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Having had no experience in raising livestock, in just five years our new "hobby" has turned into a passion. We began our Katahdin endeavor during the winter of 1999. A fellow co-worker and KHSI member Carl Ginapp heard about Katahdins and had began raising them the year before. Well, curiosity got the better of me, and I had to see what these hair sheep were all about.
I stopped by his farm one very cold January morning just in time to see twins being born. Being born and raised in the city myself, and only moving to the country a few years before, this was totally new to me. Within 15 minutes I was hooked! As I drove home that day, I was trying to reason how to convince my wife that we needed these sheep. I figured I was in for an uphill battle, but to my surprise when I told her about them, her answer was, "Sounds great!". (I guess these sheep really do sell themselves.) By November of 1999, we had purchased 20 bred ewes and anxiously awaited lambing time. We haven't looked back.
Five years later, not many of those original 20 are still on the farm. Using a lot of weight, and rate of gain data, and then joining the National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP) a few years ago, we have selected the top 20% each year to hold back for our breeding stock. This has improved the size and quality of the offspring of those first 20 ewes by close to 50 pounds each and over 0.25 pounds per day gain the first 60 days. Now, I know many breeders do not like the larger Katahdins and want them to stay the medium sized 125-145 pound animal, but for our area (North Central Iowa) most farmers are looking for a larger animal than this and want lambs ready for market by 3 to 4 months of age. Just another wonderful trait of the Katahdins; they adapt to any management style and through selective culling you can have your "perfect" animal within a few lambing cycles.
We use a rotational grazing system and have about 12 acres of improved pasture divided into eight paddocks and plan on adding another four paddocks by the end of the summer. During the winter months, we feed out a good quality alfalfa with our own twist. After seeing how wasteful sheep can be with feed, we decided to try something a little different. We bought an old silage chopper at a farm auction and began chopping our hay. We have a traditional barn with a hay loft and can chop about ten tons of feed in a day. That fills the barn loft. This is enough to feed for several months.
We then built feeders so we can feed the sheep from above. The end result reduces our hay need by one third. Previous to chopping the hay on average each ewe was responsible for about 6 pounds of hay (whether they ate it or dropped it on the ground and walked on it). By running the hay through the chopper, it is cut into pieces about a half to one inch long and each ewe is now only eating about 4 pounds per day and with very little waste!
Very little waste is a big deal to me, because this farmer has to clean out the barn the old-fashioned way with a pitch fork and a clothespin. I have been told that chopping the hay will cause sheep to bloat, but for us and our experience, we have had no problems and it works great. This last winter was our third year of using the chopped hay and we have had no ill effects.
We currently run between 35-40 ewes and have been in the Scrapie Certification Program since May of 2000.
Red Barn Katahdins, Manly, IA
Steven and Melissa Bull
3450 Quail Ave.
Manly, IA 50456
515-454-3097
angus50456@yahoo.com |
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