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We live in the temperate Willamette Valley in Northwest
Oregon, this is an good area to raise grass fed lamb.
There is a lot of interest in raising lean healthy meat and
the Katahdin is an excellent choice to do this.
We strive to raise and sell quality breeding stock
and have been working hard to improve the Katahdin
breed in the NW as well as educate the public about what
our breed can do for them. We run about 60 ewes.
By raising our sheep mostly on pasture and using forage
products when needed to supplement it we can produce
a lean lamb that meets the publics needs for taste and health.
We've been working for 11 years to improve the size,
muscling and growth rates of the flock while keeping their
great hair coats, milking and mothering abilities.
We are getting more lbs of lamb weaned per ewe and have
shortened the time from birth to market size.
Our ewes consistently lamb with mostly twins and triplets and
have the milking and mothering abilities to do a good job
raising all their lambs. We lamb the yearlings in July, the
main flock in the winter and a few in the fall.
This last year we had a 225% lamb crop raised.
We have brought back six excellent rams in the last several
years from Illinois and Montana to improve our bloodlines.
Using these rams on our own good ewes and consistently
selecting for excellence in size, muscling, growth, milking and
twining we have developed a flock that is having a real
impact on the perception of the breed on the West Coast.
The word is spreading about this great breed!
The last three years we have been using EPDs in the NSIP. This
is another tool we can use to measure performance and help us
make good selections and improvements in the flock.
Two of our rams made the NSIP balanced ram list this year and
one is in the top fifteen in numbers weaned.
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KRK 845 Yearling twin, RR
Ram lambs @ 7 months
Good muscled yearlings and lamb.
Winter born triplets
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We show to promote the breed and educate the public, we do not have "show" sheep, our sheep are pasture raised, we supplement with forage products, not grain. We tell folks sheep are ruminants and Katahdins were developed to have good gains on grass. We talk about nutrition and what the Katahdin can do for them.
We are having a real impact on the perception of the Katahdin as a serious meat sheep and a good choice for someone looking for a good maternal sheep breed.
We walk the sheep about the fairgrounds and they are turning heads, we hear "Look at the Katahdins!" All which would not happen if we didn't attend fairs.
This year our local group PCKHSA was excited to host the 2009 KHSI Expo here in Oregon. We are still getting feedback on how much people enjoyed the great speakers, the sheep, the food and the fun and fellowship on the field trips.
We had the honor of having the high selling ram at the Expo, the twin to pictured KRK 845, both twins out of a 13 mo old ewe and grandsons of Canadian Ccc 380N.
After 30 years of raising a big wooled meat breed sheep I got into Katahdins and I just love them! So much less work! No shearing or crutching or messy wool. Easy lambing with little work! Great feet and we continue to have parasite resistance and do no regular worming of the ewe flock.
Vigorous lambs and great maternal instincts in the ewes, out of season lambing, good growth and milking on grass, the list goes on!
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Katahdin