel, of Maine, imported his first hair sheep from St. Croix, Virgin Islands, and began crossing them with wooled breeds, primarily Suffolk. Later, he made limited use of the Wiltshire Horn, a shedding wool breed, from England.
After Michael Piel's death in 1976, his widow, Barbara, and farm manager Charles Brown carried on development of Katahdins, including the focus on performance assessment that has become part of the culture of Katahdin Hair Sheep International. Brown, who helped to found KHSI in 1985 and was its first registrar, was an early adopter of computer technology for analyzing sheep performance at the Piel farm.
Heifer Project Steps In
The adoption of the Katahdin by Heifer Project International's Arkansas education center around 1980 prompted the founding of KHSI and led to an historic expansion of the breed. The Heifer Project flock was composed of sheep from several sources and included Katahdins from the Piel Farm and Katahdins infused with St. Croix bloodlines from the Jepson Farm in Vermont.
Heifer Project also incorporated some Suffolk and Barbados Blackbelly ewes, as well as 75 productive crossbred ewes that came from the research work of Dr. Parker, who was then working at the Ohio Agricultural Research Center, Wooster.
Seeking parasite resistance, high maternal performance, increased frame size and a shedding coat, Dr. Parker had experimented with his own composite consisting mostly of Florida Native, St. Croix, Suffolk, and Targhee.
The Katahdins bred at Heifer Project were widely dispersed and enhanced the breed's vigor, growth rate, muscling, and parasite resistance. The importance of the involvement by Heifer Project for Katahdins is second only to Michael Piel's creation of the breed itself.
The Open Flock Book
A unique and important feature of the Katahdin breed is its open flock book. Since its establishment in 1985, KHSI has had an open flock book, which means that percentage-blood Katahdins can be recorded in the KHSI registry and registered Katahdins can be generated through the use of registered rams or ewes mated to non-registered animals.
In the most common upgrading and recordation method, a registered Katahdin ram is bred to any group of ewes, and the offspring are recorded in succeeding generations at ½ (50 percent), ¾ (75 percent) and 7/8 (87.5 percent). In practice, most recordation has been done with outstanding purebred, but unregistered, Katahdin ewes. However, the open flock book also offers the opportunity to capture economically important genes outside the existing breed population.
The greater the genetic diversity within a population, the greater the selection potential for performance improvement. Allowing upgrading benefits the breed through the introduction of new gene combinations, the incorporation of hybrid vigor, and opportunity for expansion in breed numbers. Breeders especially benefit from the open flock book by being able to use good, productive ewes to make economical and efficient progress toward development of a flock of hair sheep that is recognized by the KHSI Registry.
Dr. Parker and other KHSI advisors have repeatedly recommended that KHSI keep the flock book open. Another advisor, Dr. Phillip Sponenberg, of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, wrote an article for The Shepherd (Jan. 2003) in which he discussed the advantages of incorporating new genes.
"Often, grading up is seen as a threat to purebred stock, but in fact it can ensure breed survivability over long centuries of purebred breeding. . . . Some breeds are now suffering varying degrees of inbreeding depression from restrictive matings only within the purebred population," Dr. Sponenberg wrote.
For more information, please see The Open Flock Book
The NSIP Initiative
After creation of the breed and Heifer Project's adoption of Katahdins, the most important event in Katahdin history has been the enrollment of a record number of flocks in the National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP).
Led by Dr. James Morgan, now NSIP board president and co-director of KHSI Operations, Arkansas, the national NSIP cross-flock initiative began in 2000 and has resulted in fast breeding progress among participating flocks for maternal and growth traits.
The power of NSIP Expected Progeny Differences (EPDs) is that they function not only within the submitting flock but also across flocks within the breed. Cross-flock EPDs allow animals in different production systems to be compared accurately. An early-born, grain-fed Katahdin can be compared to my pasture-born and forage-raised Katahdin. This is because NSIP does not care about raw weights or the heaviest animal, per se, but assesses relative performance.
In 2004 the NSIP implemented for Katahdins the first across-flock EPDs for ewe productivity. These EPDs are to assist selection for maternal performance and lamb survival in addition to more traditional EPDs that predict growing and milking ability. In an effort to enhance economically important traits, these EPDs predict the percentage of the lamb crop that will be weaned (lamb rearing rate) and the total pounds of lamb that will be weaned by each ewe in a flock.
Another historic EPD now being developed for Katahdins will predict parasite resistance for sires, dams, and lambs and should lead to much higher ability across the breed to resist the common stomach worm.
As of 2005, more Katahdin flocks were enrolled in NSIP evaluation than any other breed. That year, the NSIP provided Katahdin breeders with EPDs assessing the performance of 1,418 Katahdin ewes, 88 rams, and 2,410 live lambs.The Katahdin Sire Summary in 2005 led with a list of rams with balanced EPDs. These balanced rams had positive EPDs for all traits - again emphasizing the need for balanced performance, growth, prolificacy and milk.
© Copyright 2006 by Richard Gilbert