Sheep Industry News January 2024

Friesian sheep that originated in Israel but is now synony mous with Spain. Assaf sheep are known for their Roman nose, floppy ears and fat tails. The breed comes in a variety of beautiful, spotted white and brown colors and East Frie sian adds black to the mix. “The lambs tend to have a lot of color,” Mariana said. “We’re lambing every two months (a necessity for a dairy operation), so we always have a lot of lambs around. We’re a scrapie-free certified flock and, because we are using imported semen from Spain, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service requires we tag everything at birth. “Spain and the Assaf breed started an improvement program 30 years ago, increasing milk production traits” Mariana said. “Eight years ago, they started genotyping their population and, together with all the data collected in 30 years, they are now able to add that powerful tool to make accurate genetic predictions of their young animals. We’ve already sent samples of all our rams be genotyped testing. We got the first results this fall, and it was so amazing. “One of the oldest rams from 2021 that I thought was pretty good proved to be one of the five best rams we have right now. I was happy about that. But I was surprised by a few rams whose moms are amazing. They weren’t as good as I thought they would be. I’m very happy to have the information, even if the results aren’t what I expected. It’s nice that we don’t have to wait five years to really see genetic value of the rams like we do in a traditional genetic improvement program.” While producing a genetically pure Assaf is the guid ing principle at Ms. J and Company, the ultimate goal is to establish a healthy, productive and easy to milk sheep flock. “I wanted to go with the Assaf with a really good udder conformation, good milk production and, good overall conformation” Mariana said. “Milk production was pretty much guaranteed, so I went a step back and started focusing on the overall best females we had. We are starting to see more and more of that ideal Assaf sheep, but there is still a lot of work to be done. But we have some that are 75 to 87.5 percent Assaf who are re ally good and productive milkers. We’re focused on that good udder, good conformation and easy milking. We are getting to the Assaf part slowly, but soundly.” HUGE CHALLENGE Moving from Portugal to rural Wisconsin in an effort to expand sheep milk access in the United States seems like a bit of a crazy adventure. But Mariana said she’s always had a penchant for tackling exotic ideas. “For me, it was a huge challenge to do something like this,” she said. “I think that all of the sheep milk and sheep cheesemakers in the United States are amaz ingly resilient. There just haven’t been a lot of resources

here for them. I came here in 2014 to see what was avail able, and I realized that what we were talking about doing (making cheese) wouldn’t be possible unless we brought in high-producing, proven genetics from outside the United States. There was no way this investment was going to work without being able to improve the milk producing sheep we had available here.” Those genetics are now available to American producers. Rams not sold as breeding stock are castrated before leaving the property. “We also control the girls we sell for meat,” Mariana said. “We want to support the industry, but we’ve made a big in vestment to bring in these genetics to build and improve our flock, so we can’t just give them away.” The company’s main product, of course, is the milk, fluid and frozen. Pallets of frozen milk ship out to companies all around the United States. It ends up in a variety of products, such as cheese, ice cream, yogurt or even healthy drinks. “Sheep’s milk is different – it doesn’t have the taste of goat’s milk and it’s more digestible than cow’s milk – and I think companies need to take advantage of that to produce some great products,” Mariana said. “I think more and more people are starting to notice the value of sheep’s milk.” Learn more at MsJandCo.com.

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