Sheep Industry News July 2024

expensive and hard to find. But the Hendricks family went the opposite direction and moved from a large-scale Dorper operation to a flock based in Merino, Rambouillet and South African Meat Merino. “We transitioned the last of our flock to wool genetics in 2018, and have been just wool sheep since then,” Reuben said. “The biggest reason we’re interested in wool is the per formance. The lambs wean heavier and we can finish them heavier. We’ve always gotten more lambs per ewe from wool genetics than hair genetics. It absolutely takes more work to raise wool sheep, but we feel like that work is worth the effort. We average 180 to 185 percent lamb crop and in our experience the wool ewes live longer. We don’t quite average twice the lifespan, but it’s close. “Sometimes, the hair genetics are a little bit more hardy. Wool ewes need a little more attention, especially around here where we have a lot of parasites. We also found that wool animals have better feet, even though that seems to be the antithesis of what most people claim about hair genetics. Our wool sheep aren’t as heat resistant, so we have to be care ful when we’re handling and shipping them in the summer. We shear a bunch in the summer, and we’ll start at 2 in the morning and finish up at 8. But we can do that because we do a lot of our own shearing. We also have our own trucks, so we can do a lot of our sorting and loading at night.” The family has looked into following in the footsteps of the Helle family in Montana and manufacturing its own

want our producers to always get a decent price for their ef forts.” The family continues to recruit new and existing produc ers into its network of lamb feeders. Interested producers should contact Reuben at reubenh@cabriejoranch.com. FROM HAIR TO WOOL It’s not unusual these days to hear about a wool sheep producer who is transitioning to hair sheep. After all, wool prices are low – if you can sell it at all – and shearers are

18 • Sheep Industry News • sheepusa.org