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In January 1999, we started our flock with a few registered Katahdin ewes from Henry Liccardiello in New Jersey. Those ewes were bred to registered White Dorper rams. We were impressed with the resulting lambs, and added a 75% White Dorper, 25% Katahdin ram with heavy muscling and a clean shedding coat. From this cross, we produced our base ewe flock over the next 3-4 years. Our ewe flock has consistently produced a 200%, or greater, lamb crop from 1999 to the present.
While developing the ewe flock, we concluded that grain feeding during gestation was unneccessary. No grain has been feed in the flock since early 2001. Our ewes overwinter on good quality, second cut grass hay, and produce vigorous lambs averaging 9 lbs. at birth. The market for grass-fed and finished lamb offers us meat prices that seem to have no upper limit in this part of the country. Our meat customers require a lamb that has never tasted grain, raised exclusively on our intensively managed pastures.
In 2003, we began upgrading some of our crossbred stock to registered Katahdins using a Fortmeyer ram, JF 03 055. The results have been impressive, this year producing a slaughter group weighing 96 lbs. at 164 days, on average. Half of those lambs were triple born and raised, one single, the rest twin raised.
Our grazing season only runs from early May to early October. That short and intense grazing season, coupled with the demands of our freezer meat customers, dictate our management and production goals. Those goals include: (a) annual production of a 200% born and raised slaughter lamb crop with a 90+ pound average liveweight within 165 days; (b) production of durable, low-maintenance, shedding, prolific ewes with strong maternal traits; and (c) to consistently acheive both (a) and (b) without feeding any grain in the flock throughout the year and with minimal deworming.
We breed roughly 20 ewes each fall and offer breeding quality animals only from the upper tiers of the crop. Breeding stock selection is based on production data, meat conformation and overall performance in our management system. The balance of each year's crop is butchered.
We are now accepting deposits on potential breeding stock out of the April '06 lamb crop. Occasional top-quality mature ewes are available after July weaning. Production records and photos are available by email.
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Above: April '03 ram lamb, weighing 123 lbs at 7 months, Sword bloodlines from Alberta, Canada. VT14-0033 was one of our flock sires in '03 and '04. Now owned by Rick and Renee Cordeau, Chester, New Hampshire.
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100% Grass-fed and Finished Vermont Lamb
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Below: JF 03 055 is our current flock sire, out of Laura and Doug Fortmeyer's Jubilee Farm, as a 2 year old. This deep, blocky, correct, perfectly balanced ram is leaving his unmistakeable mark on our flock.
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Above: 75% recorded daughters of JF 03 055
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Katahdin