why use ewes?
diving into the weeds about our ewes
We added sheep to our farm system two years ago, and they’ve quickly become an integral (and growing) part of what we’re building.
What Kind of Sheep Are We Raising?
We raise hairsheep. Unlike traditional wool breeds, they don’t require shearing. Instead, they naturally shed their thick winter coat each spring.
I call it “fluff,” because it’s not quite wool… it’s more like a mix of coarse hair and insulating undercoat. Either way, the important part is that they take care of it themselves, which saves us a significant amount of labor that shearing traditional sheep would require.
There are several types of hair sheep, and we currently raise two:
Royal Whites: a composite breed developed from Dorper sheep (South Africa) and St. Croix sheep (Caribbean). Ours are muscular, consistent, gentle, and easy to handle.
Katahdins: the most common hair sheep in the Southeast. They’re hardy, excellent mothers, and well-adapted… but a bit more variable in appearance and, at times, a little more flighty.
So naturally… we decided to cross them.
We bred a Royal White ram to our Katahdin ewes, aiming for the best of both:
More muscling
More consistency
Calmer disposition
While keeping the hardiness and strong maternal instincts
So far, we like what we’re seeing.
This summer, we expect to graze around 170 ewes as part of the Ewe Turn project.
Where Do the Lambs Go?
We market our lambs in a few different ways.
Some are sold directly to customers as frozen cuts through Bravo Steaks, our direct-to-consumer meat component of our farm. For example, this week I smoked amazing Greek lamb shanks and they were so delicious. Check out our lamb offering here.
We’re also exploring building a brand focused specifically on locally raised North Carolina lamb, for restaurants or small grocers.
Over 70% of lamb consumed in the U.S. is imported from countries thousands of miles away, and nearly 95+% of lamb served in restaurants comes from overseas. We think there’s opportunity to change that locally but high meat processing costs are a challenge to small farms like us. This is still a work in progress.
Other lambs can get sold through commercial channels, where groups of lambs are sold together through livestock markets. It’s more efficient, scalable, and follows market supply/demand.
Timing is Everything
Sheep are naturally seasonal breeders. As days get shorter in the fall, changes in light trigger hormonal responses that lead to reproduction. In a traditional sheep setting, sheep are bred in the fall and lamb in the spring. But hair sheep are different.
They’re capable of breeding out of season, which allows us to align lamb production with market demand instead of just the calendar. That flexibility is a big advantage.
This year we aim to breed our ewes in the spring with the goal of lambing in the fall.
Fall-born lambs are then ready for market in the late winter, right when demand peaks during Ramadan. A lamb marketed during Ramadan can be worth nearly twice as much as at other times of the year.
The twist: Ramadan shifts about 10 days earlier each year, which means our breeding plans have to stay flexible. Lots of planning.
My Favorite Herbicide: The Ewes
Goats get all the credit for eating weeds, but a flock of hairsheep will surprise you.
Turn them into a patch of thick brush, and they go to work:
Blackberry canes
Saplings
Poison ivy
Invasive weeds
Ragweed, dog fennel, sericea lespedeza
If it’s a problem plant, there’s a good chance the ewes prefer it over grass. We have been trialing this out over the last 2 years with the ewes and we intend to use their grazing to our advantage.
During the summer, when our ewes are in a lower early-to-mid gestation nutritional demand phase, we hope to deploy them onto newly cleared land. Weed pressure is likely to explode on newly cleared land. Instead of spraying herbicides… We will let the enthusiastic ewes handle it.
In the video below, this ewe is stripping lespedeza. It’s an invasive plant that cattle typically won’t touch —but the ewes are bloodhounds for it and lespedeza is a natural dewormer for sheep. Eat up, girl.
Why Use Ewes… Instead of Cattle?
We also run cattle, but for this specific job, ewes have the edge.
The ewes are:
more willing to eat weeds and brushy plants
tolerate heat better than our black cattle
deal with fewer flies and parasites in summer
We equate about 6 ewes to 1 cow. 6 ewes can browse more ground than 1 cow, with less soil impact
There’s also a risk factor. Newly cleared land comes with unknowns like toxic plants, rough terrain especially stabby sapling stubs, and predator pressure. The financial risk exposure is lower with sheep. The value of 6 ewes right now is roughly $1500-1800. The value of an equivalent 1 cow right now is $3500-4000. If we’re going to take risks, we’d rather do it with livestock that give us more flexibility.
To tie it all together, our flock fits into the Ewe Turn by working in step with both the land and our production goals. This summer, the ewes will be used for weed control in place of chemical herbicides, stepping in right when that pressure is highest. From there, they transition into lambing in the fall, and those lambs will be ready for market next February, aligning with peak pricing next year.
Thanks for going into the weeds with me on the ewes. At this point, you can probably see why we call it the Ewe Turn.